I Feel Your Pain, Paul.

As someone who earned a Bachelor of Science in journalism from a reputable national school, yet came of age in the early 90s with industry "hiring freezes"* on (except for the black and "minority" journalists, who were actively courted based on their skin tone and "insider" status -- see the Jason Blair story for how well that worked out) it's like what's happening to your field has already happened to mine...

I’ve never liked the notion of talking about economic “science” — it’s much too raw and imperfect a discipline to be paired casually with things like chemistry or biology, and in general when someone talks about economics as a science I immediately suspect that I’m hearing someone who doesn’t know that models are only models. Still, when I was younger I firmly believed that economics was a field that progressed over time, that every generation knew more than the generation before.

The question now is whether that’s still true. In 1971 it was clear that economists knew a lot that they hadn’t known in 1931. Is that clear when we compare 2011 with 1971? I think you can actually make the case that in important ways the profession knew more in 1971 than it does now.

I’ve written a lot about the Dark Age of macroeconomics, of the way economists are recapitulating 80-year-old fallacies in the belief that they’re profound insights, because they’re ignorant of the hard-won insights of the past.

What I’d add to that is that at this point it seems to me that many economists aren’t even trying to get at the truth. When I look at a lot of what prominent economists have been writing in response to the ongoing economic crisis, I see no sign of intellectual discomfort, no sense that a disaster their models made no allowance for is troubling them; I see only blithe invention of stories to rationalize the disaster in a way that supports their side of the partisan divide.
...
And all this makes me wonder what kind of an enterprise I’ve devoted my life to.

In fact, it's so similar to the way I felt about journalism after seeing Ezra Klein's media star rise, following his creation of Journolist, which pretty much gutted the neutrality of the profession.

Been there.
Felt that.
Hang in there...
You'll Get By.

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* They didn't give a damn how good a writer/reporter you were, they weren't even looking at your work if you weren't black or minority. Still have the "your clips are great; you scored highest on our copyediting tests from all test applicants whose campuses we visited... yadda yadda" --- a working-class white girl simply counted for less than a mediocre-educated black one. What can you do?

Me? I mastered desktop publishing -- went into public relations putting out newletters for a public finance firm, and then a local hospital undergoing a $13 reconstruction building project... and then went to law school, on a merit scholarship owing to my LSAT score. Still, writing -- not "practicing" law -- is more for me. I simply couldn't adapt to that drier, more advocative writing style ... not when there's so much out here that needs to be better covered, in non-legalese speak.

Chin up, Paul.
You'll be ok too, in time.

And we forgive you too, for your role in that Journolist thing, and for shining Ezzie's star too, based on your own reputation. Let's see what he can do by himself now, though? Stand or fall on his own work record, his own two ...

Never quite understood why you adopted that one for your protege in the first place, except ... I guess people really do prefer their own when it comes to promoting. Anyway, clean slate. All is forgiven. He and Annie aren't you and yours, if you catch my drift...