Asked for comment about the absence of the Daily Progress in the syllabus for course PLAP 101 (Government) at UVa, Prof. Larry Sabato responds as follows:

George,

.... As for my syllabus, I did not have an exhaustive list of newspapers noted there. I'm happy if I can get these 500 young people to read any daily newspaper. Actually, I believe the Progress does a good job overall of covering politics and government. You can't expect a small paper in Charlottesville to have foreign correspondents, so they pick and choose pretty well among the wire services available to them. And as I always tell people, because this is a University community, the Progress has a deep, rich pool of writers from which to draw---and many first-rate people write and report for them. The price of the paper is justified alone by the excellent work of Bob Gibson. He's easily in the top half-dozen political reporters in Virginia.

-Larry Sabato (electronic mail, January 17, 2004)