The following is excerpted from Robert Stacy McCain's recent interview with Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com:
Q: Let's talk about Breitbart.com -- when did that start?
A: It started in 2005. I just always had a strong desire, as opposed to monitoring 25 to 30 Web sites to get the best AP national feed and the best UPI politics feed, and the best AFP world feed and countless others, my goal -- and it was a lofty one, and it seemed inconceivable that an individual could take on the major media -- but one by one, I've engaged in contractual relationships with the primary content providers.
Anyone who is paying attention to the world is going to have to use the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence-France Presse, UPI and the Press Association, and PR Newswire -- they're the major core news wires. In addition to that, I thought, why not start aggregating all the newspapers and Web sites into it, so it's searchable and to make it so you don't have to go to 50 sites. The two sites that are competing with me in terms of what I'm doing are Google and Yahoo -- and from looking at their stock prices, they're beating me. But I feel that it's like a feather in my cap, that after all these years that I've been online, having always felt like somewhat of an outsider in the media realm, that I have business relationships with the very entities that are larger than life and intimidating to me.
It's an exceptionally practical entity, Breitbart.com. I use it all day long, obsessively. I can just refresh one URL, as opposed to going to 25. On a self-esteem level, it's an achievement that perfectly reflects my interests and my aspirations. And [my goal is] to continue to grow that out and make it as useful a place for people to get information -- with me being the primary customer.
Q: Speaking of Breitbart.com, how many people do y'all employ?
A: Breitbart.com employs no one -- just me.
Q: OK, so you're a one-man operation?
A: Well, let's just say I contract out services. I don't have the technical prowess to put this stuff together, so I have tech partners, I have content partners, but Breitbart.com is my own offering.
And Breitbart.tv is a partnership that I have with Scott Baker and Liz Stephans, and they're going to be anchors and reporters for the site, in addition to being a video and audio news aggregation site.
We launched with an interview with [former Tennessee Sen.] Fred Thompson the day after the first [Republican presidential] debate at the Reagan Library. Scott Baker had the only on-air, on-camera, exclusive interview with Fred Thompson, when many thought he won [the debate] by virtue of not being up there. And people wanted to know, "Well, what does Fred Thompson have to say? And is Fred Thompson running?" Fred Thompson ended up choosing us to be his first and only interview of that type, and it was seen by over 100,000 people online. People dissected what he had to say, and it strengthened the perception that he's definitely going to run, it's just a matter of when he's going to announce. It was a primary sign that he was going to be using the nontraditional Internet media, versus the traditional media, to get his message out.
Q: Which he has done very effectively, when he responded to Michael Moore.
A: Which was a Breitbart.tv exclusive, and that's been seen by about ... 2 million people so far. So to say that was a bigger hit -- you know, an Internet hit -- that was exceptional. That one, the timing was the story. That he responded with a professional Web response to Michael Moore's salvo ...
Q: Within seven hours, I think, start to finish.
A: Unbelievable. It was awe-inspiring. ... It was a brilliant use of the media and what can happen. It starts off independently, and it goes out to the traditional and non-traditional media, as opposed to the other way around. ...
Q: What do you see being the impact of the New Media on 2008?
A: It seemed that 2000 and 2004, you saw where the Internet was important, yet peripheral -- an afterthought, to many. But now it's central to most. Hillary Clinton is right now using YouTube as a means to try and communicate to people that she's not as stiff as others think that she is -- making an appeal via YouTube to find out what song she wants for her campaign, in which she's mocking how she was caught on YouTube singing the national anthem out of tune, which shows a self-deprecating humor, which is exceptionally vital online.
Q: Why is that? ... A self-deprecating sense of humor, a sense of irony, seems so central to success online.
A: Well, a lot of it has to do with the demographic issue, has a lot to do with getting kids to relate to you. It's not that often that someone who comes across as a mother, maternal. ... Why would a 20-something vote for their mother, who's tsk-tsking their misbehavior? ... These people on YouTube are looking for things that make you realize, "I can relate to that person." It's hard to relate to an accomplished intellectual when you're a 22-year-old going to concerts every single night. It's not just policy.
Q: You've talked about Thompson, you've talked about Hillary. Any other candidates who really seem to get the Internet? I mean, Obama's doing pretty good.
A: I'm certainly not all-knowing. ... I think my value, as a thinker, is that I'm impervious to a certain degree to conventional wisdom. That doesn't mean that I'm always right. The more people tell me how successful Obama is on the Internet, I'm still not convinced of it. I haven't seen his use of the medium to any great result.
His success is born of the symbolism that he brings to the table more than anything, and that's something that's conveyed perfectly well on television. You see that he's seemingly, ostensibly conciliatory -- seems like the type of person that wants to convey that he can work and be genial with both sides.
When he castigated the Duke prosecutor [Durham, N.C., District Attorney Mike Nifong] for prosecutorial misjudgment, he was sending a message to white America, "I'm not Al Sharpton. I'm not a race-baiter. I will see your concerns as well." That didn't seem like an Internet phenomenon. ... So far I'm not seeing any evidence of his Internet prowess.
