Nonetheless, I’d say that in many ways, the productivity of journalists has increased dramatically since I was born. Interviews don’t take any less time than they used to, but you have other ways to contact sources: e-mail, text, instant message. And those can be much faster than an interview (though it’s much harder to get confrontational and drag out information they don’t want to reveal). Just finding sources is amazingly easy compared with in the old days. If I want to write about a subject, I look up who seems to be doing a lot of work in that area, Google their professional details, and send an e-mail or pick up the phone. Thirty years ago, I’d have been limited by who I knew and whose phone numbers I had — or forced to trek down to the library to page through back issues of academic journals.

And that doesn’t even account for the explosion of commentary from people who aren’t professional experts, but nonetheless offer immense insight into breaking-news issues and bring stories to our attention that we might not have seen. We certainly lost something when it became harder to finance reporters who spent six months writing one story — but we have also gained quality in important ways. Much of the kind of commentary that I do about economics simply couldn’t be done in 1985, for three reasons: It was too hard to find the kind of niche audience that wants public policy and business writing, heavy on the jargon; it was almost impossible to publish such writing at any length; and much of the data that I use every day couldn’t be accessed, or easily accessed, by an ordinary working journalist.

And that doesn’t even touch on the technology for writing and delivering our copy: I’d write a lot less if I had to type it out and mail it or phone it to the copy desk.