Trey Garrison at HousingWire magazine is exceptional at seeing every piece of news through the wide-angle lens of mortgage finance and real estate. Sure he’ll report on Janet Yellen and the Fed‘s tapering tendencies, but he’ll also peg a story to the Super Bowl and show how Denver and Seattle perform against each other…in the housing market. (Pricewise, it’s Seattle that’s more “mile high.”)
But even Garrison had to stretch the regular bounds of his bailiwick to report a recent story he titled Third Prominent Banker Found Dead in Six Days. HousingWire wouldn’t normally cover death in the industry, he writes, but this is “the third prominent banker found dead in his home since Sunday.” It’s hardly a stretch for an enterprising reporter to think there’s a story brewing when people in the industry he covers start hanging themselves and jumping off buildings. It’s almost too bad that Garrison’s such a dedicated and responsible reporter–he can’t take the next imaginative step, and connect these seemingly disparate happenings the way a novelist would. Garrison sounds like he’s a fan of mysteries (“what’s so strange about this…” he writes). And it’s a truism that so many journalists have a novel in the drawer. What if these aren’t suicides, Trey Garrison? With all due sympathy and respect for the families of the departed, what would come of the speculation that these weren’t suicides at all, but something more sinister? Bankers, as someone in Garrison’s position would know better than anyone, have made more than a few enemies lately…
