September 2009

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Wooden Horse News (July 12) reported, Car and Driver and Road & Track have now been re-organized by owner Hachette Filipacchi under the umbrella Jumpstart Automotive Group, named for the vertical online ad network that Hachette bought in 2007 for $84 million. Buried in the article about this reorganization in Mediaweek.com is some interesting news about these two magazines. First, they will upgrade their paper stock. Second, the automotive news, which has played such a big part for both magazines, will be mostly moved online whereas print will feature more content-rich material. In addition, both magazines will relaunch their websites this summer. Although this reorganization follows the lead of Hachette’s other magazines, pundits speculate whether the publisher is preparing to sell them.”

Autowriters.com: The Road Ahead: September 2009

Photo By: Keith Syvinski

Onine Media Daily reports, “new research from social media platform Wetpaint and digital consulting firm Altimeter Group found that companies with the highest levels of social media activity on average increased revenues by 18% in the last 12 months, while the least active saw sales drop 6% over that period.” Starbucks and Dell were winners. No word on car companies but that, reportedly, is available at www.engagementdb.com.

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Eric Killorin has published the first issue of the Car Pub Insider blog which he says, “gathers, researches, analyzes, and comments on the unprecedented challenges facing our industry” . . . Race Fan Radio has introduced Next Level, a new 60-minute interactive show devoted to young, up-and-coming racers. To learn more, check www.raceFanRadio.com. To book someone for the show call 877-596-7223 or email nextlevel@racefanradio.com.

New to AWCOM is the more than 50 hybrid related blogs and websites, http://www.hybridkingdom.com. According to Jeff Carey, monarch of this kingdom, “Rather than build one website/blog to write about all aspects of hybrid-electric vehicles, we are building specialized niche sites for hybrid SUVs, hybrid cars, hybrid trucks, the 3rd generation Prius, and more. The most popular of them currently is www.HybridSUV.com.  . . . Another new and unusual blog brought to AWCOM’s attention is http://fabulavir.com authored by John Walker who says it is an “Experimental fiction concerning the life of a surviving identical twin who inherits an Oldsmobile 442 and slowly becomes the man his brother might have been while coming to terms with death.” . . . Yet another Blog new to AWCOM is The Cultural Blog Garage, “a social site for those whose common bond is a passion for all things combustion. It meets at the cross streets of automobiles and culture.”

USA Today has a number of mobile editions in the works. “Company officials forecast a huge market for mobile readers in the near future,” according to Media Daily News. . . . The Rocky Mountain Independent is a news Web site serving residents of Denver and surrounding area. It is staffed by former editors of the shuttered Rocky Mountain News. Steve Foster, Cindy House and John Moore are co-editors. For more information, check www.rockymountainindependent.com.

A chance glance at a pithy thought printed on a T-shirt took Huffington Post blogger Schuyler Brown through a door to the future and “The Golden Age of PR.” The phrase: “Nothing Is More Abstract Than Reality,” brought Brown a vision of “what’s changing as we enter the wild west of information
dissemination is that the concept of journalistic integrity has nearly disappeared and concepts like ’the truth’ and ‘reality’ have become so abstract as to be meaningless.”

Autowriters.com: The Road Ahead: September 2009


Photo By: Cheryl Leinonen

Reduced ad budgets (down $1.7 billon in auto advertising alone during the first half of the year) has freed funding for actual and virtual consumer interactions, clever spins and artful image-building event marketing to move product and ease our existential discontent with “old realities.” Diana Verde Nieto, writing for Media Post Publications, says, the new reality involves, “taking the message of a brand and using it to produce entertainment that consumers are interested in and want to engage with. By producing these new entertainment experiences brands gain significant publicity.”

Current examples, Buick’s “Art of Taste” events in several cities in conjunction with Uptown Magazine that combine music, culinary arts and entertainment to showcase the 2010 LaCrosse for the magazine’s affluent African-American audience, Scion’s sending an art collection on tour and then auctioning if off for charity, Audi’s “Youth Mobile 2030 Los Angeles Design Challenge”, Ford’s “You Speak Green” Facebook promotion and B.F. Goodrich’s “Nation of Go” traveling road show and multi-platform interactive tie-ins.

Frank Rich offers a more somber vision of the road ahead in The New York Times (Is Obama Punking Us?) when he writes, “What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sale of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.” As an example of the latter, Rich offered his paper’s report that the corporate bosses of MSNBC and Fox News sanctioned an agreement to tone down the on-air war between their respective cable stars. Rich said the report, “fed legitimate suspicions on the left and the right that even their loudest public voices can be silenced if the business interests of the real American elite decree it.”

