Crain's New York Business'

"Crain's Insider newsletter will be turned into an online blog that offers news on the business of politics during the day," Crain's announced. Unlike the newsletter, which cost a separate fee, blog access will be included with a Crain's subscription.

If the format is reminiscent of City and State's old Notebook blog, well, the writing may be as well. Crain's reporters Andy Hawkins and Chris Bragg are both former City and State staffers. "The city's hundreds of thousands of business owners, executives and professionals will need these stories more than ever as Mayor Michael Bloomberg completes his final 15 months in office and the people of New York choose his successor. The mission of the new Crain's Insider blog is to deliver that 'insider' coverage–as only Crain's New York Business can–to the city's entire business community,"  the magazine's editor Glenn Coleman said in a press release.

The blog will launch on Monday, October 15 and the last newsletter will go out the previous Friday.

The metro-focused business newsletter has discovered the future, and the future is a blog.

Note: The post has been corrected. We mistakenly said that Crain's Insider newsletter is sent out in the afternoon. In fact, it is emailed first thing in the morning.

Why is CBRE so dominant? Matt Van Buren, CBRE's executive managing director, enlightened us.

"I don't think the secret is all that mysterious, I really don't," he said. "It all comes down to, A, Do you have better talent? We think we do. And, B, Do you keep your eye on the ball? And keeping your eye on the ball means eliminating all distractions and giving clients really good results."

Last year, Jimmy Kuhn, president of rival brokerage Newmark Knight Frank, compared CBRE to the Yankees and Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE's archrival, to the Boston Red Sox. America's favorite pastime is also commercial real estate's favorite analogy.

To borrow a phrase, CBRE's batting average this year was impressive. The brokerage claimed the top four positions in the top-50 list, representing the landlord, the tenant or both. It also had a hand in eight of the top 10 leasing deals, and 23 of the top 50. By comparison, Cushman snagged 13 of the top 50 deals, Newmark Knight Frank got nine, and Jones Lang LaSalle and Studley each took seven.

CBRE's 23 top deals totaled about 3.55 million square feet. It's a dramatic improvement over 2009's dismal mid-year total of 1.75 million square feet, but it's not quite back up to the pre-Lehman 2008 mid-year figure of 4.9 million. Cushman's 13 leasing deals this year totaled 1.55 million square feet, better than last year's mid-year figure of 892,284, but, likewise, not as impressive as 2008's mid-year total of 1.9 million.

To New York City commercial brokerages: Pretend you're playing baseball, and you might have a shot at toppling the CBRE kingdom (but probably not).

"We do have a very powerful lineup of brokers in New York that are unusually resourceful," Mr. Van Buren said.

walden@observer.com