Whenever I talk to friends or family back home, I inevitably get the "what are you hearing" question. The basic idea is that living in Washington, DC, I hear all sorts of fascinating or genuinely revealing tidbits that, for unexplained reasons, I keep to myself. It's always baffled me: If I was hearing something, I'd tell you abut it, because I would like people to read my blog and link to my stuff and generally make me a powerful and influential and well-liked and economically affluent individual. But paging through the reams of polls on Pollster.com clarifies the question a bit: 10 years ago, most folks didn't have access to reams of polls on Pollster.com. But if you lived in Washington, you really did hear about them. Your office had a subscription to The National Journal or you knew someone on a campaign. This was why it was useful to have TV shows where pundits and reporters distilled DC wisdom: They were hearing stuff, and accessing data sources, that the broader public didn't have. But now, everyone who asks me that questions reads the same polls. They know Nate Silver or watch MSNBC or keep an eye on HuffingtonPost.com. The tools of the pundit trade have been sharply democratized. The "things we're hearing" are now published instantly on web sites where you can read those things yourself. As such, the pundit and the reporter actually have a lot less to say. We can tell you what we're thinking, but you already know what we're hearing. Information is cheap. My sense is this is part of why punditry has become so disreputable and seems increasingly useless. The added value of having access to protected knowledge is mostly gone. And yes, this would suggest that a large part of my job is obsolete. On the other hand, it turns out you all have an insatiable appetite for hearing what people are saying about what they're hearing, and so rather than the industry shrinking as it proved to have less to offer, it has actually expanded vastly. As it's become easier for people to be political junkies (you can do it at your desk), the market for political chatter has expanded.
