Categories: OLD Media Moves

When a business columnist took on real estate

Jon Talton

Jon Talton, who writes a business column for the Seattle Times, writes about his time writing a business column for The Arizona Republic from 2000 to 2007 and how it ended due to his alienating real estate executives in the Phoenix area.

Talton writes, “Could I have found a way to stay?

“It’s a question I’ve pondered for years  (I’ve been writing for the Seattle Times for more than a decade now, my longest tenure at any paper).

“It’s not as if I didn’t come to understand the peril of writing about Arizona as it was (and is). There’s a reason that E.J. Montini, known for his merciless takedowns, or Laurie Roberts, who writes regular outrage columns, never take on the real estate interests. But I did. Relentlessly. I did the same with the crazy reactionary politics that had taken over Arizona — I had grown up a Goldwater Republican, remember. ‘Real Estate Industrial Complex’ and ‘Kookocracy’ made me more enemies than I realized, no matter how many readers were delighted by the terms.

“And it’s not as if I was always ‘negative,’ as my traducers complained, whatever that word means. I was the first and most constant supporter of TGen, ASU, the downtown Convention Center, and light rail (I take special pride that WBIYB). I wrote honest but largely favorable profiles of people such as the late Paul Fannin — even a fair shake for Jon Kyl once I had a column on the op-ed page. I worked hard to stay on the good side of the LDS.

“I also knew that a drumbeat began soon after my arrival to have me silenced or fired.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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