VIEWS OF THE PRESS: Kay, Otis, and Newby-They Sell Out, Too
Shapiro, Walter
VIEWS OF THE PRESS: Kay, Otis, and Newby: They Sell Out Too by Walter Shapiro These days it has become easy for the press to come out on top in discussions of journalistic...
...Among the contributors to a recent Post real estate section were the chairman of the Virginia Real Estate Commission, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Mortgage Credit, the president of the National Association of Home Builders, a veteran mortgage banker, and the area’s largest builder...
...When I took over I was told that 1 was free to run stories regardless of whether the builder advertises or not...
...The real estate pages should tell us what’s right and wrong with the way we’re housed, and the health and education sections should help us evaluate our schools and hospitals...
...Then came the plug: “Each...
...to break ground for a three-story structure that will include a yacht club, two restaurants and other facilities...
...Instead, we need special coverage, defined not by advertising but by the real-life problems people face...
...On most papers they began as an advertising supplement with editorial copy provided by advertisers and the editing done by the newspaper’s business staff...
...Schmidt is a stunningly beautiful woman...
...Three weeks of this kind of hucksterism must have been exhausting for all concerned, because on the last Sunday of the month, all they could come up with was just one small article on an inside page, “Ryland Home’s Photo Contest Ends Nov...
...They are precisely the things that newspapers should be devoting special sections to...
...The crowd of about 100 that stood on the nondescript beach was a mixture of youthful Ocean Pines employees with corporate emblems on their blazers and retirees in golf caps who represented the local property owners...
...VIEWS OF THE PRESS: Kay, Otis, and Newby: They Sell Out Too by Walter Shapiro These days it has become easy for the press to come out on top in discussions of journalistic ethicsespecially since their principal adversaries have been such discredited figures as Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon...
...Recently, for example, New York magazine documented how Madison Square Garden funnels blocks of free tickets-in addition to press passes-to the sports sections of the city’s three newspapers...
...Unlike some vacation land developers, Boise Cascade doesn’t emphasize investment as a reason for buying land at Ocean Pines...
...Financial Services, quoted in the Baltimore News-American...
...Often this is scant improvement...
...Such lines as “ME...
...And Yeonas ended by assuring potential home buyers that they “can look forward to redoubled efforts on the part of reputable builders to avert or rectify, as far as is humanly and economically possible, valid complaints...
...The Post’s real estate section was never more conspicuous than on November 3. Subscribers who were expecting the latest word on the mounting pressures for the resignation of President Nixon found a hefty 48-page paper sitting on their doorsteps, but it was all real estate section...
...The public relations firm that had organized this press junket also attracted Walter Herman of the Baltimore NewsAmerican and reporters from several suburban papers as well...
...is determined to maintain a growth rate which has kept it in the No...
...Take Dorothea M. Brooks who writes regularly on real estate and related topics for UPI...
...The aggressive performance of these papers’ news pages has not been mirrored in their “backofthe-book” sections like entertainment, food, travel, automobiles, and real estate...
...Buried within the sports section, it is part of some thing called “Business-oil-financialfarm-real estate,’’ which . runs opposite “The Lifebeat Page,” featuring “Local Deaths...
...Bob Hales is the resident pro, and Billy Casper, representing it as a touring pro, has one of the 54 condominium duplexes known as Borderlink...
...Meanwhile, the Post’s newsroom teems with young, aggressive reporters struggling to get their stories into the tight Metro section...
...The ground-breaking was an almost classic non-event...
...with Worcester County authorities, and with the Maryland state government...
...Generally, though, Willmann depends on his “stable of feature writers”-outside contributors who receive token payments for their work...
...To avoid running press releases, understaffed real estate editors frequently turn to wire service copy...
...Where’s the real estate news...
...The following Sunday, the front page of the tabloid heralded the opening of “Ryland Home’s twostory, fourbedroom model, “The Raleigh...
...The real estate sections of other papers may tout local developers, but only The Washington Post serves as the house organ for the entire Home Building Establishment...
...A quote was used to reinforce the message: “Sweat equity and affordable financing are the elements that make Evans unique...
...The real estate editor of The Baltimore Sun had also planned to attend, but begged off at the last minute because of a family emergency...
