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HIGH GEAR MEDIA ANNOUNCES NEW OPEN CONTENT PLATFORM High Gear Media, one of the web’s leading automotive authorities and the publisher of over 70 automotive websites, has opened up its content platform for automotive writers around the web. Writers can now sign in in minutes, submit articles, and have the chance to get their automotive articles seen on the widely read High Gear Media network quickly and easily. Why try us? Here are some reasons to post an article:
Join the conversation. Our network of contributors is growing quickly with automotive media professionals, passionate enthusiasts and everyday users voicing opinions and being seen. High Gear Media gets the web talking about the automotive world in new and exciting ways – by putting its readers at the center of the action. Contribute to the conversation today and see for yourself. High Gear Media is looking forward to starting a new chapter in how journalists, writers, and auto enthusiasts communicate, and invites you to visit us at: http://www.highgearmedia.com/iwanttowrite/ -30- |
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| For More Information: | Hesky Kutscher HighGear Media Inc. Phone: (650) 646-2702 Email: hesky@highgearmedia.com |
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You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.
Google and Microsoft are “content kleptomaniacs” according to News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, as quoted in a report by Media Digest of an interview he gave Sky News in Australia. He also was quoted as saying he would ban search engines from his newspaper websites when he erected pay walls for them. The walls being necessary in his opinion, because there are “not enough advertising dollars to go around and make all web sites profitable.” . . . Google president Eric Schmidt sees future media as super fast, intuitive, largely crowd and social media sourced and advertising based, as reported by Jessica E. Vascellaro in, ironically, the Wall Street Journal Network.
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Photo By: Joakim Buchwald |
For automotive writers it would seem that advertising-based content would be better as long as car dealers and manufacturers pay to promote their products, locally and nationally. The premise being that auto editorial is needed to attract readers to the ads and sustain consumer interest in the products. . . However, Hewlett-Packard lab scientist Bernardo Huberman as quoted in Online Media Daily believes, “The value of information is giving way to individual expression as more people post on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.” He notes, “Our ability to pay attention to things is limited,” so it will become more important to look at ‘propagation of signals’ at social media sites to determine effective marketing strategy.” Which could mean, as AWcom interprets it, every reader an editor, selecting his or her own media input from a vastly expanded range of options.
This is only going to get wider and denser with new apps like www.Ulitzer.com offering “a ‘new media; social journalism platform which revolutionizes how we create, deliver, and consume content on the Web. Ulitzer authors can get started with their first article in a few minutes and may start a new “topic” on any subject or write a story and post it both to their Ulitzer author page and to any existing Ulitzer topic. The network effect of people using Ulitzer to communicate and collaboratively produce and categorize content is disruptive, bypassing traditional media and middlemen. Topics published on Ulitzer range from Greek Isles in the Summer to New Media via Personal Branding and Marketing & Sales.”
But wait, Kurt Cagle, managing editor of XML Today reminds us in Technology News, “The danger here is in failing to recognize that user-generated content does not necessarily just represent true facts, but also contains opinions, distortions, analyses and biased content.” Which brings into question the current popularity of crowd-sourced car reviews being promoted by Ford, Honda, Toyota and others. By becoming our own editors we will have nobody except ourselves to blame for what we get in the way of news and information.
Autowriters.Com invites readers to submit their own Clog
(Online Column). Your reward: a byline and an audience of your peers. All submissions are acknowledged, queued and used at the editor’s discretion.
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
A View From The Edge
In recent installments here at AWcom, we’ve spent a bit of time looking at what’s next in the craft of automotive journalism. Initially, we discussed the physical structure of the information chain, in which the information consumer is rapidly taking over many of the roles of old-media’s top-level managers.
More recently, we tried to make the case that in a rapidly downsizing market for automotive generalists, the answer is specialization (also see footnote #2 below), not to the exclusion of all else automotive, but rather, to expand on one’s foundation of general automotive knowledge by choosing a specific sub-topic area and really drilling down to the point of becoming “the” recognized expert in that niche.
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Tom Kelley |
This next installment was to have been the opening salvo of what would likely be a vigorous debate on which physical elements separate the online practice of journalism from the automotive website of a fan/enthusiast.
However, before I could get to that column, I had the occasion to attend the recent Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas. This year, the two formerly separate shows joined forces to create a single event with impressive attendance growth, especially considering the current state of the economy. This marks my third year of participation, and each year I’ve expanded my knowledge and networks, so this year’s show is clearly an instance of “what happened in Vegas,” shouldn’t be confined to “staying in Vegas.”
Given the number of autowriters from the print realm that have recently re-entered the job search market, and given the foregone conclusion that “new” media is the future of journalism, I found it odd during the first day of the proceedings that I didn’t run into anybody from the autowriting community. Little did I know that it wasn’t just the autowriters from the old media who were conspicuously absent from the event.
On the show’s second day, the opening keynote included a panel discussing “The Death and Rebirth of Journalism.” Moderated by Brian Solis, founder of Silicon Valley PR firm FutureWorks, the panel included Joanna Drake Earl, COO of Current TV; Don Lemon from CNN; NYU Journalism Prof. Jay Rosen; and well-known blogger Hugh Hewitt.
