677 Caterpillars: A man named Tyler Pearson had posted a list of the 1000 Twittter accounts most commonly followed by the 677 New York Times staffers on the paper’s public list. It is, as you would expect, embarrassingly cocooned: Times staffers follow people who share the liberalish/leftish viewpoint of the Times itself, meaning these staffers are less likely to even find out discordant information. Which may be why they are so often surprised, or late to a story. …

Actually, it’s not as bad as expected. It’s worse! Jack Shafer takes the Liebling-Optimality** award (in that he’s the first non-liberal on the list, and with 235 NYT followers well above anyone more conservative) but as far as I can see you have to go a long ways down, past acceptably self-critical conservative David Frum, and the NYT‘s own Ross Douthat to get to a genuine partisan ‘winger Tweeter –@Karl Rove, who’s followed by 67 Timesers that person is merely talking head Ari Fleischer, followed by 6.9% of Timesers . [Correction: I’d missed Rove. Thanks to alert reader NM for pointing him out] …

Of the 1000, you could count those who oppose comprehensive immigration reform on the fingers of one hand, and you wouldn’t need the thumb (and maybe not the pinkie). …

Coming soon: The memo from @deanbaquet telling reporters gee, maybe they should branch out a bit and include some Republicans on their feeds! Whoever gets that Times affirmative action traffic will have some MSM-influencing power. …

Not on the list: Byron York, Instapundit, Rich Lowry, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham., Jonah Goldberg, Conn Carroll. No Powerliners, no Red Staters. certainly no Ace of Spades. …

Update 10/19: The list has been updated, with about 100 more NYT staffers included, apparently. Cocoonedness unchanged.

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** — “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better” — A.J. Liebling. Similarly, Shafer is less liberal than anyone with more followers and has more followers than anyone who is less liberal.