A questionable prospect for auto journalists: knowingly or not, feeding fantasy as reality to abet the financial interests of their employer. Tom Kelley provides one answer in this month’s Tom-Tom: become truly expert in one or two areas. This viewpoint is supported by a recent comment by Alan Press, senior marketing vice president for the very successful publication, The Economist, “There is a myth that people are looking for sound-bites and celebrity…The reality is that there is a growing demand among the educated for intelligent news, analysis and entertainment that challenges, amuses and informs.” (Quoted in Wooden Horse News, Sept. 1)

Autowriters.com Autowriters Spotlight: Harold Gunn

Harold Gunn

Harold Gunn is a life long car nut who is in his third term as President of the Texas Auto Writers Association. Taught tools by his Dad, at age 14 he rebuilt his first car, a ’48 Ford convertible, from a clunker to a driver.

Through the years he’s owned some pretty impressive iron including a ’59 Ferrari Testa Rossa that he foolishly sold in 1969 and has regretted it ever since. In the late sixties he began performing in radio and television commercials. Shortly thereafter he formed a production / advertising/public relations company that is still operating. Gunn began regular radio and television
programming in 1972 and has not been off the air since.

For seventeen years he has been producer/host of the country’s number one syndicated outdoors radio program that includes a vehicle feature, Texas Outdoor News. Eight years ago he was asked to produce an automotive television show and that prompted him to create the syndicated radio program, The Automotive Reporter, which he has produced and co-hosted for seven years.

His automotive background goes from drag racing in the early 60′s to head of public relations for Texas World Speedway, and director of public relations and promotions for motorsports events in Houston’s Astrodome for fifteen years. As to his opinion of the state of the automotive industry Gunn says, “I see things improving and feel we automotive journalists can help. American manufacturers are building their best vehicles in history, but the public’s perception has not caught up with the reality. We need to promote the positives. The industry has faired better in Texas than most parts of the country because our love affair with cars and trucks is genetic and contagious.”

As an award winning broadcaster and journalist, Gunn is most proud of being named a Pioneer of Broadcasting by the Texas Association of Broadcasters and this November he is being inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

Tom Kelley is a freelance auto journalist specializing in trucks. He is founder of the Southeast Automotive Media Organization and Executive Director of the Truck Writers of  North America.
Reach him at:
tom.kelley@deadlinefactory.com


 Auto Journalism 3.0 – Specialization In The Digital Age

Autowriters.com Tom-Tom: Tom Kelley

Tom Kelley

“I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.” – Agatha Christie

Earlier this year, we took a look at the “How” of Journalism 3.0, examining the delivery mechanism and how the new structural paradigm compares to the old. In this installment, we’ll take a look at “What” one should consider covering as automotive media evolves.

As a second-generation automotive journalist who’s about to round the half-century curve, I’ve had the unique  opportunity to follow the highs and lows of our craft almost since the time it became a recognized subset of journalism.

During what my father sometimes referred to as “the bygone era of byzantine opulence in automotive public relations,” there were rare occasions when not just spouses were invited along to a preview, but offspring of nearly all ages were welcomed as well. While the adults were inside feasting on prime rib and being entertained with live music, my fellow rug-rats and I were outside flogging brand-appropriate go-karts around the parking lot, getting our fill of soda, hot dogs and popcorn.

Although the fog of time may have impaired my memory regarding all of the specifics, the relatively unchanged capacity of some event venues backs up my estimation that the mainstream automotive press corp numbered only in the dozens back in the auto industry’s glory days of the 1960s. If one adds in the members of the “enthusiast” and motorsports press of that era, the total number might have passed the 200 mark, but only barely so.

But then as the baby boomers came of car-buying age, the auto industry and its press corp grew exponentially over the next few decades, to the point where recent auto show statistics quote press registrations in the range of 3,000 to 4,000, not including many of the bloggers and new-media attendees.

Until recently, virtually every metro area in the U.S. with a population of a few hundred thousand or more was supporting a daily newspaper, and with it, their own dedicated autowriter riding herd on no less than a weekly auto section.

Unfortunately, those at the helm of many newspaper organizations confused their actual product with the idea that they were primarily in the business of printing on paper, secondarily acting as pundits outside the narrow constraints of the op-ed pages, and on a barely tertiary basis, serving only a portion of their readers with hard news and useful information. The inevitable result of this market blindness is that many mid-sized daily newspapers, along with a few of their big-city brethren, are currently heading the way of the buggy-whip.

With the demise of a significant portion of the newspaper business, a substantial numbers of auto journalists, hundreds maybe, find themselves looking for a new outlet to distribute their sage words of automotive wisdom. When these ex- or soon to be ex-newspaper auto journalists were “the” car guy at their paper, they had no choice but to be generalists, covering all things automotive, because nobody else at their paper had the knowledge or connections to cover the topic.

When the newspaper business was at its peak, there was a market for several hundred automotive generalists in the U.S. But now that the scope of an automotive media outlet is no longer limited to the reach of the local auto dealers, the market for generalists is drying up, just as many automotive generalists are out looking for a new home.

The obvious answer, of course, is to specialize. Not within one specific media format, and not to the exclusion of all else automotive, but to become truly expert in one, or just a small number of automotive topic areas.

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