I think Thompson, right now, is far in the lead in terms of doing that, because he isn't spending a penny right now, and he's a player. And he's using the Internet to do so, while every other candidate is spending their nights and days trying to gobble up as much money as they can, which they can use to push their message, mostly in the traditional media. So Fred Thompson, to me, is the only one who's using the Internet exceptionally, because that's the way that he can run without running.
Q: And the future of online, the future of news organizations -- as a content provider, The Washington Times is working now very hard to get our stuff online. Instead of the one day, "It's Friday, here's Friday's paper online," we're updating [the Web site] continuously through the day. ...
A: Smart. That is a lesson that newspapers should have realized in 1995. ... I'm glad I don't have to work inside of a newspaper and try and figure out the financial aspects of all of this, and what this means to the bottom line, in regards of [classified] ads and print advertising versus the immediacy of online advertising, being able to click and that render a sale, and how that affects entire business models. That's not my burden.
I like the idea of information being immediate. And it's always my intention to find out what news is happening, even if it's not made public. ...
If you've got an exclusive, and you're holding it 'til midnight, and it's noon, you should be sweating those 12 hours in this environment. It's a different world.
I've never worked in a newsroom before, so I don't know, but from what I can tell from the journalists I know, their heads are spinning around, trying to make sense of it all. ...
In the old days, you had newspapers that would come out. You knew that the New York Times would come out at this time, you knew that the London papers would come out another time, it was almost like a steady diet -- breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now it's the healthier diet of eating little snacks throughout the entire day, and not having that big meal. ...
The rise of the cable news behemoth -- CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, similar type of programming, 24/7 -- to me, the problem with that 24/7 model is that MSNBC and Fox News rose to their current level of popularity around the dynamic of impeachment. Nine months of an O.J.-Simpson-like national saga that had a tug-of-war in which -- right-left, right-left, perfect crossfire, back-and-forth, back-and-forth -- and it was political theater, it was boxing, it was pristine entertainment. You can't do better than that programming.
As a result of that, a bunch of shows took the "Hannity & Colmes" model, took the "Crossfire" model -- point/counterpoint. Well, now that all those shows exist, and there is no impeachment, we're nine years after the fact, you've got this right-left thing going on. And I think that it has fed into the online, camp-oriented, DailyKos/FreeRepublic sort of thing. Bringing on a moderate to debate a moderate doesn't make sense. ... [The formation] of Internet camps, ideological camps where people go to the places where they feel comfortable, at the exact same time that on cable news you're watching people who, for all appearances, want to kill each other, going at it, has not particularly served this country well.
Because what a lot of people don't understand -- I was able to witness this during my education under Arianna's tutelage -- was that she could be going after a person in debate, she comes from a debate background, and she could be taking that person apart ... and then, a half-hour later, she's driving with that person in the car, and they'd have dinner at her house together. You don't get that perception on television. ...
What the audience doesn't get to see is these people can passionately disagree with each other but still afford them their human dignity and still be friends, because who cares if you disagree on welfare reform or immigration reform? We have the right to disagree with each other, and life's boring if everybody thinks the exact same thing.
So I think what's happened in the last 10 or so years of this stratification is that conviviality that existed behind the scenes by pundits who knew what their position was, to shake hands afterwards and have a cocktail or exchange phone numbers and maintain a civil friendship or professional relationship -- in 10-plus years, plus the Internet ghettos that people go to be comforted by their ideological brethren -- has made it so that the people who are pundits now are warriors, and don't have that "Hey let's get together after the show. ..."
That was one of my desires, after 2004, was to see if I could be involved in a project in which I disagreed mostly. ... The idea was, hey, news is news, opinion is opinion. And compelling writing and compelling debate is what I'm into. I know that I can hold my own around people I disgree with.
So I thought that the Huffington Post would be a great venue for the left to put their names -- you know, prominent members of the left -- to put their names next to their ideas, whereas at DailyKos and Democrats.org, people are using fake names ... then posting a diatribe calling for the president to swallow his entrails or something. So I think it's been successful in that regard, because whenever something happens significant politically, I want to know what the left is thinking. Arianna's created a site where you can almost recognize the consensus. ...
Q: I remember that when Arianna first went up that it was thought that her film friends would be posting their opinions -- that the Hollywood superstars, Charlie Sheen and Sean Penn ... would be posting on there, and that has not really happened as much as some people had thought. Can you talk about that?
A: I never thought that that which was going to make the Huffington Post work would be a steady stream of celebrities posting. I thought that it would be writers. Writers are what can sustain a good blog and a good Web site.
I think that celebrities did not expect that free speech is a two-way street, and that on the Internet, we can now talk back to them. And so when they preach that we get rid of our SUVs, those middle class out there who go to Costco with their three or four kids ... while they're flying in private jets -- I don't think that celebrities understood ... that putting out ideas that marginalize them from their core audience, that shows a sense of elitism, is probably not in their best interest.
I have seen celebrities on there, pretty big-time celebrities, and they're smart to convey their humanity in other forms other than political rhetoric.