[aznpwnzor]

imo part of the problem is our liberal arts influenced college education system.

because college has moved away from being a luxury of broadly educating landed gentry to being a signaling of "i can be employed and responsible" the train a generalist approach doesn't really work.

To be specific, there are two types of journalists/writers

1. domain experts that are good writers/communicators 2. good writers/communicators with an ability to pick up domains quickly

at some point the 2nd type of person will be out of their depth. but the 1st type of person is expensive.

Why are Matt Levine and Adam Minter (even Krugman sometimes) such great journalists? All were domain experts first.

Great journalists that were not domain experts still exist, but they are more of the investigative variety. the ones that win Pulitzers.

[danieltillett]

What about the third and fourth types - paid shills/hacks without a clue and activists with an axe to grind.

[aznpwnzor]

i think those reduce to the first two types. paid shills is subjective and can be a domain expert. some even think krugman is a neoliberalist shill.

many hacks are also the first type. see degrasse tyson, jared diamond, malcolm gladwell, arguably pinker. very little substantive base, but great storytellers

activists reduces to the second type imo. if you have domain expertise, you usually hold a more nuanced view and don't come off as an activist even if you are very active. those with a preconceived notion are typically not a domain expert and just use their superior communication ability to prove their axe