Back when most people we're still figuring out how to connect their 14.4 kbps modems to AOL, Matt Drudge arrived on the Internet and became the 'Net's first household-name journalist, much to the chagrin of every journalist dining in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons whose last name wasn't Ailes. Drudge got to the 'Net first, established a mighty beachhead, and was the source of breaking news (and a fair amount of gossip) before the Blogosphere began.

Drudge of course is famously prickly when called a blogger. And while it's fair to say that Drudge himself is not a blogger based on his site's format, in the past he's a bit more open-minded about those who followed in his wake, telling an interviewer in 2005:

They tried calling it “Me-Zine” before, that was the word they were going to do, which also was offensive, as if the editors of the papers don’t make their own decisions and it’s their own version of a Me-Zine, as if Bill Keller doesn’t make the decision what is on the front page - that’s HIS Me-Zine.

I just don’t like these negative terms. They’re individuals on the internet, living out their dreams.

But if their dreams also include video, apparently that's a technology too far for Drudge:

Maybe we’ll do, uh, uh, a commentary on the Internet like Michelle Malkin. Maybe I’ll stand in front of like a blue screen and hold a banana and start talking into the Internets. (Sneering tone) ‘This is Matt Drudge reporting on Hot Air.’ Agggh. You know. It’s ridiculous. Looks like, you know, Captain Kangaroo time, Michelle. Get real.

That seems an incredibly cheap shot to me. As Libertas writes about indy filmmaking, "If you’re going to make a no-budget film anything that has nothing to do with budget must be executed perfectly...What doesn’t cost money, you must excel at". And the videos produced by Michelle's small Hot Air team do just that.

Don't believe me? If you're new to the technology, try making one yourself with the same production values: this isn't someone borrowing his family camcorder for a blurry unedited spittle-flecked rant to upload to YouTube. Michelle's videos, even setting aside their often well-written content, are extremely slickly produced, and could easily be cut into a nightly news program with no loss of quality, and that speaks volumes about how technology has leveled the playing field between billion dollar networks and (comparatively speaking), a shoestring operation.

There's no doubt that Drudge deserves an enormous amount of credit from being both a prominent early adopter, and an even more visible target for elites fearful of their status. And yet, faced with an ever-increasing new media environment, Drudge certainly seems to spend a lot of time looking over his shoulder, and risks turning into a new media version of the very same dinosaurs whose hermetically-sealed media world he up-ended.

Compare Drudge's quotes to those of the man who helped put another Internet news format--the Blogosphere--on the map, and has not only linked to those who've been inspired by him, but to whole lists of them. Since increasing competition is inevitable, that seems to be a much healthier attitude.

Update: Welcome Drudge Podcast readers! Umm, listeners...err, readers...Let's try that again: Welcome Drudge fans!