we saw that...

shoddy town talk story on the local real estate market

the town talk has a story today by r.t. morgan "area real estate sources say housing here holding up well" (see link) the thing is though, is that all of the town talk's "sources" are realtors!

the best observation of the story's lacking comes from a town talk story chat commenter, JJS who opined:

This just doesn't seem right. I mean, the Town Talk asked people who were brokers. Is there a broker anywhere that would actually say sales were flat or in decline?

The reporter should have provided support through a review of sales in the courthouse and building permits. Of course, if building permits were in decline one could always blame the highly expensive, convoluted procedures of the Rapides Parish Planning Commission/Police Jury who have singlehandedly added 15% to the cost of any project.

another story chat commenter, Alamo hit the nail on the head too with "[T]he T.T. isn't going to print anything negative about local Real Estate because they're big advertisers, especially in the Sunday Paper."

alamo is right too, because when you really look at the article for what it is, you cant help but notice that its really an advertisement for certain local realtors and real estate developments masquerading as a legitimate news story.

of coz, the town talk's rather juvenile treatment of this story isnt limited to just the town talk as those of us in the blogosphere cant help but recall the attitude of kalb's news director michele godard in (not) reporting this past summers cleco stock trading story.

in that incident, some anonymous person provided ms. godard with information suggesting "proof of serious insider trading," amongst some cleco executives. ms. godard's idea of investigative journalism was to phone up cleco's public relations officer, susan broussard for an explanation. ms. broussard (because its kinda like her job) assured ms. godard that there was nothing amiss. which in turn led ms godard to inform the blogosphere via her (now defunct) blog "no story here." lol

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