Notorious R.O.B.

I’ve been meaning to check out The Local — New York Time’s foray into what they’re calling ‘hyperlocal’ media but only got around to it just now.  Imagine my surprise and pleasure to discover that my neighborhood (Millburn, Maplewood, and South Orange) is one of the two trial neighborhoods for The Local.  (The other one is Fort Greene & Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn.)

Of course, I’m not quite sure why the blog address has to be maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com rather than millburn.blogs.nytimes.com but I chalk that bias up to my L-Dub Lower Wyoming hood mentality.

The Local

In any case, it appears that The Local is written primarily by journalists or people who want to become journalists.

The primary poster is Tina Kelley, who is a reporter for the NYTimes and a resident of Maplewood.  There are, as of this writing, three other writers (bloggers?) for The Local including a journalism college student, a grad student in “politics and journalism” which sounds like a particularly horrible combo, and a Columbia Journalism student.  It is not immediately clear that the three student intern-types have any connection to Millburn/Maplewood/South Orange.

And the topics of The Local are a mishmash of police blotter news, cute promotions of local residents, and information about local political or community events.  But it is precisely the sort of thing that I, as a local resident, find interesting and even useful.

For example, I didn’t know that Maplewood is receiving $200,000 of federal money, but that the money can’t save the jobs of three cops who are being laid off due to budget problems.  Interesting info.  That’s actual news.  Maybe now that cops are being laid off in Maplewood, the township might consider promoting greater gun ownership among the residents?  Or maybe not.

In any case, while I find the overly-cutesy tone gratingly condescending, I can see what New York Times is trying to do with this experiment.  If these hyperlocal sites can turn a profit, then that might be the way out for the newspaper industry that is dying off, one by one.

The response from the community has been somewhat mixed.  Tina Kelley posted an initial “Why We’re Here” post and the comments have been a mix of support, brutal criticism, and a wait-and-see attitude.

A “Jay” wrote:

I don’t understand what this is supposed to be. I don’t see any solid mechanism to include content related to news items of pressing interest. Are you tied in with the Times and your wire service to dump stories related to our towns in here as blog entries?

A “MCH” commented:

If this is supposed to be a blog (a new thing), you need to stop modeling it after a newspaper (an old thing.) So, lose the datelines. The bylines. And the take-yourself-too-seriously tone. Surely the old gray lady can learn some new tricks. If not, then it’s buh-bye!

In contrast, people like “John X. Kim” are far more supportive:

I’m glad to hear that the foundation of The Local will be local news, considering every time I pick up the local rag I shake my head in disappointment.

There are tremendous opportunities for stories here in Maplewood/Millburn/South Orange…stories of local significance but also of national resonance. The unique demographics of Maplewood/SO make the towns a bellweather for larger cultural currents on politics, education, race relations, to name a few. (No doubt you and your editors know this already.)

As such, it’s my hope that the site will shy away from fluff and tackle difficult questions that often are NOT asked for the sake of keeping the neighborly peace, community boosterism, and other vagaries of small-town exigency. We can certainly heed Eric Holder’s admonishment about our collective cowardice about race and apply it to other pressing public conversations.

So welcome, and I look forward to joining!

[Now, one sidenote here.  The link address for John Kim's comment above is: http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/why-were-here/#comment-43.  Comment-43, got that?

On the thread, his comment is #10.  Where are the other 33 comments?

It seems that even in the blogosphere, the newspaper folks can't resist picking-and-choosing which "Letters to the Editor" see the light of day and which do not.  So I will be posting on my own blog, rather than trusting my "comment" to the tender mercies of the "editors" of The Local.]

Localism: Maplewood

Being that I am in the real estate industry, I couldn’t help but compare The Local to Localism, the ActiveRain project that Jonathan Washburn, CEO of ActiveRain, has said will pull more traffic in 24 months from launch that Trulia and Zillow combined.  That was July 28th, 2008.  So I figure we got sixteen months to go to see whether J-Dub was right or not.

