Punditry as Work
Eugene Volokh on why he's not covering the leaking of the name of a CIA employee by, well, it's not yet clear by whom:
[I]f you want someone to write about a subject he knows nothing about, a subject that others already seem to be exhaustively covering, a subject that requires him to read an increasing volume of sources and commentary (before one gets off the fence to accuse people of serious crimes, one would have to invest some effort to make sure one has one's facts right), a subject that he doesn't really find fascinating, at a time when he's pretty busy with other things -- why, then, you know what you're asking him to do. You're asking him to work. And you know what it is customary to give those who work.
The emphases are in the original. Note that not knowing a whole lot about girls, relationships, sex and so on isn't stopping me from blogging about it. In fact, you could say there's an inverse relationship between my knowledge of said subjects and the amount of time spent blogging about them.
