NYT Economics Coverage Shrinks

From Market Movers

Was there too much economics in the NYT, which is literally shrinking in August and might need to make cuts? Elsewhere in the NYT there's Paul Krugman, of course, with his own op-ed columns, but those are rarely particularly economics-based these days. And every so often the Levitt 'n' Dubner team writes a Freakonomics column in the Sunday magazine – there have been four of those so far this year.

This is not good news for economic discourse in the mainstream press. One column every two months is not much of a platform: it will take years for readers to get a decent feel for where each of the columnists stands. And while the Economic View column was not always scintillating, it was a million times better than the half page of undigested tripe filed every week by the dreadful Ben Stein. To kill View but to keep Stein alive betrays a sense of priorities which can't bode well for the NYT Business section.