Matt Drudge

Fox News Channel and Internet columnist Matt Drudge are close to parting ways. After Drudge failed to do his Saturday show, "Drudge," crying censorship because Fox wouldn't let him use a picture it felt was a misrepresentation, the network gave Drudge an ultimatum: apologize and be let out of his contract, or be fired and sued for breach of contract.

Andrew Breitbart, the pugnacious, conservative Internet entrepreneur who took on the left and what he called the "media bully cabal" with a series of exposes that were explosive and sometimes flawed, died early Thursday after collapsing near his home in Westwood. He was 43. According to his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, Breitbart, a father of four, was out for a late-night walk shortly after midnight when he apparently suffered a heart attack. Paramedics took Breitbart to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Bean said, but he could not be revived.

Matt Drudge is coming to Washington--and plenty of other cities--over the heated objections of ABC News President David Westin. ABC Radio said Wednesday that it has signed the Internet gossip columnist to a syndication deal that will put him on the network-owned stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles (beginning Sunday at 10 p.m.), San Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington.

Michael Wolff is over journalism. The media columnist for Vanity Fair thinks that the ailing vocation has gotten in the way of what modern info seekers really crave: news. As he tells the story, in recent decades the people who call themselves journalists have bloated the news with their self-importance and their desire for prestige, losing sight of what's interesting. Then the Internet arrived and gave people a faster, more efficient way to get their info fix. In a decade that's seen the expansion of the Internet, cable news, cellphones and social networking, most young people are about as likely to buy a newspaper as a Walkman.

Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! It's the speed of Matt Drudge's mind. It's the fingers pelting a plastic keyboard at http://www.drudgereport.com. It's the velocity of the verbal volleys he lobs into the Oval Office from his cheap ninth-floor apartment near Hollywood and Vine. Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! "I like things big and loud," he trills, fiendishly clapping his hands together like a child in a highchair. "Speed is my weapon!"

WHEN Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner revealed in a recent column that he'd soon be changing his name to Christine Daniels, the piece quickly became the No. 1 draw on the newspaper's website. From across cyberspace the readers came. Overwhelmingly, they arrived after spotting this titillating link on a news site called the Drudge Report: "L.A. Times Shock: 'I am a Transsexual Sportswriter.' " Hard not to click on that one.

KIDS Naturalist Rosi Dagit leads kids of all ages in storytelling sessions about oak trees. Saturday, Natural History Museum. (213) 763-3466. BOOKS The Essential Media Book Club discusses Don DeLillo's "White Noise." Wednesday, Mani's Bakery, Santa Monica. (310) 574-1554. MEDIA The Individual Rights Foundation presents Matt Drudge (of "The Drudge Report"). Wednesday, Torrance Cultural Center. (310) 781-7171.

The Aug. 16 magazine seemed to have a theme. Was it intentional? It's hard to believe that you randomly gathered all that nilhilism and despair by chance. First, Patt Morrison, one of my idols, describes closing her mind to Moses and the whole Bible on the basis of skepticism on the parting of the Red Sea ("Seeking the Truth, but Not on His Knees," SoCal P.O.V.). For someone as bright as Morrison, it's a shame she has missed so much because she never considered that the Bible might be crammed with metaphor.

The article by James Endrst about the Fox News Channel was the most ludicrous piece I've read in a long time ("Fox News Makes Noise; Will Ratings Follow?," Aug. 25). Any network that employs Matt Drudge, Fred Barnes, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Jim Pinkerton and several other conservatives who are known to be hostile to Democrats in general and Bill Clinton in particular cannot possibly be fair and objective enough to be taken seriously. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are in charge of this operation and everybody is well-aware of their right-wing biases.

Re "Clinton Said to Want TV Talk Show," May 2: Bill Clinton as an NBC-TV talk show host? I think it's a great idea, but I just hope reports that Clinton is looking for $50 million are wrong. As great as his political skills are, he is an amateur as the next David Frost or Larry King, and he should be happy to get such an opportunity at a bargain rate. I'd love to see "Bubba" go toe to toe with the likes of conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and all the Fox-TV motor-mouth nitwits.

