Washington has too many columnists, says Robert J. Donovan of the Los Angeles Times, who could be considered a Washington columnist of sorts himself. But there are not many like Donovan. No pundit, he specializes in writing around the news and stresses a new, people-oriented approach in interviews with the famous, the forgotten and the obscure. His low-key offbeat efforts do not aim for headlines, but the Times is now syndicating them to 200 papers in the U.S.
Actually Donovan does not consider himself a columnist at all in the conventional sense. "My stuff has no title, no regular schedule, no limitation...