Two New Surveys Show The Industry's Reach   

A check of editors and a study of eight papers reveal the inroads of soft coverage.

With the housing industry in its worst funk since the Depression, many real estate editors have felt increasing pressure from advertisers to provide more friendly coverage of the industry. And, more importantly, many don't get the support they need from their newspapers to resist.

These conclusions are based on two detailed studies conducted last year – a confidential national survey of 42 real estate editors and a qualitative analysis of real estate sections at eight major dailies.

The first study asked editors if advertisers had ever pressured them for "friendly" stories, the effect such pressure had on the editorial process and whether the paper's own policies concerning real estate copy stifled balanced coverage. The second study catalogued the length and quantity of news stories, features and industry-friendly advice columns and press releases that appeared in real estate sections at the eight dailies.

The editors overwhelmingly agreed (83 percent) that balanced coverage belongs in their sections, yet 44 percent said publishers or senior editors prohibit such coverage for fear of offending advertisers. More than 80 percent said advertisers had threatened to pull ads because of negative coverage; more than a third knew of advertisers who had done so.

Many editors said they didn't expect or get support from their publishers when advertisers complained. Ten percent said their publishers sided with unhappy advertisers; another third said they weren't sure what the publisher would do because their sections never published controversial stories. Half said they believed they would have management's support in a dispute, but some added that they would first need to vigorously defend their coverage.

Several editors said they had been ordered by senior editors or publishers to delay or kill a story that might offend advertisers. For each, the experience was devastating. In fact, this section of the survey, which asked about advertiser protests before and after publication, triggered particularly vehement comments. Some editors scribbled long diatribes against advertisers and newspaper managers on the front and back of the survey sheet. Others called, eager to talk about problems they face.

"The publisher once stopped the press run of the section when he saw a wire story critical of the real estate agents," said one New York editor. "The senior editors are very conservative when it comes to advertisers. They anticipate the worst before it ever happens, probably overreacting in the process."

An editor at a small Midwest paper said his section ran a story several years ago reporting that condominium sales were slipping. Local condo salespeople complained to the publisher that the story made the crisis worse by discouraging potential buyers. Several major advertisers pulled ads in protest. In 1989, the same editor ran a story about selling a home without an agent, triggering protests from angry advertisers and an editorial policy change that cut the heart from his real estate coverage.

"I truly believe that feature generated a letter from every residential brokerage in town," the editor said. "The result is that now we only run fluff..and stories are edited by a surprisingly large number of senior editors" to avoid similar conflicts.

Another editor, in California, said he was brought in to make an industry-serving section more "hard-edged." But his changes, which included adding balanced service information, angered advertisers. To appease them, the advertising department took over the editor's small Saturday section.

"I'm not happy with the situation," said the editor, who now handles real estate stories in the paper's expanded Sunday business section. "But I'd be less happy producing a section to keep advertisers satisfied."

Many editors reported less overt – but still insidious – pressure from advertisers.

"Recently, advertisers have been using the 'negative news' argument to attempt to change or get coverage," wrote one editor in the Midwest. "They accuse the paper of writing and publishing too much negative news and urge us to refrain [from publishing those pieces], put a positive slant on a story, or write about their project to balance a perceived barrage of negative stories. We are asked to do this for the good of the community."

The editor said that although he was rarely pressured about an article before publication, editors "have to do some fence-mending" each time a controversial story hits the newsstand – including soft follow-up stories that otherwise would not be printed.

Because they had few, if any, reporters assigned to their sections, some editors said they had no choice but to fill space with articles based on industry press releases.

The editors said controversial real estate stories – including reports on the savings and loan scandal and financial troubles at the Department of Housing and Urban Development – often appear elsewhere in the paper. Stories about historic preservation, which often involve disputes over landmark designations, were twice as likely to appear in metro sections as in real estate. Stories about zoning disputes were more than four times as likely to be covered in metro. Only a third of stories about troublesome developments, real estate scandals and unhappy consumers ran in real estate, with the remainder in metro or business.

Stories about non-controversial developments and residential real estate – mostly light features about new homes – were more likely than any other article to appear in the real estate section.

The in-depth study of real estate sections at eight dailies supported what editors had said earlier: Many contain little more than sanctified ad copy.

The survey covered newspapers in cities with an expanding real estate market during the boom years of the 1980s on the premise that cities with active markets would have more breaking news, more reader interest in consumer-oriented reporting and enough advertisers that papers could afford to resist those who protested.