...Real estate editors, however, seem to have been inspired by Thumper the Rabbit, who said in Walt Disney’s Bambi, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all...
...Bill Manley was typical when he explained his reluctance to evaluate new construction by saying, “I never felt that I was professionally qualified , to make that kind of judgment...
...Instead, they are press releases hastily worked over by harried editors stmggling to meet a deadline...
...Rodgers reported that an Ocean Pines lot located six feet under water was sold for $1 8,000-with $10,000 down...
...Does this make him a villain...
...Rather than surveying the entire housing market, they merely highlight new construction...
...Ruvinsky’s feeling of self-satisfaction was somewhat justified...
...Lew Sichelman, real estate editor of the Star-News, likens his job to “putting out a small paper singlehandedly . ” The L. A. Times real estate section has a five-man staff, but it too depends heavily on hand-outs...
...Today’s investigative reporters take their cues from turnofthe-century muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell...
...Its chatty informality introduces tenants to one another in print...
...And all too often, the articles that Willmann publishes reflect little more than the parochial concerns of their authors...
...recognized nationally...
...What would have happened if Woodward, and Bernstein had said last year, “Because we are not licensed CPAs, we’re not going to try to look into the financing of the Committee to Reelect the President...
...And even Ruvinsky was careful to pull his punches...
...You don’t take your foot off the accelerator when you’re climbing up a steep hill,” said Yeonas, whose family firm has been in the business since 1946, long enough to have seen enough ups and downs in the market to adjust accordingly...
...Boise Cascade and Ocean Pines, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, should be familiar to regular readers of The Washington Monthly...
...1 home builder in the Washington area again next year,” says c. G. “Gus” Yeonas, president of the f m which did a volume of $41 million last year...
...For example, the lengthy celebrity interview, mainstay of the entertainment section, is generally not assigned like a regular news story...
...Readers of the Times real estate section are buried in facts that cry out for some interpretative detail...
...It is clear that Chandler, Noyes, and Mrs...
...He used this as a springboard to discuss Yeonas Co.’s program of “constant, rigid, controlled, and thorough” inspection in the homes they build...
...But this does not excuse the failure of virtually every real estate editor in the country to criticize specific builders or developments...
...A condominium developer quoted in The Atlanta Journal & Constitution...
...Who said so...
...The only real critique of real estate sections that I came across was written for The Columbia Journalism Review in 1966 by Ferdinand Kuhn...
...Like the rest of Ocean Pines, Mumford’s Landing fronts on a brackish bay rather than the ocean...
...One writer pinpointed the problem: “It isn’t that we don’t have standards in the real estate section...
...By next summer the first 40 of 100 boat slips will help sailing enthusiasts to take advantage of the development’s nine miles of waterfront...
...One recently began, “Seagate, a new community of waterfront townhouses designed for a leisurely life of sun and sea, opens today in Huntington Harbor...
...The mores of the profession are illustrated by The Houston Chronicle, whose real estate editor is currently president of the association...
...This kind of dispassionate analysis is all too typical of Willmann’s “stable...
...Puffery- Hearst Style With the 1966 demise of The New York Journal-American, the flagship of the Hearst Empire, press critics began to ignore the abuses of what was once America’s most notorious newspaper chain...
...Dick Turpin, the Times’ real estate editor, explained that page-one stories on new developments indicate that “either we have gone out and looked at the opening ourselves, or we have gotten to know the builder over the past five years and are familiar with his work...
...He was quite startled to discover that I considered his article “puffery” for Ocean Pines...
...Real Oneeighth of the property owners estate writers don’t always go out to look at a development themselves...
...This total preoccupation with new construction betrays the origins of newspaper real estate sections...
...This is perhaps inevitable, because most sections are one- and two-man operations...
...You bet we will be the No...
...There was an Episcopal minister who prayed, “0, Lord, on this ground may the pleasuresyou have given be enhanced.’’ And a septuagenarian state legislator gave a keynote address that focused on how he had once known someone named Mumford and they had dated the same girl during “the roaring twenties, which I doubt that many of you remember...
...I was instructed that no one in advertising would tell me what to run or what not to run...
...There is a big element of trust involved-it helps, say, if I went to college with the PR guy...
...Instead of probing the Nixon Administration, our major newspapers just would have stopped covering the President alto...
