Archives for January 1999

Seven sites worth writing for

This column appeared Jan. 26, 1999, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

First of two parts. See Part 2.

The Web has opened up new landscapes for writers. Where major newspapers like the Miami Herald pay all of $200 for an off-lead, front-page travel story including photos — I got the check Friday and spent it Saturday — online publications sometimes pay considerably more.

While Salon and Slate remain cyberspace’s best-known outposts of original content created by staffers and freelance writers, the Web today is flush with a host of online publications offering quality non-fiction. Indeed, this might be the best of times for freelance writers with some online savvy. [Read more…] about Golden days for Web freelancing

Can the mainstream media resist being dragged through the mud?

This column appeared Jan. 7, 1999, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Drudge has taken his articles down, but you can still read them here. To track how the Clinton paternity story infiltrated the media, see A cybersleaze timeline: Anatomy of a smear.

Matt Drudge and Larry Flynt — who would have thought them soulmates?

Drudge, the enfant terrible of online journalism, has been ratcheting up the hysteria volume this week over his latest “world exclusive”: that Bill Clinton may have a 13-year-old son, the result of a tryst with an African American prostitute who’s seeking to prove paternity through DNA testing.

Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, is planning to reveal the marital infidelities of one Republican U.S. senator and as many as a dozen GOP congressmen in the coming days, having offered a $1 million bounty to women who came forward with evidence of congressional sexual philandering. [Read more…] about Drudge and Flynt: Two of a kind

The following dispatches from the Drudge Report are being reprinted under the fair use doctrine for educational purposes in cooperation with the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.

WHITE HOUSE DNA CHASE: TEEN DOING ‘WELL’ AFTER NEWS OF ‘NO MATCH’

**Exclusive**

He had been told all of his life by his mother that Bill Clinton was his father, but late this week, 13-year old Danny Williams of Arkansas learned the truth: He is not. [Read more…] about Examples of Drudge Report dispatches