While the entire discussion was quite interesting, and is likely to be fodder for a separate installment in this series, I’m compelled to emphasize an observation that came up midway through the session. A call went out to the room for a show of hands from those who had ever worked as a paid journalist. In a room full of roughly 500 attendees, my hand was among only six or seven that went up in response to the inquiry.
In our own segment of the journalism world, we may be looking at a few hundred people currently looking for work, but if we expand that view to include journalist of all stripes, the number currently in the job market is almost certainly in the thousands.
Again, at this point, the shift to new media is a foregone conclusion, so in a world where thousands of journalists, and as a subset, hundreds of autowriters are looking to write the next chapter in their careers, why weren’t hundreds of old-media journalists, or at least dozens of autowriters attending this event learning how and where to write that next chapter?
John Davis used to wear a red sport coat to press gatherings. A carryover, he says, from the days when television was highlighting its color capability. Or, it could have been a shrewd way of being remembered by PR guys when he called about a car to review for his little known public TV show, MotorWeek. That was 29 years ago and it was the first weekly TV car review in the United States.
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John Davis |
As he saw it, “Pubic television was at the bottom of the food chain when it came to distributing ad dollars and, in those days, press cars.” Now they review about 175 cars a year but still have to hustle for dollars, “Each year we raise enough money for a season, but there is no guarantee that we will be back the next year.” To make that happen Davis now goes to fewer press events and spends more of his time on the road raising money. “We bring in enough money to pay for ourselves and once-in awhile add something to the station’s budget.” Of late, the show has benefited greatly from being carried on Speed TV and online by www.Cars.com, as well as its own www.Motorweek.com
Davis created the show as a companion to the buff magazines that were the prime consumers sources of automotive information at the time. “We weren’t competing with them. We were providing an educated impression of the cars viewers saw on the covers of those magazines. That’s what we still do.” Only they have to target a broader audience. To do so it is designed in components that can be dropped in and most important, they keep it easily understood. “If a viewer says, ‘what was that,’ he can’t go back and read it again. Its on its gone.”
Davis could well lay away his audience with technical jargon – a gear-head as a kid, he graduated North Carolina State as an aerospace engineer – or pontificate on the auto industry and its problems. He also has a business degree from North Carolina University and worked as a research analyst on Wall Street before becoming executive producer of the venerable Wall Street Week TV show. But, he prefers a self-effacing style that tells viewers more of what they want to know than how much he knows. He was able to create the work he really likes because he volunteered at NC State’s campus radio station, rose to director there and then continued to work in commercial radio and TV to pay his way through NCU.
A number of persons who got the their start with Davis at MotorWeek have moved on in the communications business, among them, Craig Singhaus, now in network broadcasting and Lisa Barrow with Chrysler. While year 30 is his first concern, Davis looks beyond and to the new media. He worries that the rush to be first on the Internet may make superficiality the norm and the trust engendered by good magazines and in-depth product reviews may be sacrificed. On the other hand, he acknowledges that once his show was “the new media” and it took a while for it to establish its place in the automotive communications spectrum.
The Emmy® Award-winning show has brought Davis numerous honors and he, in turn, has lent his talent and energies to auto journalism, driving safety and clean air initiatives. But it is not all work. Over those years he has owned and enjoyed a variety of high performance cars, including a vintage Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Corvette and a deTomaso Pantera.
Nice if it is a harbinger of things to come – Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper has “revved up its auto section both online and print,” reports Kristin Laird in Marketing Magazine’s Media News. She quotes the paper’s advertising vice-president, Andrew Saunders, “You’ll be able to find passionate journalism that matches the person’s passion for driving–that’s going to be the key point of difference. Everyone drives, so we wanted to take a more lifestyle approach.” The paper’s weekly auto section is now titled “Globe Drive” and its online companion www.GlobeDrive.com has added more photos and video.
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Wooden Horse News reports: Aftermarket Business, the auto title from Advanstar Communications, will go online-only. The December issue will be its last. Starting in January, the title will publish a monthly digital version as well as twice-weekly e-newsletters. . . . A survey of 3,800 people in a cross-section of newspapers’ newsrooms revealed they are not the ones slowing the change from print to digital. As reported by Mediapost, a study from Northwestern University’s Media Management Center, found almost half of today’s journalists think their newsroom’s transition to digital is moving too slowly. Those most favoring the change are involved in internet use outside of work and those with knowledge of online users and their preferences. . . . However, in a speech by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to the paper’s digital staff, he described prioritizing the web at the paper as ”our Manhattan Project,” according to Zachary Stewart writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Washington Post will merge its print and online operations January 1,2010 . . . Volkswagen is launching its newest GTI without using any traditional media. Only online will be used, with a free downloadable game featuring the car and a contest with six real cars being awarded.
“Social purpose is the new social status,” according to Mitch Markson, chief creative officer for Edelman Worldwide and creator of the company’s, “goodpurpose Consumer Study.” As reported by Aaron Baar in Marketing Daily, the study shows consumers are more inclined than ever to spend their money with companies and brands that have dedicated themselves to a social purpose. As many as 67 percent of the 6,000 persons surveyed in 10 countries said they would switch brands if another brand of similar quality sported a cause they were interested in and the same number said they would buy a hybrid car over a luxury car. Click here to get a PDF of the study (48 pages).
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