Who Matters Most? Will, Not Coulter

If you're a George Will fan, and it seems that most of us are, then this won't be a surprise. Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog, finds that he's the king of newspaper columnists.

In its list of the top 100 columnists, he leads with his column published in 368 papers with a total circulation of 26,178,378. But you'd be wrong if you guessed David Broder, Ellen Goodman, or Cal Thomas as the second-most-circulated columnist.

No, it's the Orlando Sentinel's Kathleen Parker, another conservative voice. She's in 328 papers with a total circulation of 20,300,742. The study "Black and White and Re[a]d All Over"? (http://mediamatters.org/reports/oped/) shows that conservative columnists greatly outnumber "balanced" and progressive columns.

But for us news junkies, it's the ranking that matters most. The rest of the top five in order: Broder, Goodman, and Leonard Pitts Jr. Some of the surprises are who's not near the top in circulation, like Bob Novak (25th) and Ann Coulter, who barely made the list at 95th.

By Paul Bedard