So I went to Localism and searched for Maplewood.  And got to this:

It’s probably an unfortunate coincidence that the very first post on Maplewood’s Localism on the day I write this is an ad for a listing.  But then, that’s sort of a feature, not a bug, considering that Localism is written entirely by realtors and sold to realtors as a way to “connect with the community”.

My initial impulse is frankly to click “Back” simply because I am not in the market to buy anything in Maplewood, and being hit with a listing as the first piece of actual ‘journalistic content’ is enough to make me believe I’m at a spamsite.  But in the interest of science — science I tell you! — I soldier on.

If you do scroll down, and give the site a chance, it does appear that the realtors who write (at least for Localism Maplewood) do provide information and news that is not real estate specific.  For example, here’s a post about an artist who will be coming to do a presentation about animation careers at the Maplewood library.  It’s just the kind of info that local residents might care about.

Except… that I see no evidence of any local residents at Localism Maplewood based on the comments.  The place has the feel of a bunch of local brokers talking to each other, and providing market reports to each other, and out-of-market realtors coming to comment on listings and such.  It’s all so… I don’t know the term… artificial?  Like a circus being put on for the benefit of clowns and acrobats.  I just can’t imagine a local resident wanting to spend any time at Localism Maplewood, since the news and info are sporadic at best, and are completely self-serving advertorials at worst.

Localism features lots of content about the local real estate market.  House prices are doing this, house prices are doing that, here are the past X closed transactions, and so on and so forth.  The “community news” stuff seems really like an afterthought add-on, as if to say, “Hey, we uh… we live here too.”  It’s somewhat like the worst possible agent blog possible made that much worse because it’s a sort of forced group-blog.

Which makes sense.  I mean, I assume most of the people writing for Localism have their own blog.  I know Perri Feldman — a contributor to Localism Maplewood — has her own blog, and her own website, and an active social media marketing thingamajig.  (And she’s a member of the Lucky Strike Social Media Club — woohoo!)  I guess in the time that’s left over, sort of as an afterthought (it seems), Perri must recycle a post or two from her blog onto Localism Maplewood.

And everyone else does too.  So no narrative, no coherent flow, no personality, just a bunch of market stats and listings, with little bits of local info thrown in there like raisins in a peculiarly chintzy loaf of raisin bread.

Perhaps other communities’ Localism pages are far better.  I don’t know.  But comparing The Local: Maplewood to Localism: Maplewood feels somewhat like comparing, well, the New York Times with all of its haughtiness and enforced cleverness to AutoShopper.

Apples and Oranges?

To some extent, I suppose you’d have to cry foul at the comparison.  After all, The Local is a venture by the New York frikkin Times, with a professionally-trained reporter who is getting paid to blog about three small towns.  And she has three interns to help her.  And she has nothing to sell you, so she’s free to just do hyperlocal content.

Localism, in contrast, is a hyperlocal blog put together by realtors who have a vested interest in selling someone a home.  The goal isn’t to provide local news and info to local residents; it’s to educate out-of-towners on what it might be like to live in Maplewood.  Right?

Well… not so much:

Localism is the valued point of connection, a place of meaningful interaction. It’s where neighbors and local merchants share what’s happening in their community. It’s people collectively communicating the unique flavor and nuances of where they live, work, eat, and play.

As long as Localism is run mostly by realtors, this vision is pure fantasy.  In reality, the best that Localism can aspire to is to become a place where local realtors give consumers an excellent rundown of the local real estate market, local listings, and service providers.

Because there is no incentive at all for “neighbors” to share anything whatsoever with the folks at Localism.  If you’re not a blogger-realtor, then you have no way to enter content or to participate, except in the comments.

The Local has a better shot at becoming the hyperlocal media channel, but it too has enormous issues to confront and overcome.

One issue is that Maplewood already has a hyperlocal media channel: Maplewood Online.  The notion may be that the New York Times and its talented journalists can do hyperlocal just better than the gimps over at Maplewood Online, but… I got news for ya (get it? I got news… oh nevermind).  There ain’t much skill involved in copying police blotters and posting up cartoons and pictures of local residents.  Sorry.

