I wondered: given how often, and on how broad a range of topics, the Minneapolis Star/Tribune quotes Professor Larry Jacobs of the U of M’s Humphrey Institute (read: on virtually every story about Minnesota politics, national politics, politics in the media, politics and culture, and any other story where “poltiics” is mentioned even obliquely), I had to ask – is he, indeed, the most cited man in the history of the Strib?

Bear in mind, at the Strib “history” means the 30 or so days that they leave articles online.  But a search of the articles available online at the Strib site (and leaving out other “experts” like, say, Algore (684 hits), who is quoted as an expert but is also a newsmaker in his own right) showed the following results:

Larry Jacobs: 58 hits.

Compare that to a selection of other notables:

Albert Einstein: 27 hits.

Steven Hawking: Seven, mostly from Strib blogs. 

Karl Von Clausewitz:  Prussian military philosopher and, literally, writer of the book on the relationship between politics and war:  Two hits, both of them comments from the Big Question blog. 

Benjamin Franklin:  Innovator in technology, politics and statesmanship:  41 hits, although perhaps half refer either to other people of that name or the cast of a play at the Guthrie.

Thomas Edison:  One of history’s greatest polymaths:  Three hits.

Archimedes: Perhaps history’s greatest innovator:  Two hits.

Leonardo Da Vinci: One of history’s great minds:  Six hits. 

Macchiavelli:  Noted expert on politics – perhaps even greater than Larry Jacobs himself:  No hits. 

So there you have it:  Larry Jacobs – the greatest authority in history!

According to the Strib.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Democrat Party, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.