How to Measure Media Slant

There is an interesting discussion over on the Cedar Lounge Revolution about the editorial movement to the right/centre/take-your-pick of the Irish Times. Apparently there are only three or so left-wing commentators remaining now that Eddie Holt has been axed. Personally I have my doubts about that but it does raise a really interesting question - how do we measure the 'slant' of a writer or paper one way or another? Fortunately I remembered an article (scroll to the end) I discovered on FinFacts about research by two University of Chicago economists, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, entitled “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers”.

The methodology the researchers used was clever. They identified 1000 partisan phrases (from political speeches) and measured how frequently different newspapers used them in their non-editorial pages. So for example Republicans say “death tax” while Democrats say "Estate tax". They both mean the same thing but using one or the other reflect a certain slant. The results were pretty much as might expect - The Washington Times used Republican phrases while papers like The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe used Democratic ones. It is a useful ready-reckoner if you find yourself reading something from a non-familiar source - you can determine what slant they are likely to be coming from. The data can be found here.

The question is if one was attempting something similar for Irish papers or individual columnists (or even bloggers), what 'partisan' phrases should one use? For example: On the right: "national competitiveness", On the left: "race to the bottom".

I would love to hear suggestions for others.