...Dick Turpin justifies this puffery as “a public service for buyers...
...With their stress on new construction, real estate sections ignore those who want to rent rather than buy...
...Although the values underlying the Star-News article are typical, Ruvinsky’s on-the-spot research is not...
...An analysis of the trend toward converting older apartments into condominiums took pains to mention the problems of the elderly who cannot afford to purchase their own apartments...
...Amazingly enough, this 48-page paper was essentially the work of one man-John Willmann, who has been Post’s real estate editor since 1960, when he left the city desk...
...test is usually the easiest way to spot rewritten press releases...
...Siding may save a move...
...Real estate sections are so dominated py the press release that editors actually take great pride in pointing out how many handouts they decide not to print...
...Faithful readers learn from them roughly as much about suburban sprawl and shoddy developers as devotees of First Monday, the official publication of the Republican National Committee, discovered about the crisis of confidence surrounding the presidency...
...1.” Although Lew Sichelman gamely tried to explain its news value, it’s hard to find a journalistic rationale for copy like this: At a time when many builders are searching for greener pastures on which to do their thing, the Yeonas Co...
...Given this situation, Willmann’s weakness for filler copy is perhaps understandable...
...Ruvinsky, for example, knew little about the legal and ethical problems that helped speed Boise’s downfall...
...Who said so...
...Like many real estate editors, Willmann has devoted a large portion of his section to unraveling the intricacies of the current mortgage market...
...In all fairness, some of the articles that Willmann solicits are surprisingly good...
...The following excerpts convey its tone: At Ocean Pines...
...A Case Study Aaron Ruvinsky’s article, “Yacht Club Begun at Ocean Pines,” appeared on the front page of the October 26 Washington Star-News real estate section...
...Things are different in the back of the book...
...a Miami architect who is responsible for some of the structures already in place at Ocean Pines...
...Willmann declines to disclose his freelance budget “because I don’t pay these people what they’re worth...
...But is it really...
...Within a few years, this 90-acre area called Mumford’s Landing will include about 600 condominium dwellings designed by Robert Bradford Browne...
...That’s why A. J. Liebling fans will be gratified to know that the most conspicuous recent example of continuing favoritism to a single builder appeared in the Baltimore News-American, a Hearst paper...
...AU too often other articles that fill these sections aren’t even staff-written...
...He pointed out that the lead mentioned how Boise Cascade had “pulled itself out of a financial excavation by selling off most of its vast building empire,” and he was especially proud of the following two paragraphs from the breakover page: have built or begun homes...
...One of Ocean Pines’ proudest achievements is the 18-hole golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones...
...Emphasis on such obvious abuses creates all too facile moral dichotomies...
...The irony is that the topics treated in this space-filling way-where we live, what we eat, how we spend our money-touch us more closely than much of what’s on the front page...
...He made it clear that he was referring to only a “few” of the 500 homes, and added that Ocean Pines was now taking steps to improve its landscaping...
...A week earlier, Aaron Ruvinsky and I had been part of a group that was flown 135 miles from Baltimore’s Friendship Airport to witness the ground-breaking for Mumford’s Landing, a so-called “destination resort” that was Phase I1 of the Ocean Pines story...
...Their occasional critics have focused almost exclusively on matters of corruption and conflict of interest...
...Editors don’t dig for stories, they are steered to them by energetic publicists...
...By Aaron Ruvinsky square-foot building, which Srar.Ncws Stall Wrrlcr will be the core of Ocean Ocean Pines is almost the last of Boise Cascade’s real estate properties remaining after the giant lumber company pulled itself out of a financial excavation by selling off most of its vast building empire...
...Meanwhile Back at the Star-News Aaron Ruvinsky, a Star-News staff writer who has been with the paper for more than a decade, contributes regularly to the real estate section, occasionally handles church news, and until recently helped put out the garden page...
...Real estate editors often derive considerable consolation from remembering how bad things used to be...
...Walter Herman and I were then taken on a tour of Ocean Pines, which climaxed with our guide driving us down to the bay to show us “our last ocean-front lot...
...A recent issue featured separate articles on five new housing developments, four new condominiums, four new motels, three new shopping centers, two new townhouse developments, two new office buildings, two new stores, a new factory, and two miscellaneous projects-including a new Bob Hope USO Club...
