# Andrew Breitbart The American conservative journalist and publisher who **founded Breitbart News Network** in 2005 and substantially **invented the post-Drudge right-wing culture-war media format** before his sudden death from heart failure at age 43 on March 1, 2012. Breitbart (b. February 1, 1969, Los Angeles) came up through Hollywood-adjacent conservative media — he was Matt Drudge's research assistant in the mid-1990s (Breitbart's self-description: "Matt Drudge's bitch"), helped Arianna Huffington launch *The Huffington Post* in 2005 (he was an early editor before pivoting right), and built the *Big Hollywood / Big Government / Big Journalism* network that became Breitbart News. Breitbart's substantive operational contribution was the **culture-war + sting-video format** that combined Drudge-style link aggregation with original investigative content (the **[[James O'Keefe]] / ACORN videos** of 2009 being the format-defining early example), substantial cultural criticism, and aggressive Twitter-era confrontation tactics. His framing — he wanted to build "the Huffington Post of the right" — substantially understated what the site became. After Breitbart's 2012 death, **Steve Bannon** assumed the executive chairman role and pivoted the site toward the alt-right framework Bannon later publicly identified as the site's audience ("the platform for the alt-right," Bannon said in 2016). The Breitbart-to-Bannon-to-Trump-campaign pipeline (Bannon left Breitbart News to become Trump campaign CEO in August 2016) is one of the clearest single institutional through-lines in the right-wing media-to-political-power pattern of 2015–2017. The site Breitbart founded substantially produced the political-cultural environment that produced the Trump candidacy. ## Quick facts - **Born:** February 1, 1969, Los Angeles, California - **Died:** March 1, 2012, Brentwood, Los Angeles (heart failure; age 43) - **Education:** Tulane University (BA, American Studies, 1991) - **Early career:** Drudge Report research assistant (mid-1990s onward) - **The Huffington Post:** Co-founder / early editor (2005, brief) - **Breitbart News Network founded:** 2005 - **Big Hollywood launch:** 2009 (the first of the "Big" sub-sites) - **ACORN videos:** September 2009 (O'Keefe sting videos that produced ACORN's defunding) - **Successor:** Steve Bannon (executive chairman, 2012; left for Trump campaign August 2016) ## KB significance **Format-defining figure for the post-Drudge right-wing web.** Breitbart's substantive innovation was extending the Drudge link-aggregation framework with original investigative content (sting videos, culture-war commentary, aggressive Twitter engagement) that produced a substantially more aggressive media format than Drudge had developed. The Breitbart format became the template for the subsequent generation of right-wing web outlets ([[The Daily Caller]], [[The Daily Wire]], [[The Gateway Pundit]], etc.). **The Bannon succession and alt-right pivot.** Breitbart's death in March 2012 transferred the site to Steve Bannon's operational direction. Bannon's subsequent pivot of Breitbart News toward the alt-right framework — culminating in his August 2016 public characterization of the site as "the platform for the alt-right" — substantially shaped the political-cultural environment of the 2016 Trump primary cycle. Breitbart himself never lived to see the Trump candidacy; whether he would have supported the post-2012 alt-right direction is contested but academically unanswerable. **The "culture is upstream of politics" thesis.** Breitbart's most-cited public framing was that "politics is downstream of culture" — the substantive theoretical claim that conservative political wins required first establishing a conservative cultural infrastructure. The framework substantially shaped the post-2012 conservative media strategic priority on cultural-criticism and entertainment-industry engagement that the Daily Wire and parallel outlets would subsequently operationalize. ## See also - [[Breitbart News]] — The site - [[Matt Drudge]] — Breitbart's mentor and template - [[Steve Bannon]] — Successor and alt-right pivot architect - [[Right-Wing Media Timeline]] — Full institutional arc - [[Fairness Doctrine Repeal]] — Background regulatory framework