] Pound for pound, who's the biggest, richest media mogul
] on the Web? Terry Semel? Nope. Sumner Redstone? Not
] exactly. Try Matt Drudge. Years after his big "scoop" --
] leaking that Newsweek was sitting on a story about the
] tryst between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky --
] Drudge's website is bigger than ever. Run on a
] shoestring, the Drudge Report, a plain-Jane page of news
] links and occasional scoops, clears, by our
] back-of-the-envelope estimate, a cool $800,000 a year.
]
] While other news sites make money, they don't mint it
] Drudge-style. New York Times Digital scored an operating
] profit of $8.3 million last year. But it has 237
] full-time employees, meaning that each worker accounts
] for about $35,000 in profit. (And that doesn't take into
] consideration the fact that the site's reports are
] actually generated by the newspaper staff, a cost
] allocated to the paper side only.) By any calculus,
] Drudge's site might be the most efficiently run on the
] Web; it makes the Times site look bloated. Drudge's is a
] two-person operation (although he never mentions his
] right-hand man); that means it makes $400,000 per
] employee. And he never has to leave the comfort of his
] Miami condo.