Gwern: Why So Few Matt Levines?

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Matt Levine is the most well-known newslettrist (“Money Stuff”) in the financial industry, having blogged or written since 2011, finding his niche in popularization after stints in Wall Street & law. His commentary is influential, people leak to him, he sometimes interviews major figures (notoriously, Sam Bankman-Fried) or recounts inside information, and a number of phrases like his “laws of insider trading” (specifically, how not to) have gained currency to the point where readers can now do much of the work of sourcing an issue for him.

He is read by hundreds of thousands of readers (including myself)—everyone from shoeshine boy to billionaire. The size of his audience is respectable, but perhaps its most remarkable feature is that many of those readers have nothing to do with the financial industry. Though his newsletter is officially a Bloomberg News newsletter which he simply writes, many of his readers will visit Bloomberg solely for him, and indeed, might have little idea who or what a Bloomberg is. Nevertheless, readers loyally tune in for each installment every few days to learn about arcane financial instruments they have never heard of before, and (except for Levine) never will again.

One might ask (and indeed, a billionaire once did), “where are the other Matt Levines?” or “who are the Matt levines of other fields?” That is, where are the Matt Levines of, say, chemistry or drug development1⁠, who explain & popularize other major industries which are vital to modern life, directly or indirectly appear in the news often, and yet people are widely ignorant of it, and deeply misunderstand its fundamental dynamics? Why don’t we have a Matt Levine for every industry? Where is the Levine of, I don’t know, petroleum refining or fracking, of shipping containers? Are we just in need of a good list of recommendations? Or could we just set up a prize to coax out some potential Levines in other industries?