I’d like to thank the Internet…

I see that earlier this week there was a small kerfuffle on the effect of the internet on journalism/punditry.  See Robert Samuelson grumping his way through this column, followed by Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman responding. 

In some ways, this all echoes some older columns by Matthew Yglesias on the internet’s effect on journalism.  His latter post, connecting it to MOOCs, made a key point: 

You’ve heard a lot over the past 10 to 15 years about the crisis of American journalism, but it’s actually been a crisis for American journalists. A lot of people have lost jobs. A lot of people have had to work harder, or work in ways they find less pleasant. Journalism has become more competitive and in some ways less prestigious. It’s simultaneously more ideological and more commercial than it used to be. There are a lot of reasons journalists gripe. But the journalism is fine. Not just fine, it’s fantastic. More people have easier and cheaper access to more great coverage than ever before. You can delve much deeper into issues than ever before, hear from a much wider range of people, and learn about news faster. There really has been an amazing explosion of journalistic productivity, and voracious readers are way better off than they’ve ever been. The fact that journalists may not like it is neither here nor there. If an explosion of higher education productivity occurs, the people who currently teach in colleges and universities will find it discomfiting and that should not be the relevant consideration.

I bring this all up because, while the debate about MOOCs focuses on the teaching side of the academy, my experience finishing up my book manuscript speaks to the research side.  Simply put, the accessibility of data over the internet has improved dramatically just in the time between writing All Politics Is Global and The System Worked.  Back in 2006 I don’t remember being able to download usable spreadsheets on IMF or UNCTAD or WEF or Transparency International data while I was writing All Politics Is Global.  I was able to do all of that inside of twenty minutes last month, and it was wonderful.  I was able to collect information in two weeks that likely would have taken me a year to do back in the 1990s.  Furthermore, the internet is now generating its own data that can be useful to scholars. 

That’s  a significant increase in research productivity, and it is truly glorious.  So I’d like to thank the Internet for all its help during the writing of this latest book.  Yes, this technology is going to complicate my profession for quite some time.  But, to paraphrase Yglesias:  there are a lot of reasons that academic researchers gripe, but the academic research is fine.