By Ezra Klein
Bloomberg View - Feb 28, 2014
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently ignited
a bit of a firestorm with a column asking why academics are irrelevant
to public debates. I’d turn the question around: Why aren’t journalists
better at taking advantage of academic expertise?
The most
efficient arrangement would have academics communicate directly with the
public. Thankfully for journalists, they don’t. That presents a kind of
arbitrage opportunity for journalists: Although academics write in
jargon, they speak in English. And they’re typically happy to donate
absurd amounts of time walking reporters through the thickets of their
expertise. Their knowledge becomes our stories -- and, ultimately, our
page views and advertising impressions. It would be a disaster for our
profession if academics became good at communicating what they know.
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