Matt Drudge, the founder of the conservative news aggregation giant The Drudge Report, paid tribute to his friend Andrew Breitbart, who died suddenly on Thursday.
“Dear Reader,” Drudge wrote at the top of his site. “In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment.”
He added: “We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what's happening. I don't think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind's eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20's. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today… MDRUDGE”
Breitbart helped Drudge create the news portal during the Clinton era and build it into an essential tool of gadfly journalism in the Internet age, often to the misery of established news outlets.