...Dick Turpin defended the L. A. Times’ kid-glove treatment of local developers by saying, “What you don’t realize is that for every press release we run, we reject four others that merely tell how great a builder is...
...Add to this the crucial role played by the press in exposing the Watergate affair, and it is not hard to understand the current mood of selfrighteousness at Katharine Graham’s Washington Post, Otis Chandler’s Los Angeles Times, and Newbold Noyes’ Washington Star-Ne ws . Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Russell Hickman of Worcester County last Friday joined officials of the Boise Cascade Home & Land Corp...
...As we stood there on the barren, muddy ground, we were asked to look between two green stakes and envision how beautiful a home would look on the half-acre plot...
...Second mortgages are seen as a way of coping with the high cost of interest...
...In conversation, Walter Herman, who covers automobiles and real estate for Hearst’s Baltimore NewsAmerican, casually drops lines like “when Volvo flew me to Sweden...
...And a Partridge in a Pear Tree A standard critique of newspaper journalism is that in its emphasis on discrete events, it fails to give proper attention to long-term trends and stories that don’t neatly fit the formula, “The Governor announced yesterday...
...And another started, “Thriving orange groves border Sunhollow, a new community of 1 78 single-family detached homes opening today in San Juan Capistrano...
...Yeonas contended that the proposed warranty program of the National Association of Home Builders was unnecessary because only five per cent of this country’s builders are guilty of any shoddy workmanship...
...The L. A. Times is typical in burying its real estate section deep in the Sunday paper...
...Just imagine what would happen if managing editors treated politicians the same way...
...to break ground for a three-story structure that will include a yacht club, two restaurants and other facilities...
...Advertising began telling builders, “If you’ve got a story, submit it to Turpin, and if it’s really a story he’ll print it.’ The real estate editors of the Post and the Star-News also claim to be entirely free of advertiser pressure, but it is interesting to note how gingerly they treat the area’s largest home builder...
...With land sales at the threequarters mark, it is turning its attention increasingly toward the development’s new town aspects...
...The president of C.I.T...
...Some outside prodding prompted the Star-News decision to run an article on Ocean Pines...
...Area residents who were aware of the suburban sprawl that has disfigured Northern Virginia must have been amused to read, “As the professional organization for builders in the Northern Virginia area, the NVBA actively promotes high standards to insure that home buyers can look with confidence to its members...
...Kuhn, a former Washington Post reporter, argued that not only was it repugnant to accommodate advertisers in news columns, but it was also unnecessary, since builders and realtors really had nowhere else to go...
...Each Sunday the Chronicle runs three separate fullcolor advertising sections-“Your Home ,” “Your Townhouse,” and “Apartment Guide...
...This almost total abdication of journalistic responsibility is a national problem, but nowhere are the consequences more serious than in Washington and Los Angeles-two of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country...
...The widely read November 3 real estate section, for example, featured an article by the executive vice president of the National Forest Products Association defending the recent report of the President’s Advisory Panel on Timber and the Environment (on which he served) against charges by environmentalists that its recommendations would allow lumber interests to raid our national forests...
...All I could see was the highway bridge in the background and all I could think about was the $35,000 price-tag for just the land...
...Nowhere are these abuses more apparent than in newspaper real estate sections...
...For these reasons, Ocean Pines has tightened up provisions in the convenants homesite buyers are required to sign...
...The seeds of all this puffery soon blossomed when “Ryland Homes in Anne Arundel County” placed a half-page ad in the October 21 real estate section...
...Condominiums and planned communities are less likely targets for rising crime rates...
...Ocean Pines remains within the corporate family, but its past is no more savory than that of the properties Boise discarded...
...Yet when it comes to integrity, these newspapers are not entirely above reproach...
...A wildcat printer’s strike had prevented the publication of the rest of the paper...
...After carefully analyzing the real estate sections of more than 20 major newspapers, Ruvinsky’s description of the houses at Ocean Pines as “a jarring sight amid bare surroundings” was virtually the only specific criticism I found of a particular development...
...In November, 1972, William H. Rodgers, Jr., detailed the shady practices that characterized Boise Cascade’s land dealings and led to their corporate Dunkirk-a ‘$200-million retreat from the land development business...
