Atlanta Business Chronicle just lost its top reporter. Urvaksh Karkaria, who broke several major stories in the past year - including news of Facebook's plans to build a huge data center in Atlanta's exurbs, quit yesterday.
He starts later this month as the Atlanta correspondent for Automotive News.
For more details, read this story from TalkingBizNews.
WASHINGTON, April 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, today announced that Dan Beyers has joined the Company as Executive Editor and Vice President. An excellent business journalist and longtime news editor for The Washington Post, Beyers will oversee CoStar's global news operation, which spans offices in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany and includes more than 40 journalists.
"Dan has tremendous experience and will be leading our effort to build a world-class news organization and establish CoStar as the industry's most-read and most-respected source for commercial real estate news," said Andrew Florance, CoStar Group Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "He has been a veteran news presence at The Washington Post, having served in a number of reporting and editing capacities at the newspaper where he earned a reputation for taking on challenges facing the print-based industry and helping it transition to the digital age, while upholding the highest journalistic standards."
While at The Washington Post, Beyers served as founding editor of Capital Business, a subscription-based publication launched by The Post in 2010 to sharpen its focus on the region's business community. He spun off new online verticals from that coverage to expand The Post's digital presence, and launched Top Workplaces, an annual publication and live event aimed at the metropolitan area's top employers. As a reporter and editor, he helmed beats including technology, government, education, local business and national industries.
Beyers' appointment is a significant milestone in CoStar's expansion of its award-winning news team, which added more than a dozen experienced business journalists located across the U.S. and in key international locations in the past year. The growing team allows CoStar to better tailor coverage for its readers, offering even greater insights into the markets and issues that matter to them. The expansion is part of a major initiative to enhance the company's role as the industry's leading source of commercial real estate information and data, building on its already established reputation as a trusted, insightful news resource for commercial real estate.
Beyers will be based in CoStar's corporate headquarters in Washington, DC and report to Lisa Ruggles, Senior Vice President of Global Research.
About CoStar Group, Inc.
CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP) is the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. Founded in 1987, CoStar conducts expansive, ongoing research to produce and maintain the largest and most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information. Our suite of online services enables clients to analyze, interpret and gain unmatched insight on commercial property values, market conditions and current availabilities. LoopNet is the most heavily trafficked commercial real estate marketplace online with over 5 million monthly unique visitors per month. Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, Westside Rentals, AFTER55.com, CorporateHousing.com, ForRentUniversity.com and Apartamentos.com form the premier online apartment resource for renters seeking great apartment homes and provide property managers and owners a proven platform for marketing their properties. CoStar Group's websites attracted an average of approximately 34 million unique monthly visitors in aggregate throughout 2017. Headquartered in Washington, DC, CoStar maintains offices throughout the U.S. and in Europe and Canada with a staff of over 3,700 worldwide, including the industry's largest professional research organization. For more information, visit www.costargroup.com.
This news release includes "forward-looking statements" including, without limitation, statements regarding CoStar's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. These statements are based upon current beliefs and are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including the risk that the company's expansion of its news team does not produce the expected results, including better tailored coverage, greater insights and establishing CoStar as the industry's most-read and most-respected source for commercial real estate news. More information about potential factors that could cause results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, those stated in CoStar's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in CoStar's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, which is filed with the SEC, including in the "Risk Factors" section of that filing, as well as CoStar's other filings with the SEC available at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements are based on information available to CoStar on the date hereof, and CoStar assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
SOURCE CoStar Group, Inc.
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.
ATLANTA (April 7, 2015) - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution went looking for a new breaking news reporter, and it found one with a nice mix of old and new media experience. But I bet it was the reporter's new media experience that won him the job.
The newest Breaking News Reporter at the AJC is Tyler Estep, who left the Gwinnett Daily Post where he served as "Multimedia Journalist" - after five years. With all due respect (which usually means the exact opposite) to the Gwinnett paper, I'm sure Tyler's experience breaking news for Curbed Atlanta played a larger role in the Atlanta paper's decision to hire him.
Curbed Atlanta, led by Editor Josh Green and part of the Vox new media empire, aggressively covers entitlement and development stories across the metro. In fact, Curbed often breaks big stories about when and why new dirt will be moved.
As a breaking news reporter, Estep has been writing a lot of crime stories, something he did well at the Gwinnett daily. But the AJC is savvy enough to know that as commercial real estate continues to be a huge story here, they have a breaking news reporter who can pitch in.
It All Starts With Real Estate.
- Tony Wilbert, The Wilbert Group
404-254-1487
ATLANTA (Feb. 9) - The battle to own commercial real estate news in Atlanta is intensifying in 2015 as marquee companies consider the metro area for headquarters relocations.
But in what could foreshadow a stunning shift, the fight for print advertising dollars also is heating up, with The Atlanta-Journal-Constitution re-entering the ring. The proof can be found on Page A7 of today's AJC. That's where you'll find a full-page color ad for CBRE. The ad, which focuses on reputation building as opposed to transaction touting, appears in the paper's groundbreaking Atlanta Forward series highlighting Atlanta's need to up its game to continue to attract new companies and residents.
This development shows that advertisers still will target outlets with great content for their ad spends.
While the AJC has regained its position as one of the - if not the top - real estate news outlets in the region, all of the CRE ad dollars in town typically flow to Atlanta Business Chronicle, which for long has led the way as the outlet of choice of real estate CMOs and decision-makers. The needle already has started to shift, thanks to Bisnow Atlanta, which has attracted ads from most top-tier Atlanta CRE companies.
