Jack Shafer’s latest “Press Box” column on Slate.com praises the Drudge Report.

The article, titled “Don’t count Drudge out. His demise is overreported once again,” chronicles Drudge’s “rise and fall” through the years — at least in the eyes of other print and online media.

Shafer writes that Matt Drudge’s high and lows have always been exaggerated:

“Not to take anything away from Drudge, but he was never as important as his promoters made him out to be. Time embarrassed itself by calling him one the world’s 100 most influential people in 2006! He’s recorded ups and downs, hits and misses, scoops and errors, but he’s never approached the irrelevance his detractors would wish upon him.”

But Shafer’s overall opinion of Drudge is a very sound endorsement:

“What’s most remarkable about the Drudge Report after all these years is how efficient and useful it remains in the age of podcasts, Web video, RSS feeds, animations, interactive charts, interactive maps, slide shows, Digg buttons, Facebook widgets, comment pages, change-text-size buttons, print options, and all the rest….”

…If you could access only one home page for breaking news and chose Washingtonpost.com or CNN.com over the Drudge Report, you’d be a blockhead. His newswire-meets-tabloid sense of story - hysterical and playful at the same time - links to both what you need to know and what you want to know, and he updates more frequently than conventional media sites do.”

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