...The L. A. Times is perhaps the worst offender...
...Witkt land sales at the threequarters mark, it is now turning its attention increasingly toward the development’s new town aspects...
...Del...
...That’s fine, but no real estate section carries a box stating, “Warning: the articles in this section are of limited news value and should be taken as reflecting only one side of the real estate picture.’’ Obviously, real estate sections, which are printed several days before the rest of the paper, should not be expected to cover breaking news...
...Russell Hickman of Worcester County last Friday joined officials of the Boise Cascade Home & Land Corp...
...The primary purpose of a recent contribution by the president of the Northern Virginia Builders Association was to stress the integrity of local builders...
...The only article I saw on apartment living appeared in The Hartford Courant, and suggested that “if you’re a prodder, try producing a newsletter for your building or complex...
...Editors like Willmann are willing captives of local real estate interests because they are acutely aware of their own lack of training in the field...
...he shares a reporter with the financial section...
...1 spot among home builders for two years...
...But as long as sections like real estate are “handout heaven,” we will go on knowing more about military coups in Chile than real estate coups in our own backyard...
...it’s just that they aren’t as high as the rest of the paper in terms of interest and freshness of the news...
...Completion is scheduled next summer for the 10.800UNLIKE SOME vacation land developers, Boise Cascade doesn’t emphasize investment as a reason for buying land at Ocean Pines...
...In 1972, the Maryland Real Estate Commission halted land sales for 90 days because some Ocean Pines salesmen had neglected to obtain real estate licenses...
...An inn and shopping center also are planned...
...In early September the Post gave a guest column to C. G. Yeonas, the “head of the top-volume Yeonas Co...
...Editors have little choice but to fill their columns with copy provided by publicists...
...a leader in the business in this area and also...
...unveiled by the Ryland Group in West Riding, one of the most desired communities near Bel Air...
...Who said so...
...By next summer the first 40 of 1133 boat slips will help sailing enthusiasts to take advantage of the development‘ s nine miles of waterfront...
...Traditionally, these special sections which provide bulk for weekend editions have pretty much been taken for granted...
...See OCEAN, E-17 golf, tennis or paddle tennis, go horsebac riding, dine or enjoy camping or picnicking in a park...
...The Kuhn article inspired the National Association of Real Estate Editors to add a self-criticism session to its annual convention, but it is easy to overstate the impact of this...
...Sometimes she is merely banal, as when she informed her readers in 1971 that “the second home is an accepted fact of American life today,” and again when she recently announced that the private backyard tennis court is the “in thing” this year...
...Alcan Aluminum Corp., quoted in The Baltimore Sun...
...Inside, the words “classified display” do appear at the top of each page, but in agate type...
...The front-page leads in the L. A. Times often sound as though they were lifted directly from the builder’s press kit...
...We have food pages because there are food advertisers, and real estate sections because of the developers...
...She was taught good taste by her musician father and home-maker mother while growing up on a farm in Watsontown, Pa.,” indicate that this was the work of a publicist of rare inventiveness...
...In a UP1 dispatch this fall, she discussed how a retired Army nurse and a beautician had constructed their “dream houses” by supplementing their cash with “sweat equity” in the form of their own labor...
...Although the editorial copy runs on the order of “Roman Forest will truly be a spectacular and fulfilling place to live,” there is no indication on the front pages of these sections that this is advertising copy...
...For example, Dick Turpin had been education editor of the L. A. Times, Bill Manley of The Milwaukee Journal had been a general assignment reporter, and Carleton Jones of The Baltimore Sun was a former reporter who had spent 15 years in public relations...
...Recent readers of his section were treated to a photo of “Sharon Eden, a student at the University of Maryland,” who had “been selected Miss SMHBA” by the Suburban Maryland Home Builders Association...
...Coincidentally, the section’s lead story featured “four new model homes...
...The first year or two were tough since I insisted that any story that came through a builder or a PR man had to be submitted to me rather than to the advertising department...
...None of the real estate editors I talked with considered himself an expert...
...In 1967, the management of the paper decided to take the section away from advertising...
...On October 7, its tabloid “Move Up to Better Living” section profiled Marianne Schmidt, an interior decorator for Ryland Homes...
