Road Ahead

“Western world media is on the brink of two years of carnage” according to the digital director of England’s Guardian newspaper, Emily Bell. As reported in the Immediate Network’s Press, PR & Media Digest, she told a gathering of digital leaders, “We are at the meeting point of a systematic downturn and a cyclical collapse… Nobody in my business has a grip on it yet.  Survivors will have to undergo what is essentially an unprofitable existence.”

Writing in Online Spin, Dave Morgan says, “Many believe that the Tribune bankruptcy filing represents just the first domino in an inevitable series of sweeping announcements and events involving traditional media companies. I agree with that notion. I think that much more will follow, and follow quickly. He predicts more newspaper bankruptcies, newspapers losing investors and advertisers, local broadcasters benefiting, publication frequency dropping and more “online only” newspapers. In an earlier column he said,” Printing presses, massive mailrooms, fleets of delivery trucks and drivers don’t belong in newspaper companies any more.. . . The days of trees to trucks vertical integration are over, as are their distractions.”

Also from the Immediate Network, England’s Press Gazette reported, “Newmedia expert Ryan Sholin says he would expect the next generation of journalists to bring a ‘trinity of multimedia, interactivity and data skills’ to job interviews.”  According to Sholin, these are the questions they will need to answer:

Not good news for many veteran autowriters looking for work in a shrinking market.

Peering down the road at what lies ahead for auto journalists would ignore the obvious: the big block in the road for the auto industry itself. True or not, self-inflicted or a consequence of the extreme economic downturn, Detroit’s need for a bailout, rescue plan or loan has filled the media with fear statistics akin to the Treasury’s plea for helping Wall Street. Warren Brown’s widely reprinted Washington Post column provides a more human perspective on what the domestic auto industry has meant to America. Titled: “An America Without Manufacturing Becomes A Starkly Divided Society,” it makes the point that along with building cars the domestic auto industry built the black middle class, providing steady work and reliable incomes that allowed workers to buy homes, educate their children and enjoy hope. As a self-described black child of the South he tells of watching “legions of neighbors and relatives flee economic apartheid in pursuit of opportunity in the automobile factories of Michigan and Ohio and in the steel plants of Pennsylvania and Indiana.

“People who left the South as field hands to become factory hands spawned generations of teachers, doctors, lawyers, technicians, engineers, inventors, designers, scientists, politicians — and more than a few journalists. A country without a viable manufacturing infrastructure, a nation lacking a commitment to excellence and innovation in manufacturing could not have authored such progress.”

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times Columnist David Brooks, the yin and yang of Jim Lehrer’s PBS TV News Hour, Shields from the left and Brooks from the right, agreed that Detroit should get help. They also agreed that it should be helped but with conditions and that Detroit as we know it will be restructured and vastly different within five years. They see a need for controls from outside of the industry but questioned if one man could be wise enough to be a “Car Czar.”

Expecting top executives to remedy the situation they helped create is denying the ego, arrogance and aggressiveness that drove them to the top and fits Einstein’s definition of insanity. Those same qualities would defend their past decisions and obstruct change. Lee Iacocca was able to do it at Chrysler (and repay Government–backed loans with interest) because, in addition to his talents, he was not vested in the leadership that put the company in need of Government help.

The dilution and decline of auto journalism decried in last month’s Newsletter along with the suggestion that it might be time for a National Auto Journalists Association brought a modest and mixed response. The percentage of readers who weighed in was small and there were no outright objections to the idea although IMPA membership chairman Paul Weissler, dismissed the decline in print outlets and the trend to online journalism as nothing to fear. In his full response, the first in our new Autowriters.com blog, he states that IMPA has found how to properly vet bloggers who wish to join. That was disputed by one of his fellow members who wishes to remain anonymous but noted the many unknown and presumably un-skilled dot coms at IMPA’s recent test days. And, that he talked to PR representatives in attendance who agreed. Weissler presciently covered that aspect in his blog, suggesting that IMPA membership might help improve the “breed” while improving access to “lifestyle journalism” for veteran auto writers. Read the rest of this entry »