Everything is Fit To Print

In an age when most newspapers are read online, one consequence is that there are effectively no limits on how many stories a paper’s website can carry. Couple this with a need to keep as many eyeballs looking at the website for as long as possible, and the result is a plethora of stories that say nothing, posted in the hope that the headline will catch someone’s eye, if only long enough to click on the article and then move on.

Here’s a typical example from the WSJ:

Headline: When Home Sellers Set Prices Too High, They’re Paying for It

Um….’paying for it’? How? Is there a fine for setting the price too high? Social shaming?

The sub-headline almost gives the punch line away: More than half of homes sold in 2025 through October had at least one price cut

Could this WSJ story then possibly be pointing out that if one sets the price too high then one must….wait for it…..lower it?

I can hear you gasping as you read this. I mean, whoddathought, eh?

Because I am all about informing my readers, I clicked on the headline to read the story, and here was the first sentence:

“If you are serious about selling your home, you might have to drop the price.’

Really? Now you know why I pay serious coin to subscribe to the WSJ. Insight like that does not come cheap. But wait, there’s more. Also in the article:

Homes priced correctly from day one tend to sell more quickly and get nearly 100% of their asking price, according to NAR. After three months, sellers usually trim prices by more than 5%, and after a year, by more than 12%.

You don’t say. This article sounds like an elaboration of a really bad stand-up comic’s worst joke:

“How did the home-seller know he had set the price too high?

“No one would buy it.”

To be fair, the author also includes some keen graphics. There is a bar graph that shows that the longer a house is on the market, the greater is the average cut in sale price from the original listing price. A deeply insightful graph, that one.

In the era of paper newspapers, this story never even gets written, I’m thinking.