Turpin, pioneer of real estate reporting, dies at 91

Dick Turpin, one of the pioneers of real estate journalism, died last week at age 91, reports Dick Barnes, the former real estate editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Barnes writes, “He was a kind, gentle man, and he had lived a long, full life, a life of service — to his country, to his newspaper, to real estate reporting. For those of you who didn’t know Dick Turpin, and that likely includes almost everyone reading this note, he was the editor of The Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Real Estate section for more than two decades—1967 to 1989.  He retired from newspapering many years ago, and his battles were even further in the past.  But they were big, important battles, vital to anyone reporting on real estate today.

“When he was first given the real estate editor’s job (after 20 years as a City Desk reporter), the Times’ publisher instructed him to wrest the section away from the Advertising Department, where ‘pay to play’ was the rule of the day.  It was ‘advertorial’ before the advent of the word.

“So Dick went to war again (as a Marine, he had fought for three years in World War II’s bloody Pacific Theater). This time he took on The Times’ powerful Advertising Department and he won, forging an independent editorial real estate section and establishing the guardrails that kept it straight until the day the section was killed in 2008.

“Dick maintained his editorial independence so well that for years after he retired, advertising salesmen still complained about him. ‘Turpin wouldn’t even talk to me,’ one ad manager told me. ‘Hell, he wouldn’t even let me walk by his office.'”

Read the Times obituary here.