On Not Listening to Professor Jamieson

The American Journalism Review has a piece that examines the high frequency with which some sources are used by journalists. Somes sources have been quoted so often on so many topics that some news organizations have forbidden their reporters from using them:

While official bans are less common, it has become routine for individual editors, say on a national desk, to forbid reporters from using certain pundits as sources. Many editors interviewed for this article would only admit such prohibitions anonymously. "I have told my reporters not to use Larry Sabato anymore," says the editor of a publication that covers Congress. Besides Sabato, the mainstays of this likely-to-be-banned list include Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, Stephen Hess and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report and John Pike of Globalsecurity.org.

Last year, Professor Jamieson [if not the only "public intellectual" communication studies can really claim, then certainly the most famous] walked down the department's hall towards the chair's office and it never occurred to me not to ask her opinions on everything from President Bush's State of the Union to Union Station.