I guess I'm in a minority: I actually read Bob Herbert (helps that I get the Saturday print edition), and have blogged about a column of his several times. In fact, I mentioned this fact a few weeks ago (not suggesting that T.A. Frank of the Washington Monthly read my post, just saying). Why isn't Herbert more popular? I guess he isn't part of the cocktail weenie crowd, and his columns are written in non-hyperbolic prose. If the NYT fires him, then they will only have 2.5 interesting columnists (Frank Rich, Gail Collins and sometimes Paul Krugman)
Even liberal blogs that bemoan how liberals get outgunned by the right seldom discuss Herbert. Search the archives of Atrios and you'll find eighty-seven references to Friedman but only fifteen to Herbert. On Talking Points Memo, a search for Dowd calls up twenty mentions. Brooks and Krugman each draw nineteen; Kristof, thirteen; and Friedman, eleven. Herbert gets three.
More telling for me is what I pick up from peers. I've spoken to a couple dozen journalists of the center-left variety, and most, after insisting on being off the record or unnamed, confess to reading Bob Herbert rarely, if ever. "I've literally never heard someone say, 'Hey, did you read Bob Herbert today?' Never in my entire life," said one reporter for a Washington political magazine. Said another: "I haven't read him in years." The New Republic may have captured it in a recent headline for a hit piece on John Tierney: "How could a New York Times columnist be more boring than Bob Herbert?"
This bothers me. Bob Herbert is the only national columnist at a major newspaper who consistently writes about the issues in our country that matter most yet seem to be covered least. Arthur Miller, one of Herbert's favorite authors, once said that "Americans in general live on the edge of a cliff; they're waiting for the other shoe to drop." Many opinion leaders don't get this; Herbert does. In a sea of plugged-in, powerful pundits, Herbert is the lone unplugged spokesman for America's little guy. He's the delegate of the deprived. I could not admire his efforts more.
[From Why Is Bob Herbert Boring? - T. A. Frank]
So go read Bob Herbert already!
