The unmistakable decline of the once mighty Drudge Report into a cesspool of liberal links had led to endless speculation about the reasons. Did Matt Drudge sell the site? Did he get co-opted? Did he just lose interest?

But the demise of Drudge also opened the market to other aggregator sites, at least one of which is a big improvement over the original.

Drudge’s appeal wasn’t just the unchanging Internet 1.0 design, or the fact that he linked to conservative news outlets. It was that he managed to uncover news that the corporate media ignored, often simply by linking to coverage by local, and often more honest, news stories. The site’s editors had a keen eye for quirky, offbeat stories. It was the go-to place, the first stop of the day, for anyone who wanted to know what story was buzzing.

But in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the site started to morph into something unrecognizable, and almost entirely useless. As we explained in February 2022 in an editorial headlined “Drudge Is Dead,” the site had grown stale and had taken to entirely ignoring stories of great news value that the mainstream press wanted to keep buried. “Past aficionados would like something approximating a manly explanation as to why the Drudge Report died,” we wrote.

Now it is just another left-wing bulletin board – a pale imitation of the leftist Huffington Post, which itself was started as a liberal counterweight to the mighty Drudge.

This Monday, for example, the top of the fold featured a long list of links to stories about Trump’s alleged mental lapse (while completely ignoring Biden’s more egregious one the day before), plus links to stories pumping up the left’s current favorite Republican, Nikki Haley.

The stories listed that day were almost entirely from a handful of (mostly) liberal-leaning news outlets – AP, Politico, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, SFGate, the Guardian.

It’s little wonder Drudge’s traffic has fallen off the table.

The good news is that Drudge’s demise has allowed a number of other aggregator sites to bloom.

Liberty Daily, Discern Report, Whatfinger, Off the Press, Citizen Free Press are all doing what Drudge used to do – highlighting news and views that the corrupt corporate media want to ignore, helping new voices find an audience, and making themselves indispensable.

Each has its own approach.

The Liberty Daily is the most Drudge-like in appearance – same font, same general layout, same use of red to flag hot stories – but has a tendency to add lots of zing and nicknames, such as Crybaby RINO NeverTrumper Adam Kinzinger or Bribery Biden, NeoCon Nikki Haley.

Discern Report and Off the Press sport more modern front pages. 

Whatfinger, which describes itself as “The Conservative answer to the Drudge Report” and aspires to be “The Greatest Aggregate Link News Site On Earth” has a huge mélange of stories from conservative news and blogs.

But we find ourselves increasingly drawn to Citizen Free Press, which has taken Drudge to the next level and is almost entirely a long list of links.

Like the Drudge of old, its operator is something of a mystery. Unlike Drudge and the other aggregator sites, it carries no ads.

The site does, however, have an engaging mix of links to news and commentary from a wide range of sources, links to X posts and YouTube videos, and an uncanny ability to find stories that are genuinely amusing. Monday’s page, for example, contained a link to video, posted on X, of a woman’s dogs joyfully running around a maze she’d shoveled out of the snow in her backyard. There’s also a link to a post of a 1954 video explaining how to use a rotary telephone.

In another, the site links to an X post headlined simply “Trump just got the entire media to finally admit Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security on Jan 6,” based on the mountain of coverage his recent slip-up generated.

There’s a reason Citizen Free Press has been growing in popularity.  

None of these sites can, as of today, boast the influence Drudge once had. But one is sure to emerge.

Drudge is dead. Long live its replacements.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board