DOWN IN THE TRENCHES

When it comes to real estate, few things slip Kenneth Harney's attention. And that, in turn, gets the attention of readers.

Exhibit A is this recent column: "With all the dismal reports about the home real estate market," Harney began, "don't lose track of something critically important: Mortgage interest rates have been falling quietly but steadily for weeks and are now at their lowest level in half a year, barely a percentage point above 40-year lows." Read it all here.

That's not the type of news most people interested in real estate have been getting of late. But it's the type of news that makes Ken's column -- The Nation's Housing -- a must-read for anyone seriously following this vital segment of the nation's economy.

Harney's column has been a Writers Group fixture for more than 25 years -- "service journalism" before it was called that. His knowledge of his subject is encyclopedic, but it is his reporting that sets the column apart. Ken doesn't just give you his opinion about real estate, he gives you the facts as he has been able to determine them.

So in the midst of report after report about a collapsing nationwide real estate market -- and the ensuing speculation about what such a crash could do to the economy -- Harney's aforementioned column was something of a bombshell. I asked Ken about the reaction.

"I wrote the column questioning the 'housing bust' because I had felt for some time that too much was being made -- in the press, on TV and elsewhere -- of what clearly was a natural, end-of-cycle corrective downturn, not a reason for panic," he said.

"The piece generated a fair amount of reaction by e-mail -- not all favorable, to put it mildly.  One reader who runs some sort of  'housing bust' blog and apparently is threatened by any suggestion that a bust is not at hand wrote to me: 'Ken, how long do you think people will keep believing your (expletive deleted.)? Good luck on your job search. You are toast.' Others -- especially realty agents, not surprisingly -- had much nicer things. 'Thank you thank you thank you,' wrote one agent from Los Angeles, 'finally someone in the press has gotten it right.'  So it goes in the housing boom/housing bust trenches."

In the news business, we usually say that if reaction is running 50-50 for and against our reporting, we must be doing something right. In Ken Harney's case, I'd say our man in the trenches again got your attention.

CONGRATULATIONS

Our neighbors in The Washington Post's Style section have reason to celebrate. The always edgy section was named the winner in General Excellence in the University of Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards for 2006. Our colleague Gene Weingarten, whose Below the Beltway column is syndicated by The Writers Group, won in the category of Multicultural Journalism.

You can see all the winners here (hat tip, Romenesko).

OBAMATHON

Just about a week until Americans vote in the midterm election, with much on the line. So what bit of election news got a lot of attention as the candidates entered the stretch? Why, the 2008 presidential race, naturally, and the possibility of a certain young senator from Illinois making a run. Richard Cohen, Charles Krauthammer and Ruben Navarrette Jr. offer a little perspective here, here and here. Let the race begin.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

AT YOUR SERVICE

Michelle Singletary and Sally Squires are two Writers Group columnists who have become masters at that word du jour, "interactivity." Both are prime examples of Washington Post journalists "expanding the brand," reaching out to consumers of news in new markets while providing Post readers and their syndicated clients with first-rate and award-winning service journalism.

Which is one way of saying that these writers are journalistic versions of a perpetual motion machine. Want to see how they work?

Here's a typical week for Michelle, author of The Color of Money column that runs twice-weekly in the Business section of The Post and papers nationwide: taping sessions for her TV One show, "Singletary Says," which begins its second season on Sunday, Nov. 5, at 6:30 p.m.; appearances on National Public Radio's "Day to Day" or sitting in for nationally syndicated radio talk show host Clark Howard on NewsTalk 750 WSB in Atlanta; live chats on washingtonpost.com; compiling a newsletter e-mailed to readers; and speaking engagements. She's also published two books, “7 Money Mantras For A Richer Life: How To Live Well With The Money You Have," and “Your Money and Your Man: How You and Prince Charming Can Spend Well and Live Rich.”

Sally, whose Lean Plate Club column runs in The Post's weekly Health section and went into syndication in 2004, has an equally packed schedule. In addition to her live chats, Lean Plate Club newsletter and speaking engagements, she's also become a regular on Washington Post Radio. Recently, as author of the book "Secrets of the Lean Plate Club," she participated in the National Book Festival here in Washington.

