The Tom-Tom

John Rettie is a freelancer, with the emphasis on being free to pursue his light. Going on staff when it works and leaving when it doesn’t, he has been on staff for Meyer’s Publishing, Ward’s Communications, J.D. Power and Associates and The New York Times among others in an auto writing career that began in England in 1971. He also writes on photography, has designed and built auto parts, raced cars and originated the Automotive PR Survey conducted by MPG.

---

Like many of you, I’ve enjoyed reading the ongoing debate about the future of auto journalism, especially as I am now one of those “old and bald” journalists.

Almost 40 years ago I was a fresh-faced writer who started working on a small magazine in the UK. I had no degree in journalism but I was enthusiastic and realized how lucky I was to be in my dream job. My salary was poor — you know the rest of the story.

A few weeks ago someone told me there was an opening listed on CareerBuilder for an automotive writer in my hometown, Santa Barbara. It looked promising. It read as if a major newspaper or magazine was looking for an experienced auto journalist. Only this was for Examiner.com.

Several established auto writers are indeed writing for Examiner and a few are making some money but I don’t know of anyone making a decent living doing this.

Writer’s forums have been full of discussions about content mills, the derogatory name given to websites that seek writers to crank out copy on every subject under the sun.

In fact just as I was on a final edit I read the following, penned by Nik Usborne, on searchengineland.com:

“Most web content is barely alive, even when it is first written. It is pumped out by content mills, optimized and uploaded. This kind of bulk content is often referred to as backfill content. I prefer the term “landfill content.” Dead and rotting from day one. In sharp contrast, living content is quality content. It is shared quickly through social media—because it is worth sharing—and takes root across the web. Better still, true living content is updated and added to on a regular basis.”

I’m sure everyone echoes this sentiment.

It’s true that Examiner appears to be a cut above these sites it has nonetheless been included in the discussions at times.

Traditionalists see a relentless downward push on the quality of writing and the rate at which writers are paid. It’s perhaps even more worrisome to read that Fortune magazine is now accepting articles for which it does not pay.

It’s sad.

Some call it “SEO marketing of content for dummies.” As long as content shows up well on search engines and enough people click on them the content generators will make money. Some of these content mills supposedly make millions of dollars a year yet their writers, sorry content producers, are not making much at all.

Nevertheless, there are many young writers, and even some seasoned out of work writers, who are happily producing features for these sites despite the low pay. And it appears there are plenty of people signing up to produce content.

I think this confirms there have always been thousands of people who relished the idea of writing and seeing their prose published. Of course, in the “old days” it was only a few who were fortunate enough to land gigs that enabled them to see their work in print.

Now anyone can start a publishing company at virtually zero cost. However, the chances of making a lot of money are still slim. Perhaps these content mills are currently a better way for new writers to get started – at least they make some money.

Despite all these dramatic changes nothing has really changed. Pretty much every one of us “old farts” started at ground zero as an unpaid intern or an entry level cub reporter before making anywhere near a living wage.

Since it’s now so much easier to get started we have thousands more trying their hand at writing, photography, and even movie making. Pretty soon we’ll reach saturation and hopefully the best sites with the best content will grow and the weak ones will wither.

Within a decade, I bet we will return to seeing the best content producers making a decent living. We will then look back on the massive changes going on at present and realize that every trade and profession has been radically altered by the digital age. Heck, by then even the healthcare industry, which is one of the last to be “digitized” will surely be undergoing transformation.

Doug Stokes has been a practicing automotive PR type since “way back when.” His work has taken him from running the IKF (Go-Karts) to promoting Sprint Cars at Perris Auto Speedway, and from an early environmental auto assignment (Geo Tree Program) to NASCAR as the communications director for Toyota Speedway in Irwindale. Along the way he ran an automotive-oriented bookstore, worked the media for Mickey Thompson, and handled corporate communications for Gale Banks Engineering.

---

Print Isn’t Dead It’s Overpriced

Over the weekend I was in Las Vegas doing PR for the Lucas Oil Off Road Series and needed to buy a Sunday paper to see what kind of coverage we were getting for the show. I put the paper on the counter in the hotel gift shop and the young lady said, “Three dollars, please, do you want a bag?” No, bag thanks. Thinking that I was paying a “normal” kicked-up resort price, I peeled off the three bucks and left.

When I got back to my room I looked at the front page and there found the “street” price – an astonishing $3.00, who’s going to have that many quarters (even in Las Vegas!) to pump a news rack with 12 quarters? Who’s going to pay that much to end up with a 80-20 split of adverts and editorial content?

For that matter, while we’re at it, who’s paying $4.95, 5.95, 6.95 and more for monthly magazines that are rationed out just about as above, when you can get similar material (all capsule-ized and easy to bite off and chew) on your computer (or phone) for “free”.

Of course we all know that free is by no means free, that there’s always a catch somewhere, and that even the best journalism has a price, it’s just that now there’s really no established place to go to get it  – regardless of what one is willing to “pay”.

The press, the “MEDIA”, has been Balkanized so widely and so thoroughly that I’m often amazed that my neighbor and I get the same two newspapers delivered on our respective driveways each morning.

In the latter days of this epoch newspapers and magazines have cut staff so severely that getting any sort of attention now seems to require a “friggin’ bombshell” instead of a (I was going to say “bon mot” but I won’t) good story. Solid equates to stolid for desk people and some malcontent’s (or bad actor’s) grousing, carousing, confessing, a sex schmozzel, a murder (or a combination of all of the above) always trumps what’s left of the headlines. Blowing out great straight stories about people, products, things.

