Drew Curtis | |
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| Born | (1973-02-07)February 7, 1973 (age 52) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Luther College |
| Occupation(s) | Publisher and writer |
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Known for | Founder ofFark |
| Partner | Heather Curtis |
| Children | 3 |
Drew Curtis (born February 7, 1973) is the founder and an administrator ofFark, an Internetnews aggregator. He is also the author ofIt's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007. He is a guest on WOCM's morning showThe Rude Awakening Show every Tuesday. Curtis was the Independent gubernatorial candidate for Governor of Kentucky in 2015 but lost to the Republican nomineeMatt Bevin.
Fark began in 1993 when Curtis was in England, sending links back to his friends.[1] Curtis registered Fark.com in 1997 but did not begin posting links on the site until 1999.[2][3] The first story on Fark was a news article about a fighter pilot who crashed while attempting to expose his buttocks to another fighter pilot.[4] Since then, the site has become one of the most popular link dump sites on the internet[2] with nearly 50 million pageviews a month.[1] As of 2006, the site was getting over 2,000 link submissions every day.[5] It was the firstindie blog to earn one million dollars a year in profit[1] and its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year.[6]
Although Fark is a million-dollar business, Curtis takes a yearly salary of $60,000. The rest of the money goes to the site's legal 'war chest' and to pay other expenses.[6]
Under Curtis, Fark has purposely shied away from theWeb 2.0 mantra of total user control.[5]
I don't care what anyone says, the masses are morons. You can't count on them to pick good stuff. Just check out Network TV to see what the masses want for entertainment. It all sucks. Don't even get me started on how they vote for elected officials. There's certainly a place for that kind of thing but it's not on Fark.[5]
According to Curtis, Web 3.0 will be "something called Good Editing."[5] Speaking at a media conference inWashington, DC hosted by thePoynter Institute, Curtis stated, "The 'wisdom of the crowds' is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb. It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter."[7]
In 2006, Curtis was featured on the cover ofBusiness 2.0 magazine as the feature in a story about successful websites.[1]Lexington Weekly named him one of their businessmen under 40 to watch.[2]
On November 28, 2007, Curtis filed an application totrademark the phrase "not safe for work" a common phrase on Fark.[8] His application was denied.
Curtis published his first book,It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007.[9] It soon became abestseller. An in-depth analysis of the state of modern media,It's Not News, It's Fark slams news organizations for running smaller versions of his not-real-news. In his review of the book, Farhad Manjoo ofSalon.com said that "[Curtis] even seems to go after the audience – his audience – for indulging in [not-real-news] Curtis seems to want us to be repulsed by them instead."[10]
Curtis's book peaked at #12 onAmazon.com'snon-fiction bestseller list. Media criticJack Shafer noted that despite the book's success, it received "scant attention" from mainstream media outlets.[11] The book was later released in paperback.[12]
Curtis graduated fromLuther College inDecorah, Iowa in 1995.[13] From 1996 to 2002, he owned and operated DCR.NET, anISP based inFrankfort, Kentucky.[14] He is a graduate of the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA program, a joint venture of New York'sColumbia University and theUniversity of California at Berkeley.[15] Curtis lives in the suburbs ofLexington, Kentucky with his wife, Heather, and children, Chance, Storm, and Sierra.[6][16]
Curtis announced his candidacy on January 23, 2015, for the2015 election for theGovernor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.[17] The platform revolved around a "Citizen Candidate" philosophy of common sense and data-driven decisions, no experiments, leaving people alone, having no party alignment, and taking special-interest money out of the political process. The stated hope was to build a blueprint for regular, real people in all 50 states/commonwealths to be able to create constructive disruptions in a broken system, in order to run competitively in elections.[18] With his wife Heather as his running mate, Curtis faced the Republican Party nominee, businessmanMatt Bevin, and the Democratic Party nominee, KentuckyAttorney GeneralJack Conway, in the November 3 general election. In the election held on November 3, 2015, Curtis lost the election to Bevin, receiving 35,629 total votes, or 3.7%.[19]
In January 2019, Curtis filed to run as a Democrat for the post of State Auditor for Kentucky.[20] Faced with a primary against three other Democrats,[21] he withdrew on April 11, 2019, citing "other commitments". Due to his late withdrawal, Curtis' name remained on the primary ballot, but votes in his favor were not counted.[22] The primary was subsequently won by Democratic candidate Sheri Donahue,[23] who lost by a 14.62% margin in the general election to incumbent RepublicanMike Harmon.[24]
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