I have to point out this self-congratulatory piece of work from Seattle Times editor-at-large Mike Fancher. It serves as a sort of introduction to the “Home Values” series, and actually seems to sum up their goals pretty well.
Housing sticker shock used to take our collective breath away; now it seems to bring just a very deep sigh.
The Seattle Times offered its first annual look at home prices in King and South Snohomish Counties in 2000, calling the report “Sticker Shock” to reflect how we all reacted to what was happening. In recent years, we’ve changed the name.
“I guess we are all over the shock now and have been calling it ‘Home Values’ the last couple of years,” said Becky Bisbee, Times business editor.
…
“This is one of those packages that only we do,” Bisbee said. “Anyone who owns a house or is thinking about buying or selling would find it fascinating and invaluable.
…
[Times Real Estate Reporter Elizabeth] Rhodes said the idea for today’s story was “based on the concern people have that the housing market is cooling, and the ‘bubble’ bursting. National stories are saying this. But all real estate is local, so it made sense to explain to readers what’s happening here. And economists say Seattle doesn’t have a ‘bubble.’“The bottom line is that appreciation may be falling, but house prices aren’t. They’re consistently up, something we’ve seen annually for at least two decades. That’s the proof that our market isn’t tanking,” she said.
It would appear that the Times has discovered a three-phase business plan in which step two is something other than ‘???’ …
- Provide data on the housing market.
- Spin data in as positive a light as possible.
- Profit!
Hey, whatever works I guess. I think it would do their readers a much better service if they provided access to the raw data, rather than just the pre-packaged maps and charts that they deem worthy of public consumption.
Then again, the readers aren’t really the customers, so much as they are the product that is being sold to the advertisers. I wonder who the Times’ biggest customers are?
(Mike Fancher, Seattle Times, 05.20.2007)