Drudge gets competition

CBS MarketWatch:

Matt Drudge has owned the online news/gossip/investigative reporting/scaremongering Web space for almost 10 years. That may be set to end Wednesday, as blog publisher Nick Denton is launching Sploid.com, a tabloid Web site for breaking news with attitude.

"Sploid is a news site with a tabloid mentality -- top stories up top, played big, as fast as they break," Denton said in an e-mail. "If there's a political line, it's anarcho-capitalist -- sniffing out hypocrisy and absurdity, whether from salon left or religious right."

Befitting with Web style, headlines on Sploid.com link to the full stories on other sites. In a preview this morning, little original reporting was evident, other than an editorial comment roasting CNN for being too "perky" in its Wednesday broadcast. Straight stories like "Halliburton Gets Billion-Dollar Payday" and "Iraq's Got a Prez" were accompanied by a sensational item, "Ms. Wheelchair Runner-Up Blasts Pageant."

I've been checking the site today and it's finally up. We'll see how long it lasts -- as Drudge told the Observer, the news is an exhausting, all-consuming business.