James Joyner worries that the stats showing an overepresentation of conservative columnists are poorly coded. "Personally," he writes, "I would score Broder and the Roberts family as progressive; still, while they’re clearly left-of-center, they’re hardly fire breathing liberal activists." But this gets to one of the problems. While I wouldn't call any of them liberals, even if they were liberals, they're not writing liberal columns.
Broder, Cokie Roberts, Ron Brownstein (a genuine liberal), and others of that sort pen reported, informational columns about American politics. They are not engaged in the work of George Will or EJ Dionne, who write argumentative columns advancing a particular ideology. So whether they support gay marriage is a bit beside the point: When The LA Times replaced Jon Chait with Ron Brownstein, they lost their liberal counterweight. Before, Jonah Goldberg's ceaseless advocacy for conservatism was balanced by Chait's liberalism. Now, it's balanced by very smart reported columns about this moment in American politics. And that's not balance at all.
