News-Record.com

Let's all agree to this: The success of the International Home Funishings Market is vital to the region and state. It provides business and jobs and a marketplace.

So why, I've been asked, do we write stories now that reflect poorly on it? Why would we quote now an industry analyst as saying that the furniture "business has been lackluster."? Why would we write now about price gouging by hotels?

Notice that I used the word "now" in each of those questions. The issue isn't so much that we write the stories but that we write them while the 70,000 industry folks are in town. Judy Mendenhall, president of the High Point International Home Furnishings Market Authority, first raised the point to me in a phone call. Since then, I've discussed it with an e-mail group that includes Mendenhall and Perry Keziah, a prominent High Point lawyer (and newspaper enjoyer and provocateur).

They acknowledge that visitors know that room rates go up during market week. But they believe that publicizing that fact rubs salt in the wounds. Personally, I think the salt gets rubbed when the visitors check-in and check-out. (We haven't posted this story because we haven't written it yet.)

But the larger point is the desire to manage the flow of news and information. It's not an unusual request. But for us to write about hotel rates after they have gone up and are back to normal is silly. Imagine if we decided not to write about $2.25 per gallon gas prices until they dropped back below $2. Readers not only wouldn't be served, they'd think we were idiots. (To save you the comment time, I know where some of you are on this issue already.)

The other suggestion is that by printing stories that might reflect negatively on the market, we're against High Point and we're hurting the region. Hardly. Readers expect us to print relevant information when we know it. They expect us to let the chips fall where they may. It isn't our business to make a determination on how we can help or hurt an institution. It's our business to write what we know. When citizens are informed, they can make intelligent judgments.

Enough with the high-church rhetoric. We're not the only ones talking about these sorts of issues. The business editor of Furniture/Today wrote a blog post last month about price gouging, although it ran before the visitors arrived. And the irrepressible Ivan Cutler of Inside Furniture says: "An excited sales representative declaring his productive market tells a colleague that his first day was "fantastic," with a detailed explanation of all the liquidators buying his company's merchandise. What does this say about the state of the industry?"

None of this is new. The mayor of High Point wrote protesting our reporting of the Las Vegas market back in 2001 during High Point market week. And Perry Keziah sent me a photocopy of the May 3, 1981, letters to the editor column in the Greensboro Daily News, which was filled with letter protesting stories about an effort by Dallas to start a market. Here's what the editor said at that time:

"The Daily News covers furniture for its regular subscribers and for others in the industry, and it commonly publishes major articles of interest during the market. It is the time when people -- ordinary citizens as well as buyers -- are most interested in the subject. The Dallas threat was perceived and widely discussed at the market well before the Daily News wrote about it."

Sounds familiar.

Saturday update: Here's the story on hotel room rates.