CDMedia is built on the premise of taking business from the corrupt corporate media as a global news service. When we see others doing the same, we like to highlight their work. Please find below an interview with the managing editor of The Liberty Daily, a site taking business leaps and bounds from The Drudge Report, who went to the dark side about a year ago.
1. Why did you start the site?
I guess you would say I was an early skeptic of Drudge even before he became rabidly anti-Trump the past couple of years. There was evidence going back over a decade ago that Drudge wasn't very conservative. He definitely propped up Obama in the 2008 election (I recently read in the new book "The Drudge Revolution" that he admitted Obama would be terrible for the country but that he would be great for his website traffic).
I was also extremely frustrated by clicking on stories, only to be taken to left-wing websites like the Huffington Post, Washington Post, the New York Times and others -- I later learned that Drudge was a leading source of traffic for those websites. "Why would Drudge prop-up these failing leftist Democrat Party propaganda rags?," I'd frequently ask myself.
In addition, Drudge didn't lift a finger helping conservatives fight the culture wars. If fact, I would argue the opposite is true. And we can see where that has gotten us -- complete moral decay.
So in 2015, my wife and I had another successful conservative website, that was starting to get hit by Facebook's censorship, and it began to kill our traffic. So I thought, A) Drudge needs some competition -- a conservative alternative, and B) I should have a backup site that isn't dependent on social media traffic to survive. So that year, we started The Liberty Daily.
2. Do you want to remain anon?
Great question! Well, I don't necessarily want to be anonymous, but I'm certainly not seeking to be famous either. I don't want the site to be about me. I'm probably more comfortable being in the background. That being said, I ran for Congress in 2010 in Washington State, against Jay Inslee who is the current governor (or should I say, dictator). I was pretty naive thinking someone like myself, a Christian, conservative constitutionalist could get elected in the Seattle area. It was my first attempt to "do something."
3. How has your traffic grown? What is the reader response to your curating the news?
For over a year, the traffic averaged only about 50 views a day, but I kept the faith. With God's help and no money to invest in the site -- completely with word of mouth -- we're almost at 10 million page views per month. The best part is that nearly 100% of the traffic is organic, completely independent of social media. Which is great, because if Facebook and/or Twitter woke up one day and decide to ban us, it wouldn't affect our traffic one iota. It's great not to have that worry hanging over my head.
Not that we haven't seen our share of censorship from the Big Tech oligarchs. YouTube demonetized our channel probably a couple of years ago -- for no stated reason -- and YouTube parent company Google, which has a near-monopoly in online advertising, classified the site as "hate speech" early on, making it very difficult to survive. We've since launched an online store in an attempt to make up for the financial damage Google has caused us.
Readers' response has been amazing and really gives me juice to keep going. Overwhelmingly, they're appreciative of a one-stop site that links 99% to conservative media and most are disgruntled former Drudge viewers.
4. What is your unique offer to separate from the others feeding off the dying Drudge?
Number one, I'm not determining the stories I put on the site for clicks. I'm trying to do what I can to save the country from what has been a long-brewing communist takeover. Number two, the site is for Christian, conservative constitutionalists. I know of no other news aggregator with that focus. Thirdly, The Liberty Daily is not keeping the left-wing fake news media in business. Quite the contrary, I trash them -- deservedly so -- every chance I get.
Lastly, I don't do "quid pro quo" or "pay for play" deals like some of my competitors. So if you see a story on The Liberty Daily, it's not because someone paid me to do it. I get asked to do these types of financial arrangements frequently and I always have and always will turn them down. I want to remain independent and objective.
5. How can conservative media help each other to break through corrupt media tyranny?
Great question! I feel like I'm doing my part on this level, but I certainly don't have all the answers. For one thing, conservative sites have to figure out ways to go around Facebook and Twitter censorship. Being overly dependent on them for site traffic is a huge mistake and I learned this years ago before Big Tech censorship was even in the news.
There are many pro-free speech social media platforms that have been launched, Gab, Parler, etc., and they should be supported as much as possible. I think we've seen that while some in Congress talk a good game against Big Tech censorship, the likelihood that anything impactful will be done to stop them is probably not very high. Politicians in both parties are in the pocket of Big Tech and it's a real and constant struggle. With that being said, we should be constantly hammering our representatives to make discriminating against people based on their political beliefs -- or banning speech just because it's "offensive" to one of the Democrat Party's preferred grievance groups -- illegal with huge consequences.
Either that or the FEC could easily make the case that Twitter and Facebook, with their focus on censoring conservatives, are basically making in-kind contributions to the Democrat Party. I'm sure the FEC is full of deep state Obama holdovers at this point so this is probably a pipe dream, which is even more reason for President Trump to drain the swamp!
Matthew Burke Founder and Managing Editor, THE LIBERTY DAILY, The Conservative Alternative to Drudge
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I have 4 news sites I visit, first, thegatewaypundit, second, breitbart, 3rd Thelibertydaily 4th ProTrumpNews all of them are dot coms. TLD and PTN send me to other sites, but those 4 are in my bookmarks.
Matthew ran against Inslee when I ran against Reichert. We're FBFs. Great work, Matthew!
I heard about Liberty Daily from posters on Gateway Pundit, which I've been reading for over a decade. It's my first stop in the morning, GP second (because I love to post there, and then Breitbart, Pamela Geller and my local news if I have time. Can't tell you how much I appreciate the site, since Drudge went to the dark side a LONG time ago with his bizarre robot sex stories etc. Keep up the good work, you're going to help save our Republic!