If Tina Kelley were to post a piece of investigative journalism where she risked life and limb to expose the decisionmaking behind Millburn lawmakers’ screwing of taxpayers with a $10m boondoggle giveaway to the Paper Mill Playhouse, why that might be the kind of news I would find absolutely indispensable.  But copying and pasting police blotter reports requires a graduate degree in politics and journalism?  Right then.

And The Local really has to drop its authoritarian approach and its condescending tone to local news.  Bigtime journos might think that stories about local police layoffs should be filed under “News By the Slice” with photos of a pizza, since it isn’t about war, famine, or national politics.  We get that you think what you’re doing is “cute” and beneath your many years of reportage, and the tragedy of your having to cover local news instead of the latest Supreme Court ruling or the pronunciamentos of Barack Obama is overwhelming us too.

But those of us who live here are deeply impacted by local laws, local policies, and local businesses.  We happen to think it’s pretty damn cool that Maplewood restaurants are having a “Restaurant Week”.  So have a little respect.  Or expect us residents to stay the hell away in droves.

Hyperlocal Media

For what it’s worth, hyperlocal media may very well be the future of media.  Seriously, while the current march towards the worker’s paradise will affect me and (more importantly) my children in a few year’s time, what the Millburn School Board decides to do at the next meeting might affect me this year in a far more personal and immediate way.

It would be great to have a single source that fills the role that newspapers and these journalism degree-havin’ folks like to fill at the national stage.  I would read that site religiously.

Localism ain’t it, unless it undergoes a total transformation of focus away from trying to sell real estate.  The Local ain’t it, unless it too undergoes a transformation and embraces the community on which it is reporting — and in fact, actually does some, you know, reporting.  The answer may be in social media, like MaplewoodOnline and Baristanet, as more and more journalists leave the newspaper business (by choice or not) and end up having to learn whole new skills in web-based, local, community-powered media.

It’ll be interesting to watch.

-rsh

Back in the day, I used to read the New York Times religiously.  I mean, I lived in New York City, was young, and was making a lot of money.  It’s what you do.  It’s kinda like going to church on Sunday if you were a Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, or doing the Starbucks run for an enormous segment of the urban yuppie population.

Then I realized that the editrix of the Old Gray Lady typically had no f’in clue about what they were writing about with such authoritative gravitas.  And nowhere is this more apparent than in the official Editorial section, the one written under the Times’ own byline.

We see this once again today in their editorial about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in which the Times Editors calls for a quick government rescue of  the two beleaguered  companies.  The editors write:

Unfortunately, support for swift passage is mixed from one important quarter: Mr. Paulson’s boss, President Bush.

On Monday, the White House renewed its threat to veto the foreclosure prevention bill if it contains a $4 billion block grant program for states to buy up foreclosed properties. The veto threat is misguided, first, on policy grounds. Mr. Bush wrongly portrays the grant as a handout to speculators when its main thrust actually is to protect communities from a destabilizing buildup of abandoned, unsold homes.

Ah, yes, well… so the Times hates Bush.  This is news?

What is news is the Times’ claim that the $4B block grant program will not be a handout to speculators.  Here is a situation where the Times confuses intent with impact.  The intent of the $4B handout may be to “protect communities” but the impact is to payoff speculators who took on financial burdens that they could not handle.

Where does the Times get the confidence to assert that the $4B will not end up in the hands of speculators?  What data or research can they point to to back up such a claim?  Oh that’s right — none.

Meanwhile, there are numerous other ways for communities to protect themselves from destabilizing buildup of abandoned homes.  Here’s just one suggestion.

Furthermore, there’s this laughable passage:

The veto threat also is a bad idea politically. Mr. Bush has not objected when the big firms and rich executives of Wall Street have been on the receiving end of federal assistance, but now he is threatening to block a measure to aid hard-hit neighborhoods filled with ordinary Americans.

