Article from Washington Business Journal.
CoStar ramps up news organization, will hire up to 60 reporters in two years
Mar 28, 2018, 3:37pm EDT

CoStar Headquarters 1331 L Street NW Washington, DC - Photo by Skyline Views
By Katie Arcieri Staff Reporter
Washington Business Journal
CoStar hired its first reporter 28 years ago.
D.C.-based commercial real estate information provider CoStar Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP) is beefing up its news organization across the U.S., Canada and Europe, with plans to hire up to 60 reporters over the next two years.
CoStar CEO Andy Florance said Wednesday his company plans to hire "experienced reporters" from existing news organizations. The company recently hired Washington Post local business editor Dan Beyers as executive editor.
Florance declined to say how many of the 60 have been hired so far or what CoStar is investing in the expansion. The company's annual report discussed the company's efforts, saying it will be “adding news talent, upgrading technology, and making our service more relevant for subscribers, by delivering specific news based on their individual preferences."
CoStar's effort to grow its news group, which currently has about 20 reporters between its London and U.S. operations, comes at a time of rapid growth for the company. It now has more than a dozen listing and information sites. Its Apartments.com subsidiary is a free listing website aimed at consumers while the company's commercial real estate information targets a B-to-B market and is behind a paywall.
The company used to focus more on print with directories, but CoStar's only print component today is ranch publications in Texas. It does not plan to roll out a print product as part of its growing news operation.
"As we migrated purely online, we took that news element online with us, and then we went through a period of pretty rapid expansion, going to eventually 300 cities in the U.S. and Canada," Florance said. "And as we did, just the way it happened, we did not keep up with growing our news to keep up with the information component. And really what we are doing now is catching our news operation up to the information component that we've taken out to 300 markets."
There will not be a separate website just for news. News generated by company journalists will be available on CoStar.com through a paid subscription, through which customers can also access leasing information and other commercial real estate information.
Florance said CoStar is seeking reporters "from any number of media outlets," including daily and weekly publications. "Obviously the reporting we do is business reporting and economics so it's a little more tailored," he said. "They all come from some other news organization."
The company his hired at least two real estate reporters from American City Business Journals, parent company of the Washington Business Journal, in markets including Denver and Dallas. An executive at Charlotte, North Carolina-based ACBJ, which owns 40 weekly publications and three digital-only news sites, declined to comment.
Florance said there has always been a "natural connection" between information generated through CoStar's researchers and analysts and news that can be accessible to customers.
"I think we have 12 million conversations a year with people and [generate] millions of pieces of information from that," Florance said. "All that is going into a massive data system and without news, people have to go into the system and ask questions or search to get interesting things out of it. What news does is it just pulls things out of what we are seeing and serves it up proactively."
CoStar's revenue was $960 million in 2017, and the company expects to generate between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion in 2018.
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