I interviewed Matt Waite about his latest project at the St. Petersburg Times, a database application that tracks weekly house sales in Pinellas and Pasco counties, Florida.

Neighborhood Watch Puts Florida Home Sales on the Map

Every paper has to do these kinds of real estate stories once or twice a year: The housing market has gone up, it’s gone down, it stayed the same, etc. It’s not big journalism, but it is important to the community and it takes a lot of time and resources to put together individual stories for different neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Watch not only provides weekly data on the housing market, but includes an instant story for each neighborhood — a computer program analyzes sale trends to generate a short synopsis of a neighborhood’s market.

Published: December 3, 2008

Publication: Publication: PBS MediaShift, a blog that tracks how new media — from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism — are changing society and culture.

Skills: Writing, Interviewing

Medium: Text