I cold-called Matt Drudge sometime in either late ’96 or very early ’97, when I had a desk at People magazine. I wanted to report something or other about the Drudge Report, which was fairly new at the time. We soon became friendly. Not friend-friends but on the phone from time to time, talking about stories, friendly enough. I introduced him to Julia Phillips, with whom I was also palling around at the time. They quickly took to each other and she wound up helping him write The Drudge Manifesto. He eventually moved to Florida and then a falling-out of some kind happened over an email I sent him in ’01, some kind of lefty slam of one of his righty articles…can’t recall.
But putting a JEFFREY WELLS link on the Drudge Report home page was good and generous on his part. I think it appeared sometime in the fall of ’98, or right after my Mr. Showbiz column appeared. Matt was a real friend from the get-go. One weekend I was having computer trouble at the People office, and Matt — at the time a Los Angeles resident — was enough of a pal to drive all the way over and take a look at whatever the trouble was. (People editor Jack Kelly was there also that weekend, lurking and bothered by the presence of a non-staffer in the inner sanctum.) I brought Matt with me to a somewhat early screening of Titanic in November of ’97, and I distinctly recall both of us feeling the feel as we walked back to our cars on the Paramount lot.