It's a truism at this point that if you're looking for information, good information, you don't look for it online. Sure, the thinking goes, there's plenty of information online.
Real journalism comes from professionals.
It's been fascinating watching this idea get turned on its head. It was a bold, sweeping story, an authoritative look at a pressing national issue. Though the article didn't mention it, there was cause for Time to worry about the study's reliability. Unlike most academic studies, whose authors have their peers check their work before they commit it to print, this one was kept secret until it was published, in the student-edited Georgetown Law Journal. Its author, Martin Rimm, is an undergraduate student of electrical and computer engineering with no apparent experience in conducting a study of this kind.