Bloggers As Illegal Immigrants

It is not uncommon to see a Journalist (with a capital J) launch into a diatribe against bloggers and sometimes even call for regulations to stop "citizen journalists" from spreading the news. Although such calls are often couched in terms of noble-sounding goals like protecting the integrity of information in a free society, there's also an important self-serving economic motive at play.

It doesn't cost all that much to become a citizen journalist: a computer and your own time is about all it takes for you to start reporting your view of the world to whoever wants to read it.

The laws of supply and demand suggest that the rewards to being a Journalist would drop because anyone can now start reporting news and opinionating a la Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd. It's as if the Journalistic profession has received its own influx of illegal immigrants--increasing competition, lowering rewards, and creating havoc along the way.

Maybe now the Journalists will learn how those workers affected by immigration have long felt.

Comments

[myles]

Journalists certainly deserve a taste of their own medicine!

In my experience, most journalists tend to socialize with people in the "helping" professions.

People in the "helping" professions are among the prime beneficiaries of the massive flood of unskilled workers in to the US. All the violence and pathology that results creates lots of jobs for social workers & etc.

Also - the teachers unions of course love the massive demand for teachers that result from immigration.

[Michael]

Maybe it will force Journalists (capitol) to preform better at their jobs? And make their news stories more relevant, hard-hitting, investigative, etc. which the home-journalist cannot offer?

I've long thought about how I get my news (which is mostly from blogs and online sites) and 90% of blog material comes from trades and newspapers, which I could get just as easily and more quickly if I woke up earlier and read the paper before them.

[Luke Lea]

Off topic slightly, but may I suggest we start to emphasize the positive side of immigration enforcement for Mexico and Mexicans, not just Americans.

On the one hand, massive immigration from poor countries to rich countries retards the economic development of poor countries, which hurts the majority of poor people who stay behind.

There are good reasons this is so -- emigration to greener pastures strips a country of its human capital -- and plenty of evidence: look at how Mexico's per capita GDP stalled around 1965, after growing just as fast as it did in the U.S. in the first three decades after WWII.

And then there is the impact on Mexican governance which the return of millions of Mexican natives from north of the border is likely to have: these people have assets, skills, and most important of all, experience of what it is like to live in a country of laws and markets, as opposed to the nest of corruption and privilege which Mexico remains. The demands for reform will build, especially if supported by the U.S. government. We can tie our trade agreements to real reform, and even make Mexico a more attractive place to invest than China if we want to. I wouldn't even be opposed to using our corn surpluses to feed the unemployed in Mexico while they get their house in order.

If we really want to win this immigration debate, we should appeal to the humanitarian instincts of our liberal elites, not just our own material and cultural interests. Not that the latter aren's important -- they are -- but because we need to use all the arrows in our quiver. Just a thought.

[LomaAlta]

Nice post. Short and hard hitting. Thanks.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Luke Lea,

Good ideas that I broadly support. However, "corn surpluses"? Not for quite some time.