John Keeling: Lazy local media's favorite "expert"
Cory Crow notes that hotel development shill consultant John Keeling has made yet another appearance in the local media, this time in a Chronicle column by Nancy Sarnoff:
Every major convention city has at least three 1,000-room hotels, Keeling said.
"A 1,200-room hotel by itself basically put Houston in the game. Houston is not in position to win the game until they get at least another 1,000-room hotel," he said.
Back to Crow:
Reports like this are paid to drive excitement for the project. The analysts are always encouraged to present the best case scenario. I've previously outlined the tendencies of Keeling's estimates to be on the high side and I don't see any reason that this will change now. As a matter of fact, a search of the Chron archives reveals a pattern of overly optimistic predictions from Keeling as well as a misidentification of several trends pertaining to downtown.
An expert like John Keeling, who has a history of overestimating in his estimates, is hardly proof of case when Millions of Dollars are on the line.
It's well past time that the local media stop citing Keeling uncritically, and start doing some homework.
It's beyond lazy for professional writers with access to tools like Lexis/Nexis and Chronicle archive search tools that actually work nevertheless to refrain from simple research into the accuracy of Mr. Keeling's past projections. If hobby bloggers can do it, surely the pros can give it a try.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/09/08 10:23 PM | Print |
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