The email arrived just after 7am.
I had already finished my workout and was standing in the kitchen halfway through my second Americano. quad shot. Contains no sugar.
Mr. Ding.
“New group iMessage,” Siri announced through the AirPods.
Before I could stop her, she rattled the participants away. There are four phone numbers. Only one name was saved in your contacts. Siri read it to you.
One of the most influential leaders in the residential real estate industry.
She got my attention.
“If you don’t remove the article, there will be consequences. We are immediately withdrawing all support.”
I grinned.
For some reason, threats sound different when delivered in Siri’s incredibly calm voice. She has an uncanny ability to make everything sound both comforting and urgent. She would probably make a good CEO.
I took another sip of my coffee.
This article was an editorial we published the day before that took a hard look at how one of the industry’s biggest companies is perceived by some. It found its traces.
What happened next is the part worth telling. My editorial team went back through the piece line by line, reexamining facts, double checking sources, and critically considering whether sharper commentary was fair. They concluded that the company had corrected only one of the inaccuracies noted and the remaining work was pending.
The reason is important. It’s easy to flatter powerful companies, but they don’t add any value. A more difficult test is what the publication is made of, arriving at 7 a.m. when important people want the article to disappear.
Inman doesn’t work for the biggest brokerage firm, the most vocal portal, or the company that will write the biggest check this quarter. We work for the agents and brokers who do that work – the people who sit across the table from buyers and sellers and entrust them with the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
The industry is rapidly consolidating. A few players have grown up enough to think that what works for them works for everyone, and they’re not necessarily wrong. Whether their opinion is correct in a particular case is a question that must be asked proactively in print without first checking if the company is also the sponsor of the conference.
As power becomes more concentrated, independent reporting becomes more difficult, and at the same time, more necessary. Without it, the industry would settle into shorthand, with the big players telling their stories and everyone else clapping on cue. Requesting that stories be deleted before breakfast is an instruction. People who are confident in their position will not ask you to erase it.
None of this is simple. I covered this business and the industry before it well enough to know how the machines work. There’s a dark side to every beat, and the line between sponsorship, influence, and editorial integrity is a tightrope I walk in broad daylight.
Sponsoring Inman Connect and want your executives to speak on a panel? If the executives are interesting and have something worth hearing, sure. First, do it as a team. That’s a trade I would make any day of the week.
With Select, your agent costs $200 a year instead of $2,000. This is because $200 keeps jobs within reach of people who need them and keeps the lights on. Commerce pays for the building. We have never had an editorial policy and never will. The day a check can buy a judgment is the day the subscription ceases to have any value to the person who paid for it.
If an organization would rather seek support elsewhere because we don’t want the real story to be kept private, that’s what the organization is calling for. We wish them all the best and will continue to report on them. With or without their support, this story continued yesterday and will continue tomorrow.
To all the agents and brokers reading this: This article, on the flip side, was the best feedback we could have gotten. That meant that the work reached the people it was supposed to be disturbing. It’s their job to tell the truth when it would cause inconvenience to those in power, but most trade publications don’t do that.
There’s a Springsteen song “No Surrender” that I’ve gone back to most of my life. It’s about people who stand their ground when it would be easier to fold and keep the promises they made when no one was looking. That’s what my team did this week.
This publication is not to be relied upon and you can trust this publication no matter who is on the other end of the phone or what time they call. We will not be bought and we will not be bullied. We work for the people reading this.
No surrender.
Support our mission of staying accountable by becoming an Inman Select subscriber today.
Thomas M. Bourne
Inman.com CEO
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