Drudge has made a successful career out of publishing stuff that other media outlets are too cautious or too punctilious to distribute. This has made the Web-based gossip hound a target for the contemptuous clucking of journalistic traditionalists -- and, on the evidence of "Drudge Manifesto," his new book, it has also given him a bit of a swelled head.

The refrain of "Manifesto" is that Drudge, a "nobody," is now a "player" in medialand. And though the book strains to emphasize that how Drudge became a player is what matters -- you know, the Internet revolution and all that -- what comes through more powerfully is Drudge's sheer excitement at having obtained entree to the circles in which the news is ostensibly made.

The kind of name-dropping that the "Manifesto" indulges in -- to prove Drudge's "player"-ness, I suppose -- makes for fairly unpalatable reading. Still, there is one moment in the book when Drudge becomes almost likable. He has been smuggled into a White House press briefing by a pal from ABC, and after it's all over, touring the premises, he peers in on the Associated Press' Terence Hunt and swoons at the sight of Hunt's computer:

"I'm face to face with the most powerful computer in the info-universe, the AP Machine at eop.gov. This machine starts the cycles. All things White House begin here. The copy I receive in my built-by-Radio-Shack Hollywood newsroom is written here. By this man. In this cubbyhole. When he hits the ENTER button hundreds of outlets feel it."

Drudge's reverence for this AP computer might seem strangely retro for a champion of the hierarchy-leveling, little-guy-empowering Internet. But there's a kind of old-fashioned geeky enthusiasm in Drudge's epiphany that will endear him, at least momentarily, to any reader who shares his fascination with the machinery of news dissemination.

That pretty much exhausts the charm of "Drudge Manifesto" -- a disorganized mélange of shrill media criticism, incoherent diary entries, aimless notebook dumps, Beat-style streams of consciousness and rap rhymes, and the inevitable column reprints. Drudge has often boasted that his brand of "publish first, check later" journalism does away with the need for editors, but this book makes a poor case for the abolition of that honorable profession.

The Free Software Project
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