The survey did not bear this out. Each of these otherwise well-respected newspapers had elements in their real estate sections that raised questions about who was making the editorial decisions – editors or advertisers.

For three months in early 1990, the weekly real estate sections of The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , The Washington Post , the Chicago Tribune , the Atlanta Journal and Constitution , The Miami Herald , the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle and The Houston Post were examined and the articles catalogued by length and quantity in four categories:

• Hard news – breaking stories using information from a balance of opposing sources, about subjects such as zoning changes, tax disputes, rising home prices, sales slumps, mortgage delinquency rates, low-income housing and changes in federal policies.

• Hard features – stories with a balance of sources that lacked an immediate news element, about subjects such as commercial brokers who offer incentives to lease office space, less dramatic changes in local markets and service information for consumers and investors.

• Soft features – neighborhood profiles and stories about subjects such as decorating, design and gardening.

• Columns or commentaries by recognized expertsthat offer basic, time-honored advice, along with single-source stories often based on press releases.

Only four of the eight papers – The Washington Post , the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle , The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune – ran several breaking news stories each week in their real estate sections.

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution , The Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times averaged less than one hard news story a week. The real estate section at The Houston Post , produced by the paper's ad department, didn't contain a single hard-news story during the three-month study.

Overall, The Washington Post and The New York Times had the most balanced sections and the broadest coverage. For example, of 80 hard news stories published in The Post real estate section during the study, nearly a quarter were about local controversies, a quarter about national developments and a quarter on federal housing programs and policies. (Despite such hard-hitting coverage, features, advice and single-source articles still filled two-thirds of the sections at both papers.) Hard news stories that stood out at The Post included a piece on buyers winning suits against builders and another on Veteran Administration foreclosures that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

The Times contained fewer (31) but longer hard news pieces, and the majority had a local angle. For example, one 46-inch piece detailed why mortgage rates rise faster in New York than other areas and what that means for home buyers, and another reported that some local consumers had trouble financing new homes even though house prices were falling dramatically.

The real estate sections of the Examiner & Chronicle and the Tribune also made relatively strong showings, with slightly more than a third of their sections devoted to breaking news and hard features. The L.A. Times , however, devoted less than 15 percent of its coverage to features and hard news and more than half of its space to single-source stories and repetitive advice columns. The Journal and Constitution , The Herald and The Houston Post got low marks as well, devoting less than 10 percent of their sections to hard news or hard features.

The Examiner & Chronicle printed 41 hard news stories, but only six detailed local controversies. More than half focused on changes in local markets. The Tribune also was gun-shy, with only two of 29 hard news stories reporting on controversial issues. Instead, it covered local market changes and national news.

The Journal and Constitution ranked first in the percentage of space given to soft features, with 61 percent of its editorial split between gardening and interior decorating. The Herald also relied heavily on soft copy, with 37 percent. The L.A. Times offered the most advice, filling 32 percent of its editorial space with columns, with the Examiner & Chronicle at 27 percent and The Washington Post at 24 percent.

Not surprisingly, The Houston Post 's real estate section was the runaway winner for publishing basic advice and single-source stories. Industry press agents wrote 94 percent of the section's editorial, most of which announced new home developments. Even the few articles written by Editor Thora Qaddumi were sugar-coated, such as a piece on people who visit model developments as a hobby, or a story about how a specific development was "the right place at the right time." Typical headlines: "Country Place Offers Unique Lifestyle Living" and "New First Colony Golf Course Experiences Successful Start-up." ( The Post section uses a different typeface and heavier stock paper than the rest of the paper and includes a small disclaimer that identifies it as advertising. Qaddumi, who was hired as editor before advertising took over the section in 1989, said in an interview that she and her staff "try to do some reporting, of course only on the positive side, but we still have to be careful... Our readership is not well-served because there's a lot of deception in this. People think they are reading a news section.")

Among the other papers, The Herald filled 24 percent of its editorial content with single-source stories; The Tribune published 21 percent, the L.A. Times , 16 percent, The New York Times , 15 percent, and The Washington Post , 8 percent. The Journal and Constitution was the most restrained, with only 2 percent of its copy written by industry.

Despite the desire of many real estate editors to print balanced stories, most of their sections remain anemic compared to the rest of the paper. And most editors in the survey felt readers won't see better coverage until advertisers back off – or timid publishers develop the backbone to resist their protests. l

Wendy Swallow Williams is an assistant professor of journalism at The American University in Washington, D.C.