California paper receives complaints about real estate coverage

The Sacramento Bee has been receiving a number of complaints about its real estate coverage by business writer Jim Wasserman, writes, public editor Armando Acuña.

Acuña noted, “The Bee’s storyteller of this falling market is Wasserman, a veteran reporter who most recently worked for the Associated Press in Sacramento before hiring on at the paper as a business writer about a year and a half ago.

“‘I’m trying to sell my home and your articles are not helping (us) sellers,’ one woman said in an e-mail she sent Wasserman on Aug. 17, the day he wrote a front-page story that carried the headline ‘Area’s home prices decline. Sacramento County’s drop is steepest in state; sales also fall.’

“‘Thanks for eating away a large portion of my equity!!!’

“‘For many people, he is blamed for the market tanking,’ said Wasserman’s editor Wayne Davis, who finds such notions ludicrous. ‘He gets the brunt of the heat and he gets verbally abused. But there’s nothing you can do but write the best stories you can.’

“One new home builder told Wasserman that buyers have come into his company’s sales offices, newspaper in hand, and cancelled their purchase contracts, pointing to a Wasserman story about the housing slump.

“There are readers who accuse him of being a tool of the real estate industry and of catering to the paper’s major real estate advertisers when he writes about a bright spot in the market.

“Some say he is obviously a landlord seeking to drive up rents. Others call him a renter bent on ruining the sales market so he can buy a home as prices drop.”

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