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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

A Plan for Getting the Best and Most Real Estate Coverage

We’ve been talking a lot here at the Business Journal about how to best leverage our resources. The goal: reallocate resources to provide higher quality business news, information, and data to readers. And we’ve already taken some concrete steps in that direction. We cut the Econowatch section, because polls showed it wasn’t being read, retooled Around the Valleys to make it newsier, planned only special reports that are truly “special” for the 2010 editorial calendar, and changed our paper stock to increase the quality and clarity of print and photos. These changes are about expanding the creative potential of the staff and getting more news into the newspaper. Readers will reap the benefits. And some of these changes relate directly to the real estate column. We recently contracted with CoStar to obtain lease and sales transaction data for industrial, office and retail space in the greater San Fernando Valley area. Instead of me trying to track down every press release that comes across my desk, and plug all of that transaction information into the column, we will soon launch a section that gives a clear breakdown of the who, what, where, and for how much of each deal. This will allow the Business Journal to publish more transactions, the most up-to-date ones, and present it in an easy-to-read format for readers. Equally important, this will free up my energy to make this real estate column into everything it can be. But, I am still interested in getting those inside tips on significant deals that can make a great news story. If there’s one blessing of the economic meltdown, it’s that it has forced many companies to take a serious look at efficiency in order to be lean and mean for the future. And this gets to my vision for the column. Over the past six months I’ve experimented with writing themed pieces, running straight transactions and news, and even using the space for a story or two. Running quarterly market reports in the column no doubt fills space, but sorely lacks in human appeal, in my opinion. The reason I’ve approached the column this way is two-fold: being new to California, I’ve been learning about the local real estate market; and, I’ve spent my whole journalism career writing news stories versus columns, so it’s taking time to develop a distinct voice. But this hither thither approach is exhausting and I don’t think it gets to the heart of what columns are all about: insight, opinion, and spurring dialogue and debate with readers about issues that matter. I’m fascinated by the greater San Fernando Valley region, and that’s a good thing. This is definitely not a boring place to live or work. And the business community reminds me a lot of New Mexico, because there’s a certain scrappy mentality mixed with pure genius. In the coming year I want to use this column to comment on issues important to all of the players involved in the Valley’s real estate industry, including brokers, buyers, sellers, legislators, builders, construction workers, and more. A few of the issues I’m currently interested in include: how growth of L.A.’s mass transit system will affect real estate positively and negatively, the pros and cons of LEED-certified buildings; whether or not predatory mortgage lending is still going on in the Valley; what types of legislation are bound to affect the local market; and brokers’ personal stories about strange and cool transactions they’ve put together lately. These are just a few ideas. But I would love to hear from people in the real estate community about other hot button or just plain interesting and out-of-the-box issues. Consider this an invitation. I would like to leverage your insights, knowledge and opinions to take this newspaper and column to the next level. Staff Reporter Eric Billingsley can be reached at (818) 316-3124 or at [email protected].

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