Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 ABOUT THIS REPORT ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 THE BIG PICTURE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 TOP OF THE CHARTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 CONSERVATIVE ADVANTAGE ACROSS THE LAND ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8 CONCLUSION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 METHODOLOGY --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 APPENDIX 1: TOP COLUMNISTS, RANKED BY TOTAL REACH ------------------------------------------------ 15 APPENDIX 2: COLUMNISTS RANKED BY AVERAGE CIRCULATION ----------------------------------- 18 APPENDIX 3: COLUMNIST PROFILES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 INTRODUCTION This project did something that has never been done before: It amassed data on the syndicated columnists published by nearly every daily newspaper in the country. While a few publications, most notably Editor & Publisher, cover the syndicated newspaper industry, no one has attempted to com- prehensively assemble this information prior to now. Because the syndicates refuse to reveal to the public exactly where their columnists are published, when Media Matters for America set out to make a systematic assessment of the syndicated columnist landscape, we had no choice but to contact each paper individually and ask which syndicated columnists are published on their op-ed pages. The results show that in paper after paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts. As Editor & Publisher para- phrased one syndicate executive noting, “U.S. dailies run more conservative than liberal columns, but some are willing to consider liberal voices.”1 Though papers may be “willing to consider” progressive syndicated columnists, this unprecedented study reveals the true extent of the dominance of conservatives: • Sixty percent of the nation’s daily newspapers print more conservative syndi- cated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced. • In a given week, nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of 125 million. Conservative col- umnists, on the other hand, are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of more than 152 million.2 • The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives. • The top 10 columnists as ranked by the total circulation of the papers in which they are published also include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives. • In 38 states, the conservative voice is greater than the progressive voice -- in other words, conservative columns reach more readers in total than progres- sive columns. In only 12 states is the progressive voice greater than the conser- vative voice. • In three out of the four broad regions of the country -- the West, the South, and the Midwest -- conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists. Only in the Northeast do progressives reach more readers, and only by a margin of 2 percent. • In eight of the nine divisions into which the U.S. Census Bureau divides the coun- try, conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists in any given week. Only in the Middle Atlantic division do progressive columnists reach more readers each week. Though they have suffered slow but steady declines in readership over the last couple of decades, newspapers remain in many ways the most important of all news media. The Newspaper Associa- tion of America estimates that each copy of a weekday paper is read by an average of 2.1 adults, while each Sunday paper is read by an average of 2.5 adults,3 pushing total newspaper readership for daily papers to more than 116 million and Sunday papers to more than 134 million. This means that some columnists reach tens of millions of readers, and one, conservative George Will, actually reach- 1 Dave Astor, “Dems Win, Liberal Material Doesn’t,” Editor & Publisher, January 1, 2007. 2 These “combined totals” count the same newspapers multiple times if they publish multiple columnists, which ac- counts for the fact that the figures are greater than the actual total circulation of American daily newspapers. 3 Further information can be found at http://www.naa.org/Trends-and-Numbers/Market-Databank/2005-Daily-and- Sunday-Readers-Per-Copy-.aspx. 1 es more than 50 million. Furthermore, newspapers are the preferred news medium of those most interested in the news. Ac- cording to a 2006 Pew Research Center study, 66 percent of those who say they follow political news closely regularly read newspapers, far more than the number who cite any other medium. And an almost identical proportion of those who say they “enjoy keeping up with the news” -- more than half the population -- turn to newspapers more than any other medium.4 These more aware citizens are in turn more likely to influence the opinions of their families, friends, and associates. Syndicated newspaper columnists have a unique ability to influence public opinion and the national debate. And whether examining only the top columnists or the entire group, large papers or small, the data presented in this report make clear that conservative syndicated columnists enjoy a clear advantage over their progressive counterparts. ABOUT THIS REPORT By contacting newspapers directly, we were able to obtain information on the syndicated columnists run by 1,377 of the 1,430 English-language daily papers in the United States, or 96 percent.5 We asked papers for two categories of syndicated columnists: those they publish regularly, meaning every week or almost every week; and those they publish occasionally, meaning at least once per month but not every week. Most of the analyses in this report are restricted to those columnists each paper publishes regularly, unless noted otherwise. This report focuses only on nationally syndicated columnists, not each paper’s local columnists. It would have been impossible to determine the ideology of every one of the thousands of local col- umnists in the country, whereas the smaller number of syndicated columnists make them much easier to classify. In order to qualify, a columnist had to appear in three or more papers, and in papers in at least two states (there are many columnists who are syndicated to a few papers within one state; we established this rule to exclude those columnists). By this measure, there are 201 nationally syndicated columnists in America. In these raw numbers, the total list of columnists looks relatively balanced: there are 74 conservatives, 79 progressives, and 48 centrists. That does not mean, however, that there is ideological balance among the nation’s syndicated columnists. The truth is that conservatives have a clear and unmistakable advantage. Conservative columnists appear in more papers than progressive columnists do, and conservatives reach more readers. Most states find their newspapers’ op-ed pages dominated by conservatives. In short, just as in so many other areas of the media, the right has the upper hand. 4 A discussion of these data can be found in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s report, “State of the News Media 2007,” which can be found at www.stateofthenewsmedia.com. 5 In addition to dailies published in languages other than English, we also excluded the few daily business newspapers from the analysis. 2 THE BIG PICTURE If one were to throw a dart at a map of the United States and pick up the local newspaper where the dart landed, chances are one would be read- ing a paper whose op-ed pages lean to the right. Putting aside for a moment the question of cir- culation, the data show unequivocally that most newspapers in America run more conservative syndicated columnists than progressive syndicated columnists. In fact, there are fully three newspapers that run more conservatives than progressives for every one newspaper that runs more progressives than conservatives. While it might be easy to bring to mind a few prominent newspapers (e.g. The New York Times) that run more progressives, looking across the data it becomes clear that at every circulation level, one finds more papers that skew to the right on the op-ed pages. This difference is modest within the largest papers -- the 103 papers with circulations over 100,000 -- but becomes an enormous gap that grows larger at each smaller level of circulation. Obviously, larger newspapers tend to serve larger cities, which are not only more likely to have a progres-