Re: Blogosphere Star Provides Refreshingly Alternative Ideas
Mary, not everyone is so pleased. Paul Walker pointed me to this item from New Zealand’s National Business Review, which worries that the free-content model of the blogosphere
has spawned a huge band of amateur, untrained, unqualified bloggers who have swarmed over the internet pouring out columns of unsubstantiated “facts” and hysterical opinion.
Most of these “citizen journalists” don’t have access to decision makers and are infamous for their biased and inaccurate reporting on almost any subject under the sun (while invariably criticising professional news coverage whose original material they depend on to base their diatribes).
Paul’s response:
I don’t know about other areas, but when it comes to economics I know I trust a number of bloggers a lot more than I trust the NBR. . . .
Does the NBR really think its better at dealing with development economics than Bill Easterly, or better at dealing with Austrian economists than Peter Boettke or Steve Horwitz, or better at commenting on almost any economic issue than Gary Becker or Richard Posner, or more knowledgeable about Adam Smith than Gavin Kennedy, or know more about organizational economics and the economics of institutions than Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein? Then there is David Friedman or Russ Roberts and Don Boudreaux or Tim Harford or Greg Mankiw or Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan or Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen, or Al Roth. If only the NBR had such people with their level of professionalism, training and qualifications.
