If you spend enough time following the news, you may begin to feel like you’ve made some unexpected friends. Like Norm Ornstein, the oft-quoted watcher of all things Congress; or Mark Zandi, the widely cited economist; or Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist and, according to The Wall Street Journal, “the most-quoted college professor in the land.”
Call them what you will—experts, quote machines, pundits. But by any name, these are the folks who pop out of well-worn Rolodexes and turn up in news stories, providing quotes, quips, and the occasional
insight, again and again and again.
CJR is compiling a list of the usual suspects. And we eventually plan to track how often these professional pundits show up in the press.
But before we can get going, we’d like to ask your help. Who would you put on the list, people whose quotes you can see coming a mile away? Who are you especially tired of hearing from? Or, conversely, which repeat player’s quotes do you still like to read no matter how many times they are quoted?
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.