Business media overuses Moody’s Zandi

Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review writes Friday that business journalists call on Moody’s economist Mark Zandi too much and need to broaden their source lists.

Chittum writes, “Who’s Mark Zandi? He’s the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a Keynesian McCain adviser back in 2008 who supports the Obama stimulus, and a quote machine for deadline-frazzled journalists everywhere.

“I brought up Factiva and searched major news and business publications in the U.S., to get an idea of just how much Zandi appears in the press. So far this year, he’s appeared 446 times to date, roughly 1.8 times a day. In the last week alone, he shows up about twenty-five times in USA Today (twice), Reuters, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal (twice), Marketwatch, Dow Jones Newswires, Agence France Presse.”

Later, Chittum notes, “If Zandi isn’t the Most Interviewed Man in the Business Press by a wide margin, he’s up there in the top two or three. I get roughly seventy Zandi hits on Bloomberg’s site so far this year. On Factiva, he shows up sixty-seven times in the AP, thirty-three times in the Post, thirty-two times in USA Today, and twenty-six times in The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal is relatively Zandi-deprived, with just fifteen mentions.”

Read more here.