And entirely appropriate that this blog should kick off today, given that it's the fifth anniversary - can you believe it? - of the Drudge Report's breaking of the Monicagate story. Here's Drudge's own account of the events surrounding that seismic shift in the relationship between traditional media - what Drudge calls the "mainpress" - and the upstart internet interlopers.

While the event may or may not live up to the AFP's - possibly tongue-in-cheek - description of it as being on a par with Marconi's first radio wave broadcast or the launch of MTV, there's no doubt that while Drudge owes more to Walter Winchell than Woodstein, his role in the affair is central to an understanding of how traditional media outlets responded to and subsequently handled the story.

As Drudge says: "Speed Beat Spin". But what was, of course, more significant was that the event signalled the coming of age of a specifically net-driven 24-hour news cycle; with all the hype and potential pitfalls that went along with it.