Real Estate Weekly, the longtime trade publication that chronicled New York real estate for more than 70 years, has quietly disappeared into the dark.
The newspaper’s website has been offline for several months. And the bare-bones printing operation appears to have failed after a series of difficulties.
Chris Hagedorn, publisher of REW and a handful of other small papers, has not made a concerted effort to bring the publications back online, sources said. genuine. He is said to be open to offers for the publication’s assets, but he is not currently soliciting buyers.
The magazine has no editorial staff and has not published any articles since September. In recent years, most of the site’s content has been rebroadcasts of press releases.
“I think it’s a sad day. It was a privilege to work there,” said Linda O’Flanagan, former editor of Real Estate Weekly. “It paved the way for great journalists to go on to even greater fields.”
Hagedorn declined to comment.
Real Estate Weekly was founded in 1955 and bills itself as New York City’s longest-running real estate publication. The newspaper meticulously chronicled New York City’s real estate business, with a keen eye on the dynastic families that dominated the industry at the time. It was founded by Al Hagedorn Jr., uncle of Charles and Chris.
“For some people, this was the bible of New York real estate,” said Roxanne Donovan, former editor of Real Estate Weekly and founder of real estate public relations firm Great Inc. “Every transaction was published in the paper.”
The publication claimed that its weekly print edition had reached 30,000 readers on its now-inactive subscriber page. The annual subscription cost was $49.
Real Estate Weekly, like other magazines, has struggled to adapt to the advent of digital media. Sources say the company never built a digital newsroom. Others said that Chris Hagedorn was not happy to take on the responsibilities of a publisher, such as attending industry events and advertising. This was in contrast to his father Al, who died in 1996 at the age of 83.
Nevertheless, the publication was once an industry information outlet, where traders checked out the latest news and advertised on its pages. It was a training ground for many influential real estate publicists as well as many journalists covering the industry.
Lois Weiss of the New York Post and Conrad Putzier of the Wall Street Journal worked there, as did George Shea of Shea Communications.
“People liked ‘Real Estate Weekly.’ When you worked at Real Estate Weekly, people were happy to see you,” Donovan said. He recalled meeting with Seymour Durst, Bernard Mendike, Charlie Benenson, Aaron Gural, and Rudin.
It existed long before competitors like Bisnow, Commercial Observer, Crain’s New York Business, and The Real Deal arrived.
The Hagedorn family was once ranked as one of the top 200 richest families in the United States by Forbes magazine. The Hagedorn family also owned local newspapers, including the weekly newspaper Town and Village, which covered Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, through a company called Hagedorn Communications.
The company owned its own printing press in New Rochelle and was able to print daily newspapers during the New York Newspaper Strike of the early 1960s when other printing unions went on strike.