Now it will be interesting to see whether other CRE firms join CBRE in buying ads in the AJC's print edition. During the past decade, I can only recall occasional display ads from Cousins Properties. And when the AJC's Horizon section existed, a couple of other firms bought ads, too.
HOUSTON - Houston Business Journal has hired a New York Daily News reporter to cover commercial real estate.
Roxanna Asgarian relocated from New York to Texas to take over the beat. In addition to writing CRE stories for the weekly print edition, she will author posts on the HBJ's Breaking Ground blog. The American City Business Journals weekly announced the news today, in a story by its associate digital editor, Nora Olabi.
"We are excited to welcome Roxanna," said Candace Beeke, HBJ's editor-in-chief says in the story. "We know she'll have her work cut out for her in Houston's dynamic real estate community. We think her skills and expertise will be a great complement toPaul Takahashi's outstanding residential real estate coverage."
Asgarian's beat should be busy and interesting. Houston is the No. 1 market for commerical real estate investment, according to the influential Emerging Trends report. However, plummeting oil prices should impact the office market there.
Jenny Agee-Aldridge previously covered CRE at retail at the paper.
Asgarian can be reached at (713) 395-9631, or at [email protected]. Follow heron Twitter @HBJroxanna.
ATLANTA (Jan. 7, 2015) - The Wall Street Journal didn't have to look far to find the ideal candidate to cover the housing market and its impact on the U.S. economy.
The paper's global real estate bureau has tapped current WSJ reporter Laura Kusisto to cover the beat, previously handled by Conor Dougherty, who now writes The New York Times' Bits column about The Business of Technology.
As for Laura, she currently covers economic development and neighborhoods for the Journal's Greater New York section. It's expected she'll move to the real estate team within a month or so.
Kusisto has been busy this week as one of the writers on the big story about Mercedes-Benz moving its U.S. headquarters to an Atlanta suburb. (Disclosure: The Wilbert Group represents JLL Atlanta, which played a key role with JLL's Chicago and Dallas offices in the Mercedes move.)
According to a story by Chris Roush of Talking Biz News, here's the focus of Kusisto's beat.
This is a high profile and fast moving beat that touches many topics, including the economy, demographics, the growth of foreign money and investors in real estate, the lingering fallout from the foreclosure crisis, suburban vs. urban development and property-tax trends.
The beat also involves mining economic data to find stories that explain how housing trends are helping or hindering the broader U.S. economic recovery. The reporter will be expected to work closely with other beat reporters covering federal and local housing policy and home-builders.
SEVEN MILE BEACH, Grand Cayman (Nov. 26, 2014) - A select group of the U.S.' top real estate writers and editors got an exclusive shot last week to check on the progress of the resort hotel and residences Dart Realty (Cayman) Ltd. is developing on Seven Mile Beach.
Dart's DECCO has poured more than 80 million pounds of concrete and constructed several stories of the main structure that will rise 10 stories.
The hotel portion of the resort will be operated by Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. The hotel will be the first property in the Caribbean for Kimpton, well known in the States for its cool, hip properties that always include at least one destination restaurant.
A quick walk-around of the construction site and adjacent beachfront proved to be a highlight of the recent press trip hosted by Dart, a client of The Wilbert Group. Journalists from GlobeSt.com, Site Selection, France Publications, PERE and Candy's Dirt attended the trip.
In October, Cayman 27 interviewed Gary Gibbs, executive manager of DECCO Ltd., and aired a story that provides a good update on construction of the resort. Click here to view that report.
Look for updates on the resort development soon. For now, I'll share several photos.
(CRE_Xtra) - CRE is hot right now, and it's starting to get the additional media coverage the industry deserves. The increased coverage itself also could use some review. So, we're launching CRE Xtra on Skyline Views. Here's the inaugural post of CRE_Xtra - Read All About It!
1) What if a top industry group in commercial real estate helds its big annual conference in your town and practically no one covered it? That's what happened last week when the city of Atlanta hosted REIT World, the show of the year for the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trust (NAREIT). We're still holding out hope that some coverage will pop up.
The event featured so many CRE CEOs that it would have been like a field day for a commercial real estate reporter. And new Atlanta business royalty PulteGroup CEO Richard Dugas made an appearance on the panel. I know the trade press made the trip because I had dinner at The Optimist with former boss Ben Johsnon, who serves as managing director and editor-in-chiefof Real Assets Adviser from Institutional Real Estate, Inc. Lucky for us, NAREIT itself provides very good coverage of its event here under "HEADLINES".
2) Atlanta developer Jim Borders some times gets some flak from snarky would-be architects who charge that the design of his SkyHouse apartment towers appears too cookie-cutter. But on Saturday, I was struck by the presence SkyHouse Midtown had, standing tall next to (optical illusion) One Atlantic Center, often declared Atlanta's best-looking office tower. The aprtment tower held up pretty well when juxaposed with the Johnson/Burgee Architects classic pinstripe suit design.
3) It's cool to see Atlanta REIT Cousins Properties team up again with Hines to develop an office tower - this one in Dallas. The pair teamed to produce 191 Peachtree in downtown Atlanta, where Cousins now has its offices after years in Cobb County.
3) Driving by the 3630 Peachtree office tower this morning (yes, the one with the Ritz-Carlton Residences), I am reminded about the lack of coverage of its sale to Hetiman at a record price earlier this year. I can find zero full-length stories about Heitman buying the building in the mainstream media. Maybe it's because Bisnow Atlanta broke the story. According to Bisnow, 3630 Peachtree did fetch a Buckhead record of $380 per square foot. Of course, had I been able to sneak into REIT World, I could have asked Tim Pire, a panelist and Heitman owner, all about it.
Now that's we've come full circle, we conclude CRE_Xtra.
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