June 2009

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Road Signs 06-2009

June 12, 2009 in Road Signs by Glenn Campbell | No comments

Amazon has introduced a large-screen Kindle DX suitable for reading newspapers, text books and other large-format print. However, Dave Morgan, writing in MediaPost (May 7) thinks it will not become popular with newspaper publishers because, Amazon, he says, is asking for 70% of the revenue generated from subscriptions delivered to Kindle devices. . . . The Denver Post is creeping along a new road, installing printers in a few dozen homes. They’ve tried it in a Denver hotel. The paper pays for the print and ink and the printer manufacturer sells the device for a deep discount recouped over time while the paper makes money on the targeted advertising the system facilitates.

The Tucson Citizen is the fifth large regional newspaper to close its print edition this year. It will be online only. . . . Daniel Lyon is quoted in The Immediate Network’s Media Digest as writing in Newsweek, “Newspapers are dead. When you ask people running these companies what they are going to do, you get nothing. Writing is now worth zero. The value of what we do is worth zero.” . . . Michael Wolf, writing for Newser, said, “Newspapers stopped working a long time ago and a better means of doing their job is readily available. Who wouldn’t want their news delivered in a form that was searchable, saveable, resendable. Which you can talk back to, which is linked to other relevant news, which allows you to read as lightly or as deeply as you wanted to and combines text, pictures and video?” . . . Arianna Huffington reminds in her Huffington Post “the future of journalism is not dependent upon the future of newspapers.” She says the pay walls protecting content are down and journalism must rely on search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation support to go forward.

A nice thought but relying on the high morals of citizen journalists or the self-correcting nature of web postings a la Wikipedia is risky. Great journalism costs says Mitch Ratcliffe. He lays it out in a detailed Rational Rant for the ZD Net. He says, “I think the economics of journalism and ethics are deeply related and we tend to view them separately, emphasizing the dying channels for distribution at the expense of understanding the net loss of reporting.” He puts the cost of a great journalist at about $180,000 a year regardless of how delivered and irrespective of IT, telecom and office space. Many an auto journalist would settle for that.

Across the Finish Line-June 2009

June 12, 2009 in Across the Finish Line by Glenn Campbell | No comments

Bob Sinclair, retired popular auto executive, most recently as head of SAAB in the U.S.

The Road Ahead 06-2009

June 9, 2009 in Road Ahead by Glenn Campbell | 1 comment

In the world of content, technology and people he writes and consults about, pundit John Blossom sees a Content Nation. It is growing rapidly. When he wrote a book by that title a few months ago his Content Nation had a population of 73,000,000. In his weekly www.Shore.com Enewsletter, Blossom said recently that today it is easily 100,000 000 people who “use social media to seriously influence others.”

AWCom is not sure if that figure includes all the persons in the world already connected to the web (Blossom says there is a huge market of 5 billion people who are not), but those who are will help generate more data by individuals in 2009 than in the history of mankind through 2008. Global Information Overload - Photo by Jay LopezThat’s according to Andreas Weigend, writing about The Social Data Revolution(s) for Now, New, Next, The Monitor Talent Group Blog.

Obviously, that staggering amount of data needs to be sorted, edited, packaged and purveyed in chunks easy to assimilate, if at all. It is less daunting a task for matters automotive – Google only has 219,000,000 entries for automotive ;-)   -  as of this writing. That’s where auto journalists come in, except increasingly they are being pushed to the web where the good, bad and indifferent are mixed in a growing profusion of auto sites and blogs and the multitude of sources and torrent of words dilute the perceived (and dollar) value of a writer’s words (see Road Signs).

Building on that is the common vision that audiences (readers, listeners or viewers) will congregate and interact around shared interests, rather than physical locations.  This leaves open the possibility of people divided and isolated in camps according to their predilections, as in current divisive talk radio.

One interesting suggestion for dealing with the problem of voluminous undifferentiated data comes from a communications consultant in England. Heidi Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer, Heidi Sinclair & Co., notes in Media Post that many journalists have become media brands. Among them Arianna Huffington, Maria Bartiromo, Fareed Zakaria and Nicholas Kristof. She asks, who wouldn’t go to a sports site sponsored by Nike? And who would have the money and the motivation to produce a reliable quality sports site? Events sponsored by competing sportswear brands might suffer but that wouldn’t be the case if GEICO or All-State Insurance sponsored an all-inclusive consumer auto site. They, too, would have the money and the motive to provide drivers of all cars with a quality experience from great writing and excellent art to complete specs and reliable reviews.

On the other hand, those that bemoan the incursions of the web, (see Talk Back) can take heart in a recent survey that shows 90 per cent of the “tweeting” on Twitter is done by just 10 per cent of its members. And, Wooden Horse News reports that research by analysts at Knowledge Networks leads them to conclude “Facebook, Twitter and others of that genre have failed to become much of a marketing weapon and likely never will.”

The Tom-Tom Gary Grant

June 9, 2009 in The Tom-Tom by AWcom Staff | 2 comments

Gary Grant speaks up for the new media in this month’s Tom-Tom. He grew up around auto racing and spent 23 years on the retail and repair side of the industry. His automotive media work began in Toronto in 2002 as radio show’s Toronto guest host. He began TheGarageblog.com in 2005. 

Why Traditional Print Media Sucks

“A few months ago, a colleague mentioned that he wanted to introduce me to a friend who’s a big fan of the magazine, and a real car/life enthusiast. I’ve heard this offer before — that person is usually a longtime reader who just wants to talk about his favorite old cars — so I politely dismissed the request. And besides, he lives in Chicago, far away from Los Angeles, even farther for someone who hates the cold. No chance. “  Sam Mitani in the May 2009 issue of Road and Track

The rise of New Media content versus the fall of Traditional Print media has been a hotly contested topic anywhere writers congregate. Not only are TP jobs evaporating but there are newcomers of all sorts who are stealing the thunder away from many of the old boy’s club.

