Monday Morning: When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough... Advertise.

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Good morning. News item: The OC Register reports pending sales of new homes in California were down 37 percent on an annual basis in March. As the housing slump continues, the National Association of Realtors is increasing its advertising spending (‘It’s a Great Time to Buy or Sell a Home’) by 60% this year, to $40 million.

Will the subprime mess climb up the credit scale? If it does, Alt-A mortgages are next, and there is strong enterprise reporting here by the Register’s mortgage expert, Mathew Padilla, pointing to looming troubles in the Alt-A mortgage category.

The high preists of journalism often criticize blogs as ‘not really journalism,’ much the same way country club golfers look down on duffers who populate the muni courses. Personally, I have seen some excellent journalism -- not just aggregation -- on the housing bubble blogs, and some lousy reportage (Jayson Blair anyone?) in the papers. FreeErisa.com makes the case here for the reliabilty of housing bubble blogs, pointing out, ‘The bloggers are more factual than theoretical, at a time when many economists and analysts are missing or sugar-coating critical facts.’

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