As Campaign Desk wobbles into the home stretch of a year of critiquing the campaign press on a daily basis, it occurred to us that readers might find useful a short list of reporters who consistently rise above the superficial to do original and often insightful work.
So we took a vote among ourselves.
At first we thought we might call this gang the Campaign Desk Hall of Fame, but that seemed not only a tad presumptuous, but a little too generous as well. So, herewith, we present Campaign Desk’s Hall of Not Half Bad and Sometimes Actually Pretty Good.
In order of votes received:
Top Ten
Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
John Harwood, Wall Street Journal
Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central
Ryan Lizza, The New Republic
Jill Lawrence, USA Today
Mike Allen, Washington Post
Adam Smith, St. Petersburg Times
Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker
Frank Rich, New York Times
Honorable Mention
Charlie Cook, National Journal
Josh Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo.com
Todd Purdum, the New York Times
Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
James Fallows, The Atlantic
Dick Polman, Philadelphia Inquirer
Bill Bishop, Austin American-Statesman
Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine
One footnote: When we set out to compile these results, we had a universe of reporters whose work we have been following for nine months to choose from — representing newspapers, magazines, radio, network TV, cable and Internet. As you’ll note — all the chatter about the transformative power of proliferating websites, blogs and cable channels notwithstanding — our straight-up-and-down vote confirmed that, at least for now, after we sample the various wares offered up each day, we keep turning back to print to make sense of it all.
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.