Pundit Boxscore for Wednesday 29 December 2004

NYT VS. WP VS. WSJ: So after an entire year of evaluating The New York Times Lead Editorial, The Washington Post Lead Editorial and the WSJ OpinionJournal On the Editorial Page feature (over 1000 total columns), what have we learned? In the partisanship rankings, the NYT's Democratic score and the WSJ OJ's Republican score were almost exactly equal, while the WP leaned only slightly Democratic, resulting in a partisanship score way down the list in David Broder territory. Both the NYT and WSJ OJ fit the profile of columnists like Cal Thomas or E.J. Dionne, who are sharply ideological but not excessively partisan, willing to write crossover columns with some frequency. The NYT sometimes writes editorials like this morning's, praising Republicans on immigration reform, while the WSJ was willing to turn over their editorial space to a sharp critic of the Swift Boat Veterans in the heat of a presidential campaign.

Does the similarity of the NYT and WSJ OJ scores contradict Michael Tomasky's finding that The Wall Street Journal's editorials were more partisan than those written by The New York Times? No, for two important reasons. First, Mr. Tomasky was careful to compare editorials written during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, but the 2004 editorials I've evaluated tell only part of the story. Second, the WSJ OpinionJournal is not the same as the WSJ -- I really don't know whether the editorials selected each day by the WSJ OJ for their On the Editorial Page feature are representative, or more partisan or less partisan than the average WSJ editorial.