WHEN Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner revealed in a recent column that he'd soon be changing his name to Christine Daniels, the piece quickly became the No. 1 draw on the newspaper's website. From across cyberspace the readers came. Overwhelmingly, they arrived after spotting this titillating link on a news site called the Drudge Report: "L.A. Times Shock: 'I am a Transsexual Sportswriter.' " Hard not to click on that one.

Re "Clinton Said to Want TV Talk Show," May 2: Bill Clinton as an NBC-TV talk show host? I think it's a great idea, but I just hope reports that Clinton is looking for $50 million are wrong. As great as his political skills are, he is an amateur as the next David Frost or Larry King, and he should be happy to get such an opportunity at a bargain rate. I'd love to see "Bubba" go toe to toe with the likes of conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and all the Fox-TV motor-mouth nitwits.

Fox News Channel and Internet columnist Matt Drudge are close to parting ways. After Drudge failed to do his Saturday show, "Drudge," crying censorship because Fox wouldn't let him use a picture it felt was a misrepresentation, the network gave Drudge an ultimatum: apologize and be let out of his contract, or be fired and sued for breach of contract.

Matt Drudge's days at Fox News Channel may be numbered. The cable channel is weighing whether to fire the renegade Internet writer, who refused to do his Fox show, "Drudge," on Saturday because executives wouldn't let him show a picture that they called a "misrepresentation." The dispute, which Drudge calls "censorship," comes as the 17-month-old show's viewership has dropped dramatically, down 17% from a year ago and 33% from the beginning of 1999, according to a Fox executive.

KIDS Naturalist Rosi Dagit leads kids of all ages in storytelling sessions about oak trees. Saturday, Natural History Museum. (213) 763-3466. BOOKS The Essential Media Book Club discusses Don DeLillo's "White Noise." Wednesday, Mani's Bakery, Santa Monica. (310) 574-1554. MEDIA The Individual Rights Foundation presents Matt Drudge (of "The Drudge Report"). Wednesday, Torrance Cultural Center. (310) 781-7171.

Matt Drudge is coming to Washington--and plenty of other cities--over the heated objections of ABC News President David Westin. ABC Radio said Wednesday that it has signed the Internet gossip columnist to a syndication deal that will put him on the network-owned stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles (beginning Sunday at 10 p.m.), San Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington.

Matt Drudge screwed up his face and squirmed in his chair. The attacks were coming from both sides. To his right, Marty Kaplan, associate dean at USC's Annenberg School of Communications, was calling him a bottom feeder in the "information ecosystem" that is the news business. To his left, Slate Editor Michael Kinsley was taking easy shots at the man he once called--with some admiration, actually--an "unreliable source of information."

Andrew Breitbart, the pugnacious, conservative Internet entrepreneur who took on the left and what he called the "media bully cabal" with a series of exposes that were explosive and sometimes flawed, died early Thursday after collapsing near his home in Westwood. He was 43. According to his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, Breitbart, a father of four, was out for a late-night walk shortly after midnight when he apparently suffered a heart attack. Paramedics took Breitbart to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Bean said, but he could not be revived.

Some key dates in a frenzy over presidential sex and lies: July 4, 1997: The Drudge Report leaks word that Michael Isikoff of Newsweekis working on a story about President Clinton and Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer. Jan. 17, 1998: The Drudge Report says that Newsweek has decided to hold the publication of a story on Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky. Jan. 21, 1998: Jackie Judd breaks the story of Lewinsky by reporting iton ABC's radio network at 12:45 a.m. EDT.

Turns out that President Clinton is not the father of the teenage son of a black prostitute in Arkansas, as Matt Drudge, Rupert Murdoch and Jay Leno, among others, would have had you believe. Put that in the file of rejects along with claims that Bill Clinton committed crimes in connection with Whitewater, smuggled drugs, murdered his friend Vince Foster and used the FBI and IRS to destroy his political opponents, a la Richard Nixon.