Otterblog

I was involved in a thoughtful email exchange last week with a Realtor upset with our coverage concerning real-estate prices, locally and nationally. Her take was that this coverage is self-fulfilling, that negative stories destroys consumer confidence, reducing demand and reducing price, thus reducing consumer confidence ....

Here’s part of my response:

Yes, we run a fair number of stories from New York or elsewhere about the national housing scene, but we also run a great deal of local stories about our housing market. Typically, we take stock of the market here once a month. Normally, the figures we use are Triad-wide, furnished by the N.C. Association of Realtors.  That makes sense, as we circulate beyond Forsyth County.
It’s pretty clear from the figures that the local market is struggling. Perhaps not California struggling, but struggling nonetheless.
The unasked question is this: Why does the Journal bother running stories out of New York on the national real-estate market. The answer is two-fold. First, it’s news. Second, as I’m sure you know, the national economy feeds into the local economy. Not just psychologically, but financially. We have banks, retailers, garage-door manufacturers, mortgage insurers etc. that are based here but do business all across the country. The cough in California becomes a cold here.
That said, we will work harder at providing context to the intricacies and subtleties of the real-estate market, locally and nationally.
Finally, I want to address your opening paragraph about our news coverage “delivering the wrong message to our local economy.” It seems illogical, but the newsroom’s job isn’t to sell ads. It’s to write, report and publish credible and factually accurate news and information. I would like to think that people buy our newspaper because the news there is honest and objective, rather than skewed to help a particular industry or person. It’s that credibility that makes the newspaper such a great place to put an ad to sell a house.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not wishing a collapse in home prices. I’m a home owner, too, and when the time comes for me to sell, I want prices to be moving nicely upwards, but once we start making news decisions based on what’s best for selling ads, the whole thing falls apart.

That’s one view of the newspaper’s role in the housing market. The economic news these days seems to come in three varieties: poor, bad and worse. There are small bright spots, to be sure. But despite the best efforts of the Fed and the Treasury and everybody else, the economy has cycles, and we’re at the low end right now. NW NC is in much better shape than other parts of the country, but that is little consolation if you are looking for a job or trying to sell your house.

Sin Tour: Our story on Saturday about the resurrection of Schlitz beer got some of us thinking about the old days in W-S, when a savvy traveler could hit the factory tour at Whitaker Park, get some smokes, and then head down 52 to the Schlitz brewery and grab a beer or two. Unfortunately, factory tours have pretty much become a thing of the past. That’s one of the great things about being a reporter, you can still take factory tours. Over the years, I have been able to get inside factories that made newsprint, orange juice, cigarettes, blenders, toasters, ball bearings, armored vehicles, furniture, thread, chicken breasts, mobile homes, cooked shrimp, tires, chemicals, crackers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, denim, fans, springs, ice cream sandwiches, turbine blades and .... kitty litter.