expertise

There are three stages of journalistic understanding.

1. You don’t understand the subject, but are full of infectious enthusiasm. That’s when you write the “Cure for cancer” stories
2. You could pass an exam in the subject, and it shows.
3. You could pass an exam in the subject, but no normal reader would suspect.

It takes a long time to reach the third stage, but it’s the only one that counts unless you can stay forever ignorant, and not all journalists can manage that.