This is an aside titled 'The Incredible Shrinking Think Tank' dated 4/1/08

The annual report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) of think tank citations in the press found a 17 percent decline in media mentions in 2007 over 2006. “The decline was felt across the board among centrist, conservative and progressive think tanks.” Also, this is also the third year in a row of declining citations, and “The decline was most precipitous among citations in major newspapers (down 19 percent) as opposed to [TV & Radio] transcripts (down 6 percent).” They can’t explain the change. Any ideas?

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2 comments posted

  1. Posted by Jefferson - 04/01/2008

    Maybe the lack of results. Think tanks by nature work on principle rather than results. Not a critism, we need people working on principle, but it’s not really newsworthy: think IJ v. Cato. I respect them both, but whose actions make news?

  2. Posted by Jerry Brito - 04/01/2008

    Yeah, I agree, but cable networks still have 24 hours to fill no matter what. Do you really think they’re looking at results? You’d also expect an increase in the number of cites to IJ, and I’m not sure that’s there. I guess it’s not the drop that puzzles me, but the precipitous drop. Maybe it’s just a statistical error of some kind.

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