Clearly, the skill of the writer and the connection he or she establishes with the audience is more important than the subject matter. Another finding from this ranking is the lack of business columnists. Tenure with the column doesn't necessarily predict readership. Among those with the strongest scores are columnists who've had the same column for many, many years, true enough, but also at least one who started his column in the last year or so. The reason I pulled this together is that a market's reaction to a single columnists is often idiosyncratic.
Newspapers often have good reasons to include less popular columnists in the mix of what they offer.
What we need to look for is a constellation of columnists who show some appeal to different demographic and readership groups. Interpreting research is all about having some sort of context in which to understand what is a big number and what is a small number. This simple analysis is an attempt to provide some albeit gross generalizations for columnists. Download a PDF version of this article.