Who Cares About Economists?

Apparently a lot of people do, or at least the people working at newspapers and blogs. The annual American Economic Association meeting was held over the weekend in New Orleans, and there’s been a virtual flood of press coverage:

1. A report on a new paper about Google’s internal prediction markets (which Justin Wolfers, one of its authors, previewed here);

2. A paper positing that movie violence cuts down on real violence;

3. A summary of new papers on sports betting and strategy;

4. And a couple of reports (here and here) on Levitt’s new research on prostitution.

Is it my imagination, or is there more attention than ever being paid to the papers presented at econ conferences? Is this a good thing (more information) or a bad thing (the information isn’t ready for prime time yet)? And why is this happening?