Uh… dear Pinch & Gang… even with the bad financial news that probably means Fannie is bankrupt… it’s still a $15B company.  It’s hard to get any bigger, and it’s hard to be a richer executive than the boys and girls at Fannie and Freddie.  So.. WTF are you talking about?  A Fannie/Freddie rescue would absolutely be corporate welfare at its finest, justified by some mumbo-jumbo about stabilizing the market, or some such.  Those were the same arguments offered up when the government arranged for a bailout of Bear Stearns or Long Term Capital.  It’s the exact same thing.

Furthermore, the reporters of the New York Times itself are saying, “We have no idea what this bailout will cost us“:

The proposed government rescue of the nation’s two mortgage finance giants should appear on the federal budget as a $25 billion expense, the independent Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday, but officials conceded that there was no way to really know what, if anything, a bailout might cost taxpayers.

Do the editors of the Times read their own damn paper?

Basically, the Times believes that we should write a blank check so the rich executives and investors in Fannie and Freddie can cash out.  Good idea, guys.  It sucks that the government is going along with it, but that doesn’t excuse the utter ignorance of the Times.

-rsh

Should the Big Brands in real estate start blogging?

Joel Burslem over at FOREM thinks so:

Even with its obvious bias, the blog is actually a fantastic resource for anyone interested in staying on top of the beer wars. Several years ago I worked for Molson, before it became Molson Coors, so the brewing industry is still of interest to me (both professionally and socially).

But I think there is a lesson here for the real estate industry. Often when I speak to brokers, I hear a lot of them complaining about the negative press the real estate industry gets in the mainstream media.

One thing I suggest is for them to create their own blogs to counter this noise. Not fill the space with meaningless marketing platitudes like “Now is Great Time to Buy…” but actually contribute meaningfully to the conversation and to debate the issues.

The big real estate brands would be wise to take a lesson from Miller; create a real estate blog and hire a full time blogger. It could be an agent – but they’re (hopefully) too busy selling real estate. Rather, carve out some dollars from that bloated print marketing budget and hire a social media guru or a cub reporter fresh out of journalism school, then let them off the leash a bit to create stories that are relevant to the conversation but maintain your brand integrity. (Emphasis mine)

It’s an interesting idea, and I’m sure that at least some folks in Big Brands are thinking about it and experimenting with it.

For some reason, however, the idea makes me sort of queasy in the belly.

For one thing, the Brewblog itself referenced in the WSJ story that sparked Joel’s post makes me sort of queasy in the belly.  For Miller, and for the limited purpose they’re trying to serve, the Brewblog works.  Basically, the Brewblog exists to piss off Anheuser-Busch.  I didn’t read the WSJ story as being all that complimentary to what Miller was doing with Brewblog.  It’s not exactly a trusted source of information, and its biases are plainly obvious.  (Although, I suppose the plain bias puts Brewblog ahead of things like the New York Times and Washington Post… so that’s saying something.)

But it does seem relatively clear to me that the Brewblog is not adding to Miller’s own brand in any significant way.  It’s an industry blog for the brewing industry, aimed at industry insiders.  And its goal is more or less to be an ankle-biting annoyance to Anheuser-Busch.

Does that hold true in real estate?

Would, for example, Re/Max spend a bunch of cash for an industry-focused website that trashes Century 21 or Keller Williams for the sake of annoying their competitors?  What purpose would that serve in our industry?

Furthermore, I’m afraid there’s an even bigger issue for the Big Brands.  As I’ve highlighted above, if a Big Brand is going to do nontraditional PR via blogging, then it has to let official blogger(s) create stories that are part of the conversation while maintaining brand integrity.

But brand integrity is the one thing that is honestly lacking from the Big Brands.  Seriously.

What is the brand image of Re/Max?  What is the brand image of Century 21?  Of Coldwell Banker?  Of Keller Williams?  Of Long & Foster?  Of anyone in the business?  How are the brands different and distinct from each other?  Say you take a survey of 1,000 real estate customers.  Put the logos of the top ten brands in real estate in front of them and asked them to write a sentence next to each one describing the brand image of the logo.  Could they actually do it?

