In the 1990s, as the field of economics almost universally rallied around globalization, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman went on a crusade against journalists and pundits who dared raise concerns about unrestricted trade. Through a series of books and articles, Krugman dismissed in scathing style any critique of globalization as being ignorant of well-established economic theory. Some decades later, you’d be able to find Krugman behind what his ’90s self would’ve deemed enemy lines: In the pages of the Bloomberg Opinion Section, admitting that the past economic consensus overlooked the negative consequences of globalization that many journalists and pundits had long been pointing to.
Krugman’s arc has placed him on both sides of what has long been a complicated relationship between academia — social science in particular — and journalism. His case begs the question: Why do academia and journalism, which each investigate the same societal issues with meticulous methodology, ever come into conflict? What was it that Krugman saw from his position as a columnist that his younger self missed? The answer, as it turns out, reveals just how much these fields need each other.
To start, let’s trace what exactly went wrong with the economic consensus of the ’90s. The idea used to be that allowing each state to make use of its comparative advantages would increase global production and prosperity in the long run. Some American industries might falter, but once people adapted to the new economy, they would be better off.
Yet no amount of mathematical modeling seemed to be able to capture a certain human factor: People aren’t emotionless, purely economic-minded bots. Their communities, their sense of identity, mean as much to them as chasing a more lucrative career, and telling them “we did the math” isn’t likely enough to convince them to leave a place they call home, if they would even have the means to leave in the first place. Rapid economic upheaval left small but significant corners of America in a rut that was harder to escape than economic models advertised. Krugman isn’t the only one to come around to this, either. Mainstream social science has since taken note of the salience of identity and place in the face of economic change.
Now might seem like the time for certain journalists to say, “we told you so.” Richard Longworth and William Greider — the latter having been on the receiving end of the younger Krugman’s onslaught — both published works in the ’90s warning of the impacts rapid globalization could have on parts of the American middle class. To come to these conclusions, Longworth and Greider did what journalists do. They interviewed government officials, labor leaders and other stakeholders to get a ground-level perspective on the issue as it was happening. A journalistic approach allowed them to account for perspectives that economic models couldn’t capture. And in a world where academic theories can take literal decades to develop, this approach allowed them to make some sense of an economic upheaval in real time.
Dominic Pino of the National Review has said that journalists don’t make good economists because journalism “specializes in seeing things. Economics is about the unseen.” Well, maybe sometimes, in focusing so much on what is unseen, economics misses the value of what is exposed in plain sight — that human factor, the grievances of actual workers having their identity stripped from them. These things aren’t hiding from us.
Clearly, social scientific theories aren’t invincible, and outside critique could provide something of value to the field. Does this mean that journalism gets off scot free? Far from it. In fact, journalism seems to have even more to learn from academia than the other way around.
The reality is that there are probably many more examples of journalists trying to play theorist and failing miserably than there are examples of brilliant predictions such as Longworth’s or Greider’s. Jude Wanniski of the Wall Street Journal played a central role in dispelling an exaggerated form of supply-side economics that advised the Reagan administration to just cut taxes and pray. The accelerated deficit spending that the policy initiated is partially responsible for the $39 trillion in national debt that our generation’s going to have to figure out. Even those journalists who predicted the downsides of globalization didn’t get everything quite right. Greider, for one, overestimated the destructive effect globalization would have on all jobs, rather than just on certain sectors.
What gives journalism freedom — the fact that journalists build their case thematically, through the thorough examination of individuals and their experiences, rather than through broad statistical analysis — is also exactly what puts it at grave risk of drawing simplified conclusions that misrepresent broader social trends. Even the journalistic format itself, which tries to condense complex issues into short, accessible stories, can exacerbate the issue of oversimplification.
These methodological shortfalls are why journalism needs academia to hold it accountable, just as academia needs journalism. For academia, this cooperation means engaging with journalists on their home turf — through interviews, columns, podcasts — taking note of what they might be catching on to that social science is missing and considering how the journalists’ findings could serve as the basis for future research. For journalists, this means platforming academics and their research, communicating this research concisely but honestly, and, most importantly, admitting where their own arguments could be missing depth and nuance. These kinds of exchanges might already be taking place, but they are often peripheral. Go visit the New York Times website right now, and you’ll find you have to dig much deeper to uncover an interview with an academic than to find hot takes from staff columnists. We need these conversations front and center.
This is where Krugman comes in as the perfect example of an economist building this bridge between academia and journalism. In his opinion columns, he draws from his and his peers’ research to both defend and, at times, critique the mainstream economic consensus. In turn, he’s able to communicate the implications of his field’s research to a public that needs to hear them in order to hold their government accountable. On the other side of the bridge are journalists like Ezra Klein. While my political disagreements with the man are large enough to make their own article, there is no denying the praiseworthiness of his efforts to use his high-profile platform to honestly and effectively communicate academic research.
The responsibility to bring academia and journalism closer together is shared by the Dartmouth community, too, and it’s most certainly shared by us student writers. As I work on this piece, I am reminded of the many other columns I’ve written in the past that, to some degree or another, are guilty of the very sins I am so confidently critiquing. Whether I’m prescribing the Democratic Party a straightforward solution to their campaign rhetoric problems or categorically declaring that institutional restraint leaves Dartmouth vulnerable to political pressure, I have at times sacrificed nuance to produce a compelling story that fits within a journalistic format.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in what I have put out in the pages of The Dartmouth. But wholehearted beliefs don’t get to escape accountability, either, no matter what format they’re shared in. They need to engage with research where possible and, if not address every nuance directly, then at least be more honest about where the story might be incomplete. This is a standard that I recognize I won’t always be able to meet, but that I will work towards, and I encourage my fellow journalistic writers to think similarly about their work.
Our society will continue to enter uncharted territory with each new technological advancement or political upheaval, and we’re not going to be able to face these challenges by compartmentalizing ideas. Confronting these issues demands that journalism and academia build a bridge between each other. And as members of the Dartmouth community, let’s not forget to each place our own little brick in it.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
