Autowriters Spotlight

Cliff Atiyeh

Unless you are a self-proclaimed pundit who goes straight from your conceit to your own blog, it’s not a straight path to work as an auto writer, as Cliff Atiyeh recounts in this month’s Spotlight.

Back in 1995, I didn’t know automotive journalism was an actual business. I was nine years old, leafing through my first issue of Motor Trend, wondering how these writers could drive a yellow Porsche across Europe and call that a job. It was wild folklore, and editor C. Van Tune might as well have been Gandolf. Month after month I was hooked: reviews, comparison tests, wacky letters to the editor, concept art, gossip. Until I graduated high school, I couldn’t eat a bowl of cereal without a car magazine.

I realized two things before setting off to Boston University for a journalism degree. First, I’d need to move to Michigan (do I have to?) or California (right away) if I ever got a magazine job. The second part involved waiting for enough writers to die off the mastheads. I figured 20 years. Auto writers aren’t like professional athletes, in that they almost never retire. And who can blame them? When I’m 80, I want to be tearing around a track in the 2070 solar-hydrogen M3, not tending an organic vegetable garden.

I haven’t yet been published in a major magazine. Every time I try, another newspaper reels me in. In college I interned for two summers at the Record-Journal in Meriden, Conn., where I covered the 2003 New York Auto Show for their business section. Unlike most local papers, they actually paid me. Three years later I was writing about New York from London during a study-abroad semester at The Times. I wrote for the online auto section, read lots of Jeremy Clarkson, drank one too many beers for lunch, and wrangled a free ticket to the British Grand Prix. I was paid for that, too.

Now I’m the unofficial auto guy at The Boston Globe for both online and print. This is my third year. But first I had to take a dirt-pay layout job at a free newspaper, only to be fired and frustrated for six months. In that time I saw a job posting for Boston.com that wanted someone to edit the auto section, but required meeting “product revenue” and “key performance indicators.” Editorial people don’t talk like that, but I thought it was a good way to get my name in a major newspaper. I didn’t realize how good until print staff were being bought out by the dozens, including auto writer Royal Ford, or laid off.

No one on Boston.com got booted, and no one was covering cars. In 2008, I convinced the bosses to start a car blog, Boston Overdrive, to start building a voice. Soon I got talking to John Paul of AAA, whose “Car Doctor” advice column I posted each week. He got talking to journalists in the New England Motor Press Association, which had connections to nearly every automaker. Months later, they forced me to dress in an elf costume and play trombone to a crowd of national PR reps during a Christmas party. I’m on the billing till I retire, if that ever happens.

Turns out auto journalism isn’t impossible to join, it’s just a small world. Of all the writers in the Geneva Auto Show press room, I ran into Motor Trend’s Angus MacKenzie. Ezra Dyer lives 20 minutes south of me here in Boston. We even talk on the phone. Well, one time.

At 24, I’m living what I’ve always dreamed about as a little boy. I can visit an auto show and have the same car sitting on my driveway weeks later. I’m invited to fancy press trips, but get uncomfortable by the lure of free vacations. I’m finding the tipping point between editorial independence and advertising dollars. I’m certainly not in this for the money.

I joke that I’ve spent my whole life driving cars that aren’t mine. I came to work today in a Mercedes SL63. This is a real job, right?

Randi Payton

If Frank Sinatra were alive to introduce Urban Wheels Awards host Randi Payton he might well sing, “a pauper, a poet, a musician, a boxer, a writer, a prince and a king.” Maybe not royalty but he is founder and head of On Wheels Media recently morphed into Decisive Media whose publications reach 5 million readers.

Born in the Camden, N.J. projects where he had to fight to survive, Payton was headed for the Olympic boxing trials when a life-threatening illness suffered in Vietnam axed that ambition. But he kept on fighting, first to be a poet, then a music impresario (he started several rap bands) and to be the first in his family to go to college. While in school he interned at a black newspaper and radio station. That gave him enough confidence to slip around security at the Washington Post and pitch story ideas until the paper finally gave him some freelance work that turned into weekly assignments while he was still in school.

Payton went on to become an editor for the Afro-American Newspapers, recognized at the time as the best of the nation’s black newspapers. He noted the absence of auto coverage in the paper and not coincidently, the paucity of car maker advertising. He attacked the first problem by starting a weekly auto column that he soon syndicated for free to 200 other minority publications. The other problem, advertising, was more complex. For years, auto advertising to minorities consisted of a person of color in a print ad that ran in a few selected publications. But, as one car company advertising director found out at the cost of his job, it did not include Harry Belafonte holding Petula Clark’s hand on national television. And, that singer Lou Rawls was deemed too black to be an auto spokesman.