...In the past, if you were a good, solid advertiser, you were in the real estate section every week or every month...
...William Schmidt, the manager of corporate communications for Evans Products, that’s who...
...Instead of criticism, some real estate editors have resorted to informal blacklists...
...But not the kind of sections we know today, which, even when they come through with a bit of information about the mortgage rate, almost never step back to examine the totality of our relationship with the bank, or the insurance company, or the doctor, or the schools...
...Willmann doesn’t work entirely alone...
...Dick Turpin took great pains to sketch out for me the situation at the L. A. Times when he became real estate editor in 1967: For many, many years this newspaper had run this real estate section from the point of view of the advertising department...
...The section may state that “kitchens have built-in appliances, hardwood cabinets, trash compactor, dishwasher, waste disposer, stainless steel sink, and pantry,” but it provides few clues for a potential home buyer to tell if this will be a pleasant room in which to cook and eat...
...These sections owe their very existence not to journalistic decisions but to commercial interests...
...More than any other institution in our society, the press can provide the average man with the information he needs to find out how he is being screwed...
...A week before the Star-News published the Ocean Pines story, it ran a press release on page three of its real estate section under the headline, “Yeonas Wants to Stay No...
...The tenor of the Star-News article cannot be attributed to a conflict of interest-round-trip air fare to Ocean City out-of-season and a non-alcoholic buffet lunch don’t add up to much of a bribe-even if Ruvinsky did take his 13-year-old son along...
...only moral pressure can be used to line up those who have held their land for some time...
...The “who said so...
...Rather, the article reflects the non-adversary attitudes that real estate writers bring to their work...
...Reflecting the boosterism of Southern California, its real estate section is totally dominated by condominium openings and new tract housing...
...A few of these, unfortunately, are a jarring sight amid bare surroundings, not enough attention being paid to landscaping...
...6.000 families owning lots and condominiums now can swim, play golf, tennis and paddle tennis, go horseback riding, dine, or enjoy camping or picnicking in a park...
...While these articles are undoubtedly a service to the potential home buyer, they cover topics far safer than an objective assessment of local developers...
...gether as soon as the Watergate revelations made clear that he wasn’t doing a satisfactory job...
...Who said so...
...Things are done a bit differently in Washington, however...
...At Ocean Pines - the 3.500-acre development across Isle of Wight and Assawoman Bays from Ocean City, Md...
...Most papers don’t even have a health section-not because the readers aren’t concerned, but because doctors can’t advertise...
...Who Said So...
...The Star-News real estate section comes out on Friday and the Post’s appears a day later-giving Katharine Graham the curious distinction of publishing the fattest Saturday paper in the world...
...6,000 families owning lots and condominiums now can swim, play Yacht Club Begun At Ocean Pines Pines’ future downtown...
...Real estate sections, however, carry this formula to absurd lengths...
...with its own Ocean Pines Association...
...If I find that some builder is not doing a satisfactory job,” said Lew Sichelman, “he won’t be mentioned in our real estate section...
...While the special sections of these newspapers are free from such transparent conflicts of interest, they are also filled with manufactured news...
...She is also the master of the disguised press release...
...If so, doesn’t it implicitly exonerate the Post, the L. A. Times, and the StarNews, which forbid such corporate largesse...
...And the willingness of many travel editors to swap a favorable mention in their column for an expensive vacation has long been notorious...
...Similarly, Lew Sichelman of the Star-News is particularly proud of an article he wrote on another general topic-the six percent commission charged by real estate brokers...
...This arrangement was eventually abandoned by most papers, I suspect, more because it was a burden on the business staff than because the arrangement offended anyone’s moral sensibilities...
...Graham would never allow publicists to shape or influence what appears on the front pages of their papers...
...With an area twice the size of Ocean City, officials have to be concerned with its impact on that long strip of shore...
...worked through a division of Evans Products Co., Portland, Ore., whose Home Groups will erect a house on a customer’s lot anywhere in any of the 50 states...
...instead, they often take a press agent’s word for its wonders...
...Ocean Pines is reached by taking U. S. Route 50, 90, or 113 to Route 589-01 by water through Assawoman Bay...
Vol. 5 • December 1973 • No. 10