Besides, do you really get the sense that the Big Brands actually compete against each other if the media?  I don’t.  If anything, I think it’s more of a Us vs. Them mentality, where it’s the real estate industry (particularly the brokerages) vs. the Media.  I don’t know that you’d get serious disagreement between the Big Brands or between real estate agents of every stripe and market about the treatment of the entire topic of real estate in the media.

That being the case… I think it might be smarter for the Big Brands to let the RE.net worry about messaging, and for the brand themselves to worry about creating distinctive brand identities.  Here’s how I’d handle it.

Rather than hiring a corporate blogger, hire a corporate blog PR person.  Make sure that you have a guy or gal whose job it is to reach out to the RE.net constantly.  Every good, bad, or indifferent thing that happens should be publicized to the RE.net as soon as possible.

They all already do this with the dead-tree media.  Why not the RE.net?  Don’t just think about press releases; think about getting word to Joel or to Dustin or Greg Swann or Pat Kitano or any one of the numerous industry-focused RE.net bloggers.

We’re all hungry for the inside scoop.  The RE.net has blogs that are industry-focused with an audience that is primarily industry participants.  The Big Brands could start to leverage this fledgling online trade media by a coordinated effort to keep us informed and up-to-date.  Some of us will knock them, and others will defend and praise them.  But they will be part of the conversation.

Add in an executive or two who may be willing to post comments, and I think you have the recipe for success in growing an alternative media.  No need to hire a blogger and let him go out on the limb under the company name.

Simon Baker of REA Group recently stopped by my little corner of the Internet.  Frankly, I was shocked.  And he provided some good detailed information.  Frankly, I was shocked again.  That’s amazing outreach.  Even if I were to go on and trash REA Group, Simon has a fan.  If some dead-tree media type wanted to find out about REA Group, my post may show up, with the conversation Simon and I are having about international real estate.

Imagine if Alex Perriello did that.  Or Dave Liniger.  And not on just my tiny blog, but on the big RE.net blogs.

Don’t become the media.  Don’t try to convert the dead-tree media that hates you anyhow and has no idea what the @&*% it’s talking about anyway.  Grow the media instead.

-rsh

Inman News has a very interesting… I guess one would have to call it an Op/Ed or News Analysis on the Washington Post’s story on HUD Secretary Jackson’s last day:

An article in last Sunday’s Post deserves credit for attempting to go beyond the allegations of cronyism that forced Jackson to resign, and taking a deeper look at the role HUD policies may have played in the housing downturn. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t deliver on that promise.

The Post claims that because Jackson “pushed for legislation that would make it easier for federally backed lenders to make mortgage loans to risky borrowers who put less money down,” he will be “remembered as a Cabinet secretary so committed to carrying out President Bush’s goal of increasing homeownership that he encouraged policies that threatened to exacerbate the mortgage crisis.”

Matt Carter does go on to explain some of the political shenanigans that went on in wa-wa land (aka, Washington DC, which is like la-la land, aka, Hollywood, in that they both indulge in fantasies, but different in the personal attractiveness factor) and basically debunks the WaPo story.  The entire thing is worth a detailed read, especially if you’re interested in legal and political issues in real estate.

I thought it interesting, however, that there were two assumptions made in the story.

First, Matt assumes good faith on the part of the Washington Post.

What’s ironic about the Post’s story is that the Bush administration (and Republicans in general) usually come under fire from housing advocates for attempting to limit the government’s role in lending — especially when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, which during the housing boom were hobbled by caps on their portfolios and requirements to maintain additional capital (those limitations were imposed in the wake of management and accounting scandals that forced both companies to restate several years of earnings). Some critics say the limits on FHA, Fannie and Freddie were one reason “private label” lenders — many employing much looser underwriting criteria — were able to boost their market share so dramatically during the boom.

To claim that the administration’s lone attempt to expand a government-backed loan guarantee program “threatened to exacerbate the mortgage crisis” suggests a lack of awareness of the changes that took place in the lending industry during the housing boom, or the motives for expanding FHA loan guarantee programs.

