Manhattan Loft Guy, 1

pardon me for boasting
I am reliably informed that my December 14, Wall Street Journal oversells a Manhattan 4 bedroom “boom”, was forwarded to an editor at the Wall Street Journal, resulting in the Corrections & Amplifications item posted Saturday on the bottom of that article, More at Home in 4 Bedrooms.

a much more muted ‘boom’
Reading it now, with that paragraph essentially neutered, shows how spare the ‘data’ in support of the 4-bedroom boom thesis is:

According to the U.S. Census’s New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, apartments with four or more bedrooms represented more than 12% of owner-occupied units in New York City in 2008, compared with 12.8% in 2005.

BFD, right? This is what it used to say:

According to the U.S. Census’s New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, apartments with four or more bedrooms represented more than 12% of owner-occupied units in New York City in 2008, up from 1% in 2005.

no hurt feelings, but …
I have no idea what the appropriate journalistic standards are for running a Corrections & Amplifications item like this, and Lord knows this blog cannot be accused of journalism, but it would have been nice if the Journal had given this blog credit for the correction (assuming that my post was what provoked the C&A). Nice, but not necessary, of course.

I am pretty sure that blogging standards would have required a hat tip to Manhattan Loft Guy, had this been a blog-to-blog issue.

Whatever.

© Sandy Mattingly 2010