And a lot of people in L.A. and D.C. have been gathering around. Two weeks ago Drudge began posting items about Kathleen Willey, a woman who would allegedly testify that Clinton had ““sexually propositioned’’ her on federal property. He was the first to report that she had been subpoenaed by Paula Jones’s lawyers. (Drudge claimed that White House staffers visited his Web site some 2,600 times in the hours after he wrote that item.) But it wasn’t clear how much of the story Drudge got right. He based his reporting on what he claimed was inside information about a NEWSWEEK investigation by correspondent Michael Isikoff, who had been researching the allegation for months. (The magazine published its account of the Willey story once the subpoena was issued.) ““Whatever he had he didn’t get from me, and much of it was wrong,’’ Isikoff says. Drudge would not tell NEWSWEEK where he got his information and stands by his version.
Should anyone trust Drudge? So far, he has had a few genuine scoops: he was the first to report Connie Chung’s firing at CBS and Jack Kemp’s vice presidential nomination. But now Drudge is coming under greater scrutiny. Sensing a backlash, he posted an attack on the author of a forthcoming profile in The New Yorker, claiming that the magazine was out to get him.
Drudge managed the gift shop at CBS before launching an online compilation of wire services in 1995. Now, operating out of his cramped Hollywood apartment, he says he has 85,000 subscribers and has distribution deals with America Online and Wired magazine. In interviews, he smugly drops comparisons to his hero, Walter Winchell, and boasts about offers from movie studios and big-time publications. There’s little doubt that Drudge could get rich peddling rumors. But he says he prefers to be his own boss and has no intention of cashing in on his newfound fame. Like a lot of the things Drudge reports, that may or may not turn out to be true.
