How the Boston Globe gets the Boston apartment market totally wrong
Another fine example of poor journalism when it comes to business reporting was just printed in the Boston Globe today in the article "Advantage, renters". Here's my take (from my Boston Apartments Blog):
There's a simple reason why newspapers like the Boston Globe are
struggling to find readership. They have completely lost the trust of
readers by too often not telling a complete and accurate story with
facts to back it up. I'm not trying to be all Pollyanna here -
reporters have tight deadlines, article size constraints, and now
threats of job losses and pay cuts. I understand all that. But one
thing that is so frustrating to me is not providing all sides of a
story and, too often, a lack of working knowledge about their subject.
Case in point:
Meg Woolhouse wrote this story
in the Globe today about the Boston rental market. She actually
interviewed me on Wednesday for the article so I went out of my way to
help her paint an accurate picture of the market. I gave her a number
of well reasoned facts about the Boston apartment market. Then I had
one of my leasing associates, Jillian Padgett, speak with her for more
"boots on the ground" rental market info, and we even gave her the
contact info for one of our customers to talk to (Justin McGuffee, who
even allowed a Globe photographer into his apartment to take the photo
seen in the article). After all that, the reporter chose only to cherry pick
what she wanted to fit neatly into her idea of what the story should
be. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the job of a reporter
was to find out the facts then create a story, not create a story then
find facts to fit....
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