The Winner in National Enquirer's Pulitzer Nomination: Matt Drudge

The Pulitzer Prize Board has finally conceded and officially accepted the investigative reporting submissions from The National Enquirer for breaking the John Edwards love child scandal last year.

This represents a victory not only for the Enquirer but for a much larger community of independent reporters and bloggers who do not fit into the narrow definition of journalist as traditionally defined by the Pulitzer Board and other august industry bodies.

It also shows how far what some have called the "democratization of media" has progressed since the early days of the web. This involves recognizing that serious work can and does emerge from unconventional sources, such as in this case, the tabloid Enquirer.

Thinking back, could anyone seriously imagined Matt Drudge winning a Pulitzer for breaking his biggest story back in 1998 -- that President Bill Clinton was having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky?

Of course not, yet he probably deserved one.

For one thing, it was apparent to many by the mid-nineties that the traditional line between "gossip" and "news" was blurring, especially in reporting about celebrities and politicians, and that the The Drudge Report personified the new synthesis.

Furthermore, though he often made mistakes, in the Lewinsky case, Drudge basically got the story right.

It took mainstream media figures a while to acknowledge Drudge's influence, but they eventually did so. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006; that same year Len Downie of the Washington Post admitted, "Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."

All of which brings us back to the National Enquirer and its dogged pursuit of former Democratic Presidential candidate Edwards and his dodgy affair with a campaign worker, which despite his repeated denials yielded both a child and a inglorious end to his aspirations as a serious political figure.

It's worth noting that this week's decision by the Pulitzer Board to accept the Enquirer's entry is at least partly the result of a grassroots campaign on the the tabloid's behalf waged by Washington, D.C.-based media consultant Emily Miller. Miller had been writing about the case for the past six weeks.

Fittingly, it was Miller who broke the news about the Pulitzer decision yesterday in the Huffington Post.