Williams takes a bulb of truth and grows it into a mutant stalk. The simple truth about newspaper car reviews is that 95 percent of the reporting in the vast majority of them (sometimes 100 percent) could come without ever driving the car. By bleating that TTAC is better because it’s purer than thou, Williams is being aggressively ignorant—maybe from inexperience, I don’t know him. I’ve just read some of the TTAC reviews. You could fill many issues of autowriters.com with examples of horrible, inaccurate TTAC autojournalism that he thinks is clever and truthful—and I’d cite them if there were room here. They serve no more purpose for consumers, in fact less, than the shallow non-critical newspaper reviews he trashes.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
The Road Ahead: May 2008
In this news ecosystem newsrooms will be organized around topics or tags (instead of sections). Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. It may not be the editor or reporter who gathers all these sources, it could just as well be the reader creating his own story.
Across the Finish Line: May 2008
Bob Storck wrote an admirable tribute to prolific racing writer William Neely who died in North Carolina March 25 from complications after heart surgery. Among his 19 books was Stand On It which introduced the fictional character Stroker Ace, subsequently brought to film life by actor Burt Reynolds. “Humpy” Wheeler who was Neely’s competition when… Continue Reading
Lane Changes: May 2008
Richard Saxton, long time business news reporter for radio in the Los Angeles area has launched a new blog for Edmunds.com’s Car Stock Exchange. He describes it: “My blog is focused on news that relates to new vehicles which have corresponding shares that trade on the Car Stock Exchange, a fantasy game where traders buy, sell and sell short shares with $1,000,000 in play money with the goal of earning more than their peers by not only predicting stock action but first six month sales of new vehicles.”
Pit Notes: May 2008
Warren Brown writing in the Washington Post about the reality gap between what we see and what we get, “What we see in TV commercials and read in zoom-zoom product reviews is mostly fantasy. Some of us might have the wherewithal to buy a super-performance car. But hardly any of us driving in metropolitan America will have the opportunity to exploit its full potential.”