Is Off the Press the Next Drudge Report? Joseph Curl Hopes So
By Michael Lovito, August 15, 2022
While he’s worked at a number of conservative newspapers and websites in his long career, there’s one job in particular that Joseph Curl gets asked about the most, so much so that he now responds to questions about it with a stock reply.
“There was a period of time when people would ask me something about Drudge Report,” he says, “and then I’d say, ‘Yeah, I ran it from 2010 to 2014, back when it was good.’”
Ever since Drudge Report took a somewhat anti-Trump turn in 2020 the site’s been sworn off by a number of conservative commentators, creating an opening for a more ideologically pure competitor to sop up its old readers. Curl thinks he has the chance to do just that with Off the Press, a new conservative aggregator where he serves as editor-in-chief. It is just one of several conservative aggregators vying for influence and audience By deploying the strategies he learned at Drudge Report – but sticking with an unwaveringly conservative perspective – Curl hopes to one day lead Off the Press, which is already averaging millions of monthly visitors, to the heights of influence that Drudge enjoyed during its heyday.
“One of the things that [Drudge Report founder Matt] Drudge used to say is, we don’t ride waves,” Curl said. “We make waves.”
A New Chapter in a Long Career
Curl, 62, began his journalism career at small regional newspapers in the DC area before moving on to the conservative Washington Times shortly after the Republican Revolution in 1994. Eventually he worked his way up to deputy national editor, where he helped coordinate the paper’s coverage of President Clinton’s impeachment trial and eventually hopped on the White House beat himself, covering the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations from 1998 to 2010. While covering the White House, Curl cultivated a relationship with Matt Drudge, the shadowy founder of the Drudge Report, and was eventually brought on as the website’s first fulltime employee in 2010.
“He called me after years of me sending him 10 or 12 things a day saying, ‘Hey this is a great Drudge Story,’” Curl said. “So, there was this sense that, hey, this guy gets how this page runs and knows what I’m looking for.”
Curl worked at Drudge until 2014 before leaving to help launch Laura Ingraham’s LifeZette, where he stayed for only a year “It didn’t work out very well,” Curl admits. He followed that with a stint at Conservative Review, all while also moonlighting as a regular columnist at the Washington Times and contributing to Ben Shapiro’s TruthRevolt and, later, The Daily Wire.
In 2021 John Solomon, another former Washington Times editor, approached Curl about starting a new conservative news aggregator to replace what Curl calls the “sudden gap” in the conservative news world after Drudge began to not only attack Trump, but seemed to openly celebrate Joe Biden’s victory of the former president in the 2020 election. After securing funding through the Informing America Foundation, Off the Press was launched on July 27, 2021. According to Curl, Off the Press’ audience has been steadily growing ever since, attracting 5 million pageviews in July 2022 and racking up approximately 15,000 newsletter subscribers, numbers that Curl expects to grow.
“Last month we were accepted by Google to run ads, take ads, and get aggregated within their algorithms and stuff,” he said. “So, I think our numbers are poised to go up exponentially.”
The Art of Aggregation
To help insure that Off the Press constantly features new stories, Curl and two other editors divvy up three shifts from 6 am to 9 pm. They to post 20 to 25 stories a shift while also making sure to “change the main story out a couple of times per shift.”
While aggregation may seem to outsiders like a simple task of copying and pasting links to stories, Curl considers it an art that requires the kind of flow and structure found in other creative mediums.
“You’re painting a picture of today’s news every day,” Curl said. “And if you’re throwing all of these things on the canvas and they don’t go with the other things, or they aren’t important or interesting, you’re wrecking your painting.”
Using the example of Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan, Curl said that he pored over 400 stories about the trip and only posted seven of them, an example of the “discernment” he says is required from news aggregator’s looking to provide readers with the most up to date information. “It’s having the news judgement to say, none of those stories are important, but these over here are,” he said.
Not Just the Usual Voices
While Off the Press favors conservative outlets like Western Journal, Breitbart, and The Daily Caller, Curl isn’t averse to linking back to sites like CNN, MSNBC, or USA Today if he thinks they’ve written an interesting story, and even favors foreign outlets when aggregating news about Asia and the Middle East. Despite this relative open mindedness, Curl still sees the mission of Off the Press as elevating conservative news sources that are willing to attack the Democratic Party in a way that he believes most mainstream sources aren’t.
“It’s so much different from mainstream liberal media, where they have all of their friends pushing all of their stuff,” Curl said. “We’re in a really interesting part of a much larger conservative conclave. If we don’t begin to support each other in some way and echo each other’s news, then it will just disappear.”
THE FINAL FOUR (QUESTIONS)
Are you fully vaccinated?
“I had the first two Pfizer shots but no boosters. The main reason is that I’m around some elderly relatives and I’d hate to be the one to give them Covid-19. I’ve had no ill effects whatsoever. I’ll wait to see this fall if the new Omicron-targeted vaccine is safe before deciding whether to take it, but Omicron is a much less severe variant than the original.”
Do you think the 2020 presidential election was stolen?
“’2000 Mules’ is a fascinating movie and certainly raises questions, but I have faith in the American judicial system. Former President Donald Trump had his chance to present evidence — and he certainly tried. But he didn’t win any cases and I never saw any firsthand evidence that the election was stolen. Still, it’s why Republicans should be vigilant in 2022 and 2024 to make sure everything is above board.”
Would you support Trump in 2024?
“Trump mocked President Joe Biden over his age during the 2020 campaign, but now Trump would be just about the same age. I think it’s time for a much younger person to head the United States, so at this point I’m leaning toward Ron DeSantis, 43. How great would it be to see the Florida governor go head-to-head with California Governor Gavin Newsom? One state is flourishing, the other imploding. Talk about a cakewalk!”
Do you think climate change is real?
“I do think the climate is changing, for sure. I grew up outside Washington, D.C., and we used to ice skate the C&O Canal all winter, from December through February, even skate on giant lakes. That hasn’t happened since the 1970s. But I don’t know how much of climate changed is caused by man. Still, there are steps we can take and we certainly ought to. I’d like to make sure this world is here for my kids and their kids.”
Michael Lovito is a Brooklyn-based reporter and critic whose work has appeared in Salon, Brooklyn Magazine, Pavement Pieces, and The District. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the politics and pop culture website The Postrider. @MLovito
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Off the Press editor-in-chief Joseph Curl: “Former President Donald Trump had his chance to present evidence — and he certainly tried. But he didn’t win any cases and I never saw any firsthand evidence that the election was stolen.”
