Drudge Report logs on to AOL

By VARIETY STAFF

One of the World Wide Web's success stories, the Internet-based news columnist Matt Drudge and his encyclopedic Drudge Report, has been snapped up by the Net's biggest entity, America Online, for exclusive use on its online service, effective immediately.

Drudge, who provided more than 50 links to some of the Web's most comprehensive news and opinion sites, will be given his own AOL keyword - Drudge, of course - and "space" on the 8 million-subscriber online service, which reportedly had been courting him for several months. No terms of the deal were disclosed.

Common qualities

Bob Pittman, prexy and CEO of the AOL subsidiary America Online Networks, said, "Matt Drudge and AOL share the same ingredients: instant, edgy information ... and that enables them to be among the very few standouts in cyberspace."

Added Drudge, a veteran of the online news wars at age 30: "With the Drudge Report, I report on the goings-on in all the media companies in Hollywood without worrying about the backlash of corporate sponsors. ... At AOL, an unorthodox service I'm thrilled to join, that won't change ... in fact, I may pick up a new source or two."