A friend of mine recently told me that Vallejo, California, is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Even more expensive than New York City, she said.
Now, Vallejo is a fine town, but it’s a middle class city and not even one of the most expensive places to live in California, let alone the country. Home prices are about half as much as nearby San Francisco, so this made no sense.
I told this to my friend, who dutifully sent me a CBS news story explaining how wrong I was. CBS even sent a camera crew to interview surprised residents, who are now worried for their financial survival.
Noelle Waring and Aleksie Von Disterlo live in Vallejo. At first, they were surprised to hear their area costs more to live in than New York but feel it makes sense.
At this rate, Waring and Von Disterlo say they may end up being priced out of California entirely. "We're looking at Montana maybe. It's cheap, it's beautiful. I was even thinking Oregon too."
CBS got all its information here from U.S. News & World Report. They trusted the formerly impressive newsmagazine so much that they didn’t do any journalism besides writing it up, and interviewing a few people so they could put it on television as well.
Here are most expensive listed cities listed:
San Diego
Los Angeles
Honolulu
Miami
Santa Barbara
San Francisco
Salinas
Santa Rosa
San Juan (Puerto Rico)
Vallejo/Fairfield
New York
Looking at that list, here’s what a journalist, or her editor, should’ve been thinking: “Hmm, some of those seem to make sense, but who knew San Diego was so expensive? Wow, crazily-price San Francisco is kind of low, no? Wait, Salinas is a farming community filled with field workers, so how can that be? And Puerto Rico? Ok, you know what … this list is stupid.”
A few minutes of research would’ve shown things to be nonsense. Salinas is 79% Hispanic – including many farm workers – and probably costs less than half that of other California areas. And the average price of a rental in San Juan is $551 per month, which couldn’t rent you a phone booth in New York, even if phone booths still existed. In fact, none of it makes too much sense at all.
In the news world, we call them “listicles” and they’re the junk food of the industry. Easy to digest, but rarely nourishing. Newsrooms pump these out not for their journalistic integrity, but because they're a magnet for clicks. U.S. News has turned ranking colleges, cities, and hospitals into a cash cow.
Still, what gives? U.S. News makes it clear in their description that, “Based on the median gross rent and annual housing costs for mortgage-paying homeowners of each metro area, these cities require the most wealth to live comfortably.”
After digging around in their methodology, I discovered that they weren’t ranking cities by “most expensive” at all, despite the huge headline. Instead, they were calculating how “affordable” the city was for its average resident. They used a combination of costs versus the average income.
So, let’s say, if a large number of low-earning workers migrate into your town, it’s immediately “more expensive.” By contrast, if everyone in Beverly Hills earns enough to comfortably afford their $4 million homes, that city is now more affordable, or as US News would dub it, “less expensive.”
While there’s value to that data, to someone contemplating moving to a new city – as these lists claim to do – that number is completely useless. You want to find out how far your money will go, and this doesn’t help you one whit.
But lists are fun and easy, so you’ll see this one printed all over the country. Here’s just the top few listings from a web search.
I picked on CBS, but the list goes on and on, with dozens of outlets repeating the claims. It’s almost a little scary how quickly nonsense can become fact, with every reporter and editor at every outlet being too dim or too lazy to get it right.
The good news is that Noelle and Aleksie really don’t need to flee to Montana to avoid going broke, although the beauty and minimal carjacking situation in Helena may give it a boost over the Bay Area.
In some ways, though, this story brought back some nostalgia. It was refreshing to see fake news appear not because of hyperactive political bias, hell-bent on getting me to vote the right way, but through sheer incompetence. It made me miss the good old days.
— Ken
There’s been a term for a handsome guy who readily attracts lots of girls, but he may in fact be quite shallow … a chick magnet.
You mentioned in your write-up a magnet for clicks, so in the same vein as the chick magnet, we should just call these saccharine and shallow news stories click magnets, similar to clickbait.
Dumb News= bored journalists, bad mgmt, No incentives for Real journalisim, think reading audience is stupid, & fake News syndrome
Thats Dumb News