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....