Slate's Chatterbox ran an interesting result of a reader poll a few days ago; readers were "given" 25 dollars and asked to allocate them among the NY Times columnists to indicate how much they would be willing to pay to read each one, and then the totals were averaged out to rank the popularity of the columnists. Of course, this means, first of all, that there is bad news. In the near future, the NY Times is going to start charging to read all the columnists, supposedly at a price of $45 a year. I wonder if there is a way to download music and Frank Rich's new column of P2P at the same time...

The results of the poll were this (though Timothy Noah acknowledges that the 1000 votes he got in 4.5 hours overwhelmed him, and he ended up only counting the ones that came in during the last .5 hours):

Paul Krugman: $6.90

Thomas L. Friedman: $4.10

Frank Rich: $3.92

Maureen Dowd: $3.42

Nicholas Kristof: $2.35

Bob Herbert: $1.42

David Brooks: $1.39

John Tierney: $0.31

I think this strongly represents both the liberal leanings of the NY Times readers, and the additionally liberal leaning of those NYTimes readers who also read Slate. I for one, have never read Tierney, who is the new conservative columnist, and I only so often read Herbert or Dowd, who I got tired of long ago. But I especially like Brooks' and Rich's writings, especially their social commentary and ability to ask interesting questions. Brooks I know is despised by much of the left, quite unfairly I believe. Not only is he a fascinating writer, but he is a captivatingly assertive and entertaining speaker, even when you completely disagree with him. While I like Krugman, I agree with Noah that he loses quality when he strays from economics into liberal ranting, which even gets on my nerves (another reason why Dowd is off my must-read list). I enjoy Friedman, but find that he often repeats himself on a variety of themes, and has lost much of the importance in his writing that once made him a star. Finally, Kristoff is a tough case. I've known of him for years, as I've read both of the books on Asia by the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of himself and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. He often turns out fascinating pieces on Asia, and is the voice of Sudan's dispossessed, but he has occasionally written some columns about American politics that have made me cringe or just yawn.

My rankings would be this:

Frank Rich $6.50

David Brooks $6.00

Nicholas Kristof $5.00

Thomas Friedman $3.50

Paul Krugman $2.50

Maureen Dowd $0.75

Bob Herbert $0.50

John Tierney $0.25 (only because I haven't read him)

Here is the article link: Rankings