There was a lot of work to be done. Payton’s task as he saw it was threefold: One was to help the car companies see not a demographic but a culture that needed to be engaged on its own terms, to replace stereotypes with facts not only about the black community’s growing affluence and new car buying power but with appreciation for the history and role automobiles played in that culture. Second was to attract and hold an audience that would merit car company advertising Although blacks bought them in impressive numbers, no luxury autos were being advertised in minority media at that time. Third, he committed to fostering diversity in the auto industry’s workforce, advertising, communications, and philanthropy.

His On Wheels Media Company took on all three missions and became the first national media company dedicated to educating ethnic minorities about the auto industry, as well as its products and services. With the help of BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Chevrolet and GMC, he launched the first issue of African-American On Wheels 15 years ago, distributing 500,000 copies in newspapers across the U.S., including the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and Washington Post. At the same time he launched what is now www.onwheelsinc.com, the first web site by an auto magazine. Since then he has added Latinos On Wheels, Asians On Wheels and a digital edition of On Wheels. His editorial formula for these publications is culturally relevant content and reliable information to help minorities make informed vehicle purchase decisions.

To keep his message and market before the industry, Payton, introduced the annual Urban Wheels Awards four years ago. It is held in conjunction with the North American international Auto Show to honor industry diversity initiatives as well as the Urban Car and Urban Truck of the year. A festive gala attracting stars, celebrities and industry luminaries, it has been dubbed the “Oscars” of the automotive industry, In addition, he founded the nonprofit Edward Davis Education Foundation named for the first African-American to receive a new car franchise in the United States. Since 1999, EDEF has trained and mentored more than 350 interns and awarded more than $400,000 in scholarships to young people pursuing careers in communications and the auto industry.

Still jabbing away at strengthening minority media, Payton recently introduced Decisive Media to extend his successful editorial formula and help minorities make smart purchase decisions in a range of consumer goods. His new Decisive Magazine covers multiple other markets as well as autos.

Steve Purdy

“Shunpiker” is an uncommon enough word to prompt an inquiry into the Shunpiker Journal and Shunpiker Productions and the person behind them. Turns out, it aptly fits how the man producing and hosting the hour-long web radio journal and a number of other auto-related endeavors arrived where he is. Steve Purdy “shunned” the turnpike or the direct route in favor of back roads or more circuitous paths to making a living as an automotive journalist. He takes pride in that designation and tries to live up to it although he has no J-school training, no desire to write, no “hands-on” mechanical experience, and no time at the wheel of a racecar. But yes, plenty of enthusiasm, networking and “hanging in” part time– like seven years as the call-in correspondent for a Detroit radio station’s coverage of the Cannonball One Lap of America, once in a Yugo GVX. (And not when he was a flexible young teenager able to easily shake off days of being cramped in considerably less than the world’s smoothest ride.) The experience provided him with numerous contacts and opportunities to work with TV shows and find outlets for his car photography. And, he worked on his writing skills.

That made it relatively easy to segue when early retirement was offered in 2002 from 25 years of social work to a second career in automotive journalism. He began with radio coverage of the Detroit Auto Show and events at Michigan International Speedway for the local Fox station. A year later, he was named Detroit editor for The Auto Channel and began covering a full range of auto topics, including product reviews. From there he added writing and photography for collector car publications.

Purdy’s hour-long Shunpiker’s Journal launched in February and right now is on Tuesdays, 11AM to noon at www.TalkLansing.net but within a few weeks the programs will be downloadable as podcasts and archived for access to any of them, any time.

Purdy co founded a group of Motor City area freelance communicators that, among other projects, revived the Detroit Press Club Foundation’s prestigious International Wheel Awards. They were going strong until two years ago when the auto industry’s economy went sour. He plans to bring the event back.

Cultivating an ability to write and on-air presence, he parlayed his interests, enthusiasm and ability to network into a second life but cites the help and guidance of veteran journalists in making it work for him, particularly veteran freelancer Gary Witzenburg who went out of his way to help Purdy make his way and Bob Gordon who gave him a shot with the Auto Channel.

Paul Eisenstein affirms there’s life, challenge and satisfaction in freelance auto writing as he relates the back story of his journey from dispirited radio reporter to www.DetroitBureau.com partner and busier-than-ever work for hire.

