Thursday, August 30, 2012

Why Journalists Should Have to Specialize in a Field

I follow Matt Yglesias on twitter.  I like to get the far left's perspective of things despite disagreeing with a lot of their positions.  Yglesias writes quite a bit on economics but so often he comes to simplistic conclusions.  So, what's happening?  Simply put, he's a leftist journalist that writes on economics related topics and uses simple Keynesian analysis to back up any policy that recommends more government power or control.  Granted, I haven't read every piece of his work so there may be a few gems that defy the trend.


In this link from Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux points out that Yglesias's analysis falls short when analyzing the stimulative effects of rebuilding after a hurricane.

Yglesias's shortcomings reinforce my feelings that journalists should pick a field they want to work in and specialize in that field by earning either a double major or a graduate degree.  One, this would reduce the supply of journalists and maybe increase their pay.  Two, the quality of journalism as a whole only has one direction to go: up.  I hope.  Requiring journalists to have some understanding of what they report on would improve the analysis coming out of our media outlets.

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