An irate – and unpublished – Opinion Line caller took me to the woodshed yesterday for what she perceives as an erroneous suggestion that the median home price in Wichita is rising.
Her logic – such as it was – was the value of her low-end home is falling, so the conclusion couldn’t be correct. And I should do more, she claims, than just parrot local realtors who aren’t being honest about the state of the Wichita housing market.
A couple of points: First, the conclusion is correct, and the irate caller is partially correct, as well. Upper-end homes are selling briskly in Wichita, and when a bunch of $500,000 homes sell, the median price rises. And, it offsets the lack of traffic in entry-level homes where the market has been literally frozen by the lack of credit for first-time homebuyers.
It’s the latest in the sagging national economy’s strong impact on covering business in Wichita: Some local realtors would love me more if I actually did parrot them because the real numbers – which we publish religiously as soon as they’re released – erode buyer confidence. I have no doubt that they’re correct about that. Yet others are brutally honest about what they see in a market that is clearly declining, spin notwithstanding.
Same with retailers: Some are candid about their questionable futures and a potentially bleak Christmas season. Others – mostly on the East side of Wichita – complain that business is just great and giving their struggling peers a voice hurts their business.
I’m reminded of a lunch many moons ago with a local construction executive, who peered across the table and said flatly, “Your job is to advocate for Wichita.”
So let’s talk about that. What do you expect from your newspaper?
5 Comments
Bill – I think this reflects what amounts to a sort of illiteracy on the part of many people. To make matters worse – if the high-end homes are selling then the MEAN will rise even more – and have no meaning to the rest of us.
If Bill Gates walked in the door at my office then the ‘average’ guy here would be a millionaire. Bot not the median. When mean and median are very different it reflects a very skewed distribution.
Remember – if your head is in the freezer and your rear in the over you are – on average – comfortable.
Your job is to get facts and report them to us. Good, bad or ugly. The facts should dictate how the story is angled, not what people want to hear. Be objective, be fair and we will listen.
Always been my view, as well.
This is a different economic time, and I think any good reporter has to be aware of that, but those unique economic times can create equally unique pressures on publication of the truth.
advocacy is for the editorial page and opinion columns. We need a truthful perspective through a journalist’s checks and verifications. Upon that information we can decide conduct and direction.
Testing. I wrote a comment, but it didn’t post. Testing if this one does.