The above statement by a respected member of the TP community exemplifies the reason the old boy’s clubs are falling apart. Strangely, Mitani is a digital savvy guy who seems to know his way around the web so I was rather taken aback by the comment.

Gary Grant

Gary Grant

A huge key to the success of NM is the transparency of the medium. Readers are encouraged to respond and interact. Writers, publishers and videographers will respond in person to a reader’s request. Most will go out of their way to actually meet up with readers if location permits because by building a real world community alongside the virtual one builds brand loyalty.

Most NM writers must work very hard and commit to years of work before they are taken seriously and even still are often shunned by the old guard. While some of the NM folks have followed the semi traditional route of going to journalism school and taking the more accommodating route of writing online, many of us actually have real industry and motorsports backgrounds. You could even say that some of us are automotive experts who also happen to write.  How many TP guys can say the same?

TP types often point to the lack of an editor. Poppycock! Pick up the local newspaper. Heck, pick up Road and Track. The quantity of typos is frightful. Recently I spent some time with the chief editor of one of the top NM automotive outlets and I can say first hand that every line of content is scrutinized before the post button is pressed. As the publisher of a smaller blog, I must admit that I self edit and do my best to correct what few small mistakes my writers make.

The big question here is how do Mitani and R & T get off thinking they are above meeting the people? They print 700,000 which they somehow manipulate into 5.5 million readers. Gawker media advertises that www.Jalopnik.com serves 2.2 million unique visits monthly which equates to roughly 21.2 million page views. Those are real eyeballs, not a guess as to how many people picked up a copy in the doctor’s office. The staff at Jalopnik interact with their readers at every chance they get. They are not alone, as most NM outlets make a point of getting to know their readers while Mitani openly admits to rebuffing a loyal reader!

Until TP manages to wrap their collective heads around the importance of building a real community alongside the virtual community, NM will continue to steal readers. Along with those readers come the ever important advertisers. I would imagine it is tough to fire up a printing press without advertising dollars!

Autowriters Spotlight – Camilo Alfaro

June 9, 2009 in Autowriters Spotlight by Glenn Campbell | 1 comment

Crossing the line between advertising and editorial can work sometimes. Camilo Alfaro is a case in point ten years in the making. He produces auto sections for 48 newspapers reaching two thirds of the nation’s Hispanic population.

Autowriters.com Autowriters Spotlight: Camila Alfaro

Camilo Alfaro

Starting as an ad rep for Chicago’s LaRaza newspaper’s automotive department after graduating Michigan State University with a degree in advertising and a minor in Spanish, he soon learned, “It wasn’t easy selling automotive ads to a dealer prior to the Census. Their idea of Hispanics was that they all washed dishes in the back of a restaurant or mowed lawns for a living, so a lot of educating had to be done back then.”

He also learned that the auto interests of the paper’s readers were underserved editorially. And, that car makers were open to reaching the growing Hispanic market, which was at 11 percent of the population then and growing. “I asked some manufacturers for cars and suddenly we had a column,” he recalls. His writing and producing an auto section caused a lot of drama in the news room but, fortunately, he says, the publisher shared his vision.

After several years at La Raza, Alfaro worked at Automundo Magazine. He became one of a few bilingual auto writers and continued his career with the Sun-Times News Group (STNG). As automotive editor at STNG’s Pioneer Press headquarters for their suburban division, Alfaro was responsible for a 12-24-page weekly automotive supplement serving 50 plus suburban newspapers. Providing this volume of content for 75 percent of STNG’s publications wasn’t an easy task, but he assembled an outstanding team of writers to get the job done: Al Vinikour, Ed Noble, Jeff Taylor and Kirk Bell all worked with him. Alfaro also helped launch Chic-Auto, a high-end, glossy magazine that was inserted into the Pioneer Press and the Chicago Sun-Times.

His work for STNG brought him an offer he could not refuse: automotive editor for impreMedia’s umbrella of 24 Spanish-language print/portal publications in the nation’s top ten markets. Among them: La Opinion Los Angeles, El Diario NYC and La Raza Chicago.

With the economy’s downturn, Alfaro saw an opportunity to create www.Autoproyecto.com, a complete Spanish-language automotive content source for publications serving the nation’s 28 million Hispanic and international outlets, as well. It makes the economies of scale available weekly to 48 print/portal publications nationally, including impreMedia, with a combined weekly circulation of 5,375,562 – almost three times USA Today’s, he proudly notes. Publications serving the nation’s largest minority population (now at 15 percent) and largest second language group with an estimated purchasing power of $951 billion, are growing. Eighty two percent of the respondents to a recent survey in the five states with the highest Hispanic population say they read Hispanic publications regularly and over half of them are under age 35 – a favored demographic for car makers.

To supply quality weekly content in volume, Alfaro, as he did with the Sun-Times, has assembled an outstanding team of writers: Carlos Guzman, Jorge Covarrubias, Ignacio Demaria and Jaime Florez. “ Working with these guys makes this enormous task easy. I think when you do what you love, everything becomes easier.” Alfaro says.

Recently Alfaro has expanded to broadcast. He talks about the week’s latest auto news every Sunday on Jaime Florez’s ESPN Deportes Radio show, “Ruedas ESPN.” The show is heard in the nation’s ten largest markets from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (EST) and also on Sirius satellite radio channel 91.