The Colby threesome takes its role as de facto advisors to the national and state press seriously. They spend hours educating reporters, after spending hours educating students. They don't mind. In fact, Corrado said the press isn't given enough credit for its crucial role in informing the electorate with academics' assistance. "I've always seen it as part of the process of helping, in a way, to try to promote civic education, to try to provide more information to the public," he said.

Most of that process never makes it into print. While he puts Corrado on the air five or six times a year, Overby said he calls him more frequently than that. At The Boston Globe, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and editor David Shribman said he calls Maisel all the time.

Sandy Maisel in his Miller Library office, where reporters call seeking comment or counsel on state and anational political issues.

"I talked to Sandy only twice yesterday," Shribman said.

"About Lieberman?" he was asked.

"About everything," he said.

There are occasions when the press queries are outside of the academics' particular areas of expertise. Maisel said he gets calls about everything from foreign policy to obscure state legislative races. Corrado said he once was chatting with a reporter about a movie, presumably off the record, and found himself quoted in the newspaper's arts section the next day. "You're trying to be helpful," he said. "And I can expound intelligently for 30 seconds on just about anything."

In most of those cases, they decline comment. Corrado says he can't return all the press queries and sometimes has to limit himself to the biggest national outlets and Maine newspapers and radio. But one quote leads to more queries. Make the front page of The Washington Post or The New York Times and suddenly calls pour in from reporters at regional dailies around the country. A few just want a quote to fill out a story. Most of the reporters are sincerely interested in better knowing the issues about which they're writing, the professors say.

In fact, Colby's political pundits spend a substantial amount of time briefing and brainstorming with reporters. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the political stories and commentary in the nation's most influential newspapers began with a conversation with a professor in an office in Miller Library. Consider a chat Maisel had a few weeks back with a Globe staffer who was posted outside the recent Mideast peace talks at Camp David, during which the participants were not talking to the press. "She'd been there seven days with no news," Maisel said. "What she's doing is trying to find something to write about. Something new to write about every day."

They talked about what Clinton had been doing over the summer, in Maisel's view, to appear presidential. He said

"How will the country react to an Orthodox Jew? My answer has been that there are four different sets of people in this country you have to deal with. One is Jews. . . I think the biggest beneficiary of all this is Hillary Rodham Clinton. I think New York may go big for Gore-Lieberman and that may draw her in. The second group, average Americans, will like his values, will love anti-violence on TV, respect the Sabbath. The third group is the evangelicals, which I said in these interviews I just don't know. I said I could argue it either way–with the philo-Semitic movement, rediscovering Israel, [they might support him]. On the other hand, some of those people are thought to be quite narrow and may not respond positively. The fourth group is the anti-Semites. I don't think many of those people are going to vote for Gore in any case." –L. Sandy Maisel

Clinton probably was doing it for his own reputation but it played very well for Al Gore, too, as the convention loomed. "Clinton gives this uplifting speech that everybody thinks of as presidential and then he disappears and passes the mantle on," Maisel said. "She thought he was only playing to the history. I said, 'It's got political implications.'

"We'll see if it leads to a story. If it does, it does; if it doesn't, well, I saw things from a way I hadn't. She was asking good, probing questions. There is a gain."

The relationship the Colby political scientists have with the press is symbiotic, with benefits that extend from the newsroom to the classroom. For the professors, information gleaned from conversations with reporters is fodder for scholarship, for in-class discussion, for students' independent study. Corrado said he often takes notes during his conversations with the press. "You're calling him with information that he may not have access to," said Salant, at the AP bureau in Washington. "You're doing the studies. You're doing the interviews. . . . I say, 'Look what I got.' He says, 'Oh, that's very interesting.'"

And then they talk, the professor in his office, the reporter in a newsroom. The jobs are different but the objectives–analysis of political trends and events, education of the public–are not. Reporters like Strobel, who has written a book on the numbing effect of the electronic news barrage on the public, respect the expertise academics have gained through years of careful study. Professors like Corrado respect how much the press accomplishes with limited space and time. "These guys talk our language," said Shribman, the Globe columnist. "They understand our needs."

With a deadline often hours or minutes away, those needs are simple enough, said Corrado. "The first step is to return the phone call," he said. "The second step is to have something valuable to say."