Why Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg still rule the conservative media roost

◼ link - Philip Bump/Washington Post

A flock of (relatively) new conservative media sites have gained attention in the mainstream-ish media over the past few weeks, a function of their increased role in driving political attention and, in some cases, their savvy in redirecting Facebook's traffic hose toward themselves. Bloomberg's Dave Weigel notes a ◼ series of scoops from the Washington Free Beacon (largely focused on Hillary Clinton); at Slate, Betsy Woodruff ◼ explains Twitchy. At the Awl, John Herrman ◼ noted the rise of the Independent Journal Review, which "landed big" on Facebook.

For all of this success, for all of the novelty of new sites with sharp designs and well-considered social strategies, publishers will note that there's something to be said for another genre of political news site: the old-school, poorly designed link blog.

The obvious example here is Drudge. Matt Drudge's Drudge Report isn't the elephant in the room, it's the Sun in the old-school linkblog solar system. The Drudge Report has been a massive traffic driver for years, and continues to be. And it looks like it was written by hand in 1996, which, perhaps, it was. Let's apply a new-web technique to make the point. The Drudge Report, as seen in 2001 and 2014.

◼ The Most-Read Conservative Media You’ve Never Heard Of - Betsy Woodruff/Slate

A new generation of conservative news sites are mixing clickbait with Obama bashing to rake in huge audiences.