Flipboard Publisher Spotlight
Promotional interview for The New York Times, 2015
Real Estate/Neighborhood Magazines: What You Get For…, International House Hunting and Life in Brooklyn
Interviewee: Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Real Estate Products
How do you think where we choose to live impacts our lives? Be it mood, behavior or lifestyle?
I believe that homeownership is at the heart of families, cultures and communities, and I believe that where you live is closely, powerfully tied to the idea of memory. Where you grew up. Where you lived when you were a student. That first real place of your own. Where you live really shapes and defines all of those things.
What was your favorite home? Where was it and why did you love it?
I really love my current home, the first my (now) wife and I bought together. We’ve lived there for almost 10 years. Even though I work in Manhattan, I live about 45 minutes’ train ride outside of the city in rural New Jersey, and it strikes a great balance between the calm of the countryside at night and on the weekends, and the frenetic pace of working for a large organization in New York. I love enjoying the wood burning fireplace on a Sunday morning with a coffee. Simply put, it’s our home. We now have a daughter, two cats and a dog, and I couldn’t think of a better place for that to happen.
How has your experience in real estate at the Corcoran group, where you worked before The Times, translated to your work at the publication?
A large focus of my digital work on the brokerage side involved answering the questions beyond the four walls of the apartment a user might be interested in. What does it feel like to live there? What should I avoid? Where are some great places to hang out near here with my friends? At The Times, we are connecting the dots between what someone is searching for, the questions they have and the voice of The Times newsroom.
What do you hope to accomplish through the Flipboard Magazines, particularly those focused on real estate?
We’re always interested in connecting with readers who simply love browsing beautiful properties and learning about neighborhoods, and that process doesn’t always have to happen on our own platforms. We connect with these readers in enormous volume on social platforms, but with Flipboard we’re able to experiment with how to group different types of content quickly, get reader feedback and understand engagement, and then build those learnings back into our main real estate products.
Read The New York Times’ Flipboard Magazines on real estate below and read all of their magazines on news, travel and the arts here.