I truly believe that you make your own luck. Much of life is simply beyond your control, so it’s important to know when to go with the flow and when to try swimming upstream. It was an unlikely string of events that landed me in Detroit, perhaps the last place this New York boy ever expected to settle down, but once I got here – for what I truly believed would be no more than a couple year detour – I found there were plenty of opportunities to be made out of even the worst circumstances.

Paul Eisenstein

The job I’d come to Detroit for, working at a local radio station, didn’t work out as planned. The news director was of the old blood-and-guts school and, to be honest, I just couldn’t deliver the sort of stories he wanted: “High speeds, rain-slicked highways, and death…” began one of his favorites, and, “Little Tommy Tucker sang for his supper, but there’d be no supper tonight, his mother was dead.” Ouch. I would have quit, but he offered a nice severance, enough, I thought, to get me back to New York. Then the calls started coming in.

It was both the best of times and the worst of times. The latter for the auto industry, anyway, as the second oil shock sent the car market into what was quickly to become its worst downturn since the Great Depression. Plants were closing, almost by the day, jobs were being cut by the hundreds of thousands, and even the 10-day automotive sales reports were suddenly making headlines. I’d been fortunate enough to make some good friends among the local media and when they couldn’t handle the flood of freelance assignments suddenly coming in, many would refer them to me.

In October 1979, National Public Radio put me on contract, and within months, what with Chrysler desperately seeking a federal bailout, I was logging more hours of airtime than any but a handful of the network’s Washington correspondents. Meanwhile, I began freelancing for a wide variety of other outlets: radio, TV, newspaper, magazine, newsletter. Heck, I’d have written copy on the men’s room wall, had the pay been good.

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If there’s someone out there undecided about becoming an auto writer, Dave Sedgwick’s recounting of his career should tip the scales.

Many journalists get involved in automotive reporting because they love cars. I got involved because it was such a great story. It was in the late 1980s, and I was a business reporter for the Detroit News.

David Sedgwick

An opening came up for an automotive reporter, and I jumped at the opportunity. In Detroit, any business journalist with ambition wanted to cover the Big Story.

One of my first assignments was to cover the 1989 Detroit auto show. Until then, the show had been relatively low-key. But the organizers finally decided to go big-time, and encouraged foreign automakers to participate.

Toyota and Nissan responded with back-to-back world introductions of their new luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti.

It was a hell of a show, and I was hooked. During the newspaper strike of 1995, I moved from the Detroit News to Automotive News, where I held various jobs as reporter and editor.

At Automotive News, I had an opportunity to see the car business as a global industry. I covered auto shows in Frankfurt, Geneva, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. And I had an opportunity to tour plants and meet executives in places like Brazil, Argentina and Thailand.

The ride-and-drives were fun, too. Years ago, I had a chance to drive through Death Valley in a Ford Contour SVT (of all things) with Parnelli Jones riding shotgun. He knew that area like the back of his hand.

All good things must come to an end, and I got laid off from Automotive News in June of 2009. Like other publications, Automotive News got financially hammered by the recession, and it had to downsize.

Currently I am editor of AutoBeat Europe, a daily newsletter for auto executives. I also freelance articles for AOL’s automotive website. So I’m making enough to pay my bills, and I still have fun.

What does the future hold? I don’t believe that journalism is dead, but there’s no question it will never be the same. In Detroit, the two daily newspapers — the Detroit News and the Free Press — have shrunk drastically. They’re not going to return to their former glory days, when they each had a circulation of 650,000-plus.

Business publications like Automotive News aren’t immune to change, either.

So what does it take for a journalist to prosper? I got a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1977. It was useful training back then, and I think journalism school remains useful today.

In 1977 I got my first job at the Adrian Telegram, a small newspaper where I did some reporting, editing, page layout, photography and editorials. This was a huge help to me in two ways: I learned how to meet daily deadlines, and I learned how to be versatile.

Those two fundamental skills are still in demand. It’s the delivery system — i.e. the Web, Twitter, blogs, etc. — that has been revolutionized. These days, a successful journalist has to be both prolific and versatile — a combination photographer, videographer, writer, reporter, whatever.

It also helps to have the mindset of an entrepreneur. Even if you are a full-time staffer in a media corporation, you should look for opportunities to expand your expertise.

Which is what I’m doing now. I’ve purchased a video camera, and I’m going to get some lessons. Stay tuned.