Doing anything for 20 years is hard. Your inspirations and motivations change, your tastes evolve. Some relationships blossom, others fall by the wayside. The people who matter change, too – the prime table at the power lunch spot is occupied by someone else.
Yet some things don’t change at all. News is still news. The thrill of a scoop doesn’t go away, nor does the satisfaction you feel after putting out an in-depth story you know will make the market more honest or the adrenaline after a great live interview. Growth is still growth and the audience you serve still gives you hell if you make the slightest misstep. Most importantly, the mantra we’ve built The Real Deal upon hasn’t changed, the lens through which we deliver all our news, analysis, interviews, panels and so much else: readers first. It sounds cliché, but it’s always been our true north and has served us well.
The environment and tools of business change, too. After having stayed largely static for two centuries, publishing has gone through at least four paradigm shifts since we launched in 2003.
Tech advancements are part of what allowed me to become a publisher with some sweat, a laptop and the design software Pagemaker. Armed with just those three things and more than my fair share of stubbornness, a single guy was able to start The Real Deal out of his Brooklyn apartment. Tech is a great equalizer, giving newcomers a shot against the establishment. It’s also an agent of fear: Every technological leap comes with a good chunk of existential doom for an industry, but over time, I like to think it turns into a tool for growth and advancement. At TRD, we don’t resist change, we try to embrace it, and that attitude has allowed us to harness tech and grow in ways that would be impossible otherwise.
A decade from now, my next publisher’s note could very well be written by a bot that understands my intent and voice. Machines first came for our farms, then our factories and now for our white-collar and creative work. It’s hard to grasp how transformative this will be for our cities, where people congregate primarily for jobs, but one Goldman Sachs estimate says that nearly a fifth of our workforce could be rendered obsolete by AI. Think about the real estate implications of that. We certainly are, and will be covering them closely for you.
A milestone anniversary like this one is a time for gratitude. One of the ways the business of media has changed – certainly for us – is that we now rely more on our subscribers than anything else. This independence hasn’t changed our coverage, but it’s allowed us to not be as wounded by irate calls from real estate moguls and advertisers, threatening to ruin us or pull their business after a tough story. Building our future around subscribers has allowed for our growth to compound in ways that were unimaginable, from venturing into new markets to new forms of storytelling. For this, I am grateful.
The saying goes that “journalists should have no friends.” Even though that’s partly true, none of this would’ve been possible without the relationships we’ve forged through the years with our readers, sources, clients, staff and everyone else who made The Real Deal possible. I am grateful for all of the years, ups and downs, challenges, fights and celebrations. I am mostly grateful for people who I’ve had the pleasure of working with, all of them smart, curious and interesting, because that’s what it takes to make something as ambitious as TRD work. I thank you all for these last 20 years.
Thank you!