Matt — maybe it’s not a “lack of awareness” but willful ignorance?  Or worse still, perhaps the WaPo simply doesn’t care about inconvenient things like the truth.  I think he actually means to suggest it, but is politely refraining from calling a spade a spade.  I have no such restraints, polite or otherwise.  Washington Post’s story is nothing more than a politically motivated hit piece on the Bush Administration written by left-wing editors and writers in an attempt to lay the blame for the current pain in the real estate market at the feet of the White House by any possible means.

It’s a shame, but that is the state of the “news” media in this country today.  When people like Ron Peltier of HomeServices and Alex Perriello of Realogy talk about the relentlessly negative media environment for real estate, there is some truth to their complaints.

As Matt Carter himself reports in another article on Inman, fact is that this whole ‘subprime’ thing may have been much ado about nothing:

According to the latest economic letter from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, it’s likely ARM loans have higher delinquency rates than fixed-rate loans not because of the payment shock associated with interest rate resets, but because the people who took them out had higher risk characteristics.

And later in the article:

The flip side of Yellen’s analysis is that markets that weren’t subject to lots of speculation are in better shape to weather the storm. PMI’s latest risk index shows a reduced risk of price declines in markets that didn’t see steep run-ups in prices during the housing boom.

Huh.  And here we are, thinking all this time that the reason why the housing market is in the tank is because of irresponsible bankers and mortgage brokers selling these DANGEROUS subprime loans to poor unsuspecting consumers.  Turns out, mortgages have less to do with delinquencies than the price fluctuation brought on by speculation?  Whodathunk reading the New York Times or Washington Post?

About those poor unsuspecting consumers… that’s the second assumption Matt makes.  He writes at the end of his excellent analysis:

HUD estimates the simplified disclosures will help consumers save $8.35 billion a year. Had those disclosures been in place during the frenzied buying of the housing boom, many buyers who got into homes by taking out loans they didn’t understand might have instead gone with more affordable mortgages — or not taken out a loan at all. (Emphasis mine)

Why do we continue to believe that the problem was buyers who “didn’t understand”?  Why do we persist in the assumption that these delinquent buyers were tricked, fooled, bamboozled into buying million dollar homes on $35K a year incomes?  Maybe these buyers understood perfectly well that they were taking an enormous gamble but simply didn’t care; maybe they all thought they’d get out before the market crashed and make a few tens of thousands of dollars for nothing.  Maybe they fell into the trap that every bubble-economy fool falls into: the Greater Fool theory.  Maybe they’re not poor unsuspecting victims after all, but simply gamblers without morals or ethics or sense of personal responsibility.

That would, after all, fit the profile of “higher risk characteristics”.

People are walking away from houses not because the loan terms got so damn onerous, but because their gamble didn’t pay off.  That’s the only possible interpretation of the San Francisco Fed report.  ARM or 30-year fixed, makes no difference — the rapid rise, then rapid fall, in housing prices does.  Those are the facts.

The responsible buyers, the ones who didn’t feel like speculating on real estate, who weren’t “flipping condos” and dreaming of making big bucks on No Money Down deals, they’re still buying in this market.  They were buying at the height of the boom too — but they didn’t go pouring everything into $2M condos on $50K a year.  They behaved like rational adults, rational consumers.  And they continue to do so.

Are there innocent victims?  Meh… I suppose… but it would have to be one hell of a story involving either a health crisis or unemployment to pass the smell test if someone bought a house they simply could not afford a mere two years later.

As for the Washington Post and the rest of their comrade-in-arms in the media… should we see a Democrat elected to the White House in the fall, I think we’ll suddenly find that the editors will discover hitherto unseen silver linings in the real estate cloud.  The sun will break through the dark clouds, and wonder of wonders, we may come to learn that WaPo and NYT begin to see a ray of hope, a brighter tomorrow.

Even then, making assumptions about their “lack of awareness” would be a step too far in the direction of naivete.

-rsh