Why Drudge Still Rules

Despite his site’s antiquated layout, Matt Drudge has “stable traffic of about 12 million to 14 million unique visitors every month no matter what kind of news is breaking,” writes David Carr in today’s NYT.

How does he do it?

Carr marvels:

With no video, no search optimization, no slide shows, and a design that is right out of mid-’90s manual on HTML, The Drudge Report provides 7 percent of the inbound referrals to the top news sites in the country. “It’s a real achievement,” said John F. Harris, the co-founder of Politico. “I covered the Clinton White House in 1997 and 1998 and I would never have conceived that he would be an important player in the landscape 12 years later. He does one thing and he does it particularly well. The power of it comes from the community of people that read it: operatives, bookers, reporters, producers and politicians.”