You may have already seen this, but it just popped up in the Pulp email from a progressive watchdog group Media Matters:
Washington, D.C. – Media Matters for America today released Florida data for its new report “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns,” a comprehensive and unprecedented analysis of nationally syndicated columnists from nearly 1,400 newspapers, or 96 percent of English-language U.S. daily newspapers.Because of the time, labor, and difficulty involved in gathering such a wide scope of detailed information about America’s newspapers, no one has ever before determined exactly where syndicated columnists are published. The report shows that conservative syndicated columnists are carried in far more newspapers, with much greater audience reach than their progressive counterparts, giving them a distinct advantage in the marketplace of ideas.
Florida: Key Findings
-- Conservative Syndicated Columnists Dominate Florida Daily Newspapers Each Week Conservative syndicated columnists appear a total of 121 times per week in Florida newspapers. Centrist columnists appear a total of 40 times, while progressive columnists appear a total of 75 times.
-- Conservative Syndicated Columnists Reach Florida Readers Nearly Four Million More Times Each Week Than Progressives Nationally syndicated conservative columnists account for 49 percent of the column impressions in Florida each week, while nationally syndicated progressive columnists account for only 32 percent. Those conservative columnists reach Florida readers 3,917,837 more times each week than their progressive counterparts.
Nationwide: Key Findings
-- Conservative Syndicated Columnists Dominate Daily Newspapers Sixty percent of the nation’s newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.
-- Conservative Syndicated Columnists Reach Millions More Than Progressives In a given week, nationally syndicated conservative columnists are published in more than 153 million newspapers. Progressive columnists, on the other hand, are published in 125 million newspapers.
-- Top Syndicated Columnists Are Mostly Conservative The list of the top 10 columnists, sorted by the number of papers in which they are carried or by the total circulation of the papers in which they are published, includes five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.
-- In Region After Region, Conservative Syndicated Columnists Enjoy Advantage In eight of the nine regions into which the U.S. Census divides the country, conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists in any given week. Only in the Middle Atlantic region (which includes New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) do progressive columnists reach more readers each week.
You can see the full report here.