"Who would have thought that writing about eating smart and exercising more would result in an invitation to the White House and breakfast with Laura Bush? But that's exactly what happened earlier this month when I got invited to be part of the National Book Festival," Sally e-mailed me. "Mrs. Bush brought this event to the nation's capital six years ago after starting something similar in Texas, when she was first lady there. The Library of Congress and The Washington Post are among the sponsors of the National Book Festival, which draws more than 100,000 people to the National Mall. They come to celebrate books -- and authors, poets and illustrators who write them."

Besides a considerable amount of stamina, writers engaged in this fast-growing specialty of service journalism have to bring something else to the table: a keen knowledge of their subject areas and an ability to click with readers. Michelle Singletary and Sally Squires are standard-bearers.

Both bring a combination of academic background and street smarts to their beats. Michelle has a master's in business management; Sally has a master's in both journalism and nutrition. But it is their real-world perspectives that have allowed so many readers to identify with them.

Michelle, for instance, recently took on what is currently one of the most vexing issues for most American workers covered by health plans at their place of employment: how to choose among the many options -- many of  them less than desirable -- of health insurance now being offered during the period known as open enrollment.

Her columns, Michelle said, "were inspired by a friend who doesn't know what to do and asked me. So I began looking into it for her and I figured if I was having trouble understanding it, so were lots of other people."

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

SIGNE WILKINSON GETS OFFENSIVE!

On Wednesday, October 18, Signe Wilkinson will participate in IQ 2 US's debate program. The motion: Freedom of expression must include the license to offend. Signe will speak for the motion. The evening begins at 6:00 p.m. at the Asia Society and Museum in New York City. For more information, click here.

THE OCTOBER SCARE

The Mark Foley congressional page scandal may or may not be the October surprise that political observers predict every election year. Yet North Korea's claim to having tested a nuclear weapon most certainly has become an October scare that has nothing to do with Halloween and everything to do with concentrating the minds of policymakers long after the votes are counted on Nov. 7.

Other nations have gone nuclear before, India and Pakistan being the most recent. Iran, not exactly the picture of stability in the Middle East, threatens to do so shortly. But as Robert Kaplan points out in the current edition of The Atlantic Monthly, North Korea (or KFR, for Kim Family Regime) may be on its last legs, and what happens when it collapses should alarm us as much as the threat of the KFR having nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, the Kaplan article was written well before Kim Jong Il issued his wake-up call. If the world was only alarmed a few weeks ago, it sure is scared right now.

Ellen Goodman, whose descriptions of her departure from her vacation home in Casco Bay, Maine, have become a yearly staple of her considerable repertoire, sets the tone in a mournful essay that casts the crisis amid the celebration of the cycles of our lives.

"I have lived my whole life with the fearful possibility of nuclear catastrophe," Goodman writes. "I ducked and covered, held my breath during the Cuban missile crisis, felt the chill of the Cold War, and the danger as the nuclear 'club' counted up to eight. We have dodged that catastrophic bullet for so long. Can we dodge it forever? To pay appropriate attention to this apocalyptic danger is to be paralyzed in a nuclear freeze. To ignore it is to whistle in the gathering dark."

David Ignatius, who agrees with Harvard professor Graham Allison that "we are present at the unraveling" of the post-World War II international security order, notes that "we must 'think about the unthinkable' with new urgency."

Jim Hoagland, meanwhile, argues that in this crisis, the Treasury Department's efforts to cut off the money flow to North Korea and also Iran appear to have been a bet worth taking.

"However much its self-imposed isolation might seem to protect it from them, North Korea clearly takes these financial pressures seriously," writes Hoagland. "So must Iran. Squeezing the regime financially is probably the only hope (however forlorn it may turn out to be) of keeping Tehran from going nuclear in a few years."

Too often, I think we in the opinion journalism business have tended to regard Kim Jong Il, his army and camp followers as little more than buffoons, suitable only as bad guys for a James Bond film fantasy.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.