My small company specializes in motorsports PR*, mainly because that’s been my interest as well as a source of rent money for about 40 years now. I work personally with a number of clients to try mightily to get media recognition of their work product, be it events, hardware, or services.

In the past few years the ranks of my potential targets have seemed to dwindle pretty drastically. In actuality the string was pulled on the costume and hundreds of tiny targets spilled out all over the place, each proclaiming that they were the equal of the one big guy that was once there. (Website wonders? bloggers? points of light?)

When I’m watching a TV show and I’m directed to effectively shut the TV off (or at least not watch the next offering) go to my computer for “more” of the show that I was watching -  I have to wonder how that works. And it’s exactly the same for the news programs: turn us off, go to your computer and see more about this story squib that we teased you with – I start to feel that the media itself is systematically shedding and drinking its own blood, kind of like that snake eating its own tail.

Again, please tell me how that works in real life.

* PR (and automotive PR in particular) is most likely another one of brother (Jack) Baruth’s least favored professions. If he thinks that all automotive writers should be shot, I shudder to think of what kind of a grisly fate he’d have in store for us car and car event PR flacks. . . .  And what makes his little, dried-up, cake-white butt so pure and holy anyway?

The plentitude of pixels has muted the old saw, “don’t get in a war of words with someone who buys ink by the barrel” as PR pro John McCandless evidences in his response to Jack Baruth’s April Tom-Tom. Baruth proposed, “auto journalism as we know it should die.”

 McCandless, who has PR in his blood (his father was an ace practitioner in his time) has been in automotive PR with Chrysler, American Motors and Toyota where he is now National Manager, Corporate Communications Field Operations. He also rose through the ranks as a communications officer with the U.S. Navy Reserve, retiring as a captain in 1999. He recently won praise for his frank discussion of Toyota’s communications problems with graduate students in the University of Michigan’s School of Management.

---

In Defense Of Automotive Journalism

Oh No! A free trip will bring down all of automotive journalism.

I hope Jack Baruth is a better racer than he is a reporter. His recent rant demonstrated little knowledge or talent for the latter.

It would appear that he wrangled an invitation to a new car preview and was aghast that others, (likely as well as himself,) were the guests of that manufacturer, to the tune of airfare, lodging and meals. Somehow, he concluded, that this hosting would guarantee that automaker good ink (or internet space), regardless of how good or bad the product performed.

Long-lead previews have been around for ages. Mr. Baruth might be surprised to learn that a significant number of organizations pay their own way to these events and pick up their lodging tabs. Others, including buff books, trade magazines and freelancers, accept the fact that they are being hosted.

His solution to this terrible violation of ethics? Invite consumers to these events. Hmmm, let’s see. Most manufacturers sell millions of cars and trucks annually. Sure, let’s invite every prospect to come evaluate our vehicles. We’d get through the 2010 products say, by 2055. I’m sure Bristol Cars will be alive and well for decades, but then again, who has ever heard of Bristol Cars.

Mr. Baruth needs to keep focused on racing. As a critic of automotive journalism, he has crashed and burned.

For those who have not visited the hornet’s nest of other responses Baruth evoked, check out the comments online.

Jack Baruth says he is the only person in American history to hold both a professional BMX racing license and a professional auto racing license. This, combined with five dollars, he notes, will get you a “venti” at Starbucks. He has been writing for publication since 1991 and wrote the unpopular “One Racer’s Perspective” and “BMX Basics” columns for Bicycles Today magazine. In the past several years, Jack has won a few races, lost many more, and received multiple disciplinary actions for contact and rough driving. He races in NASA Performance Touring, the Koni Challenge and the Skip Barber Mazdaspeed Series. You can find him at speedsportlife.com, thetruthaboutcars.com, leftlanenews.com and in Malaysia’s “Wheels Weekly” tabloid.

---

Automotive Journalism’s Credibility Gap

“If Woodward and Bernstein had been automotive journalists, the Watergate story would have been a five-star review of Richard Nixon’s personal tape recorder.” I’m putting that in quotes, even though I just wrote it, because I think it’s quotable.

Here’s another quotable idea, courtesy of a young autoblogger whom I occasionally read: Manufacturers should stop paying for auto journalists to enjoy unbelievably sybaritic new-vehicle launches, $80,000 free loaner cars disguised as “long-term testers”, and all of the other little bennies of the biz. Instead, the money should be spent reaching out to, and connecting with, the actual customers for their products. In short, auto journalism as we know it needs to die. The denim-jacket fatties and bald old buzzards who shuffle-steer their incompetent way through a driving event, hold down barstools for the evening, and then rewrite the press release during the flight home — well, they should be taken out back and shot.

The color rags should wither and fall from the shelves like autumn leaves, with only the lace-like rotted pages of a MacNeil Products special-advertising section remaining. The functional illiterates who take a free plane ticket to an auto show, have their hands held by PR reps through a scripted sequence of roundtables, and then breathlessly blog about the “awesomeness” of cars they’ve never driven — they will become as difficult to find as their talent was. All change, as they say. Everybody goes home.

It’s interesting to note that special-interest car rags have been around nearly as long as the automobile itself. Autocar was founded in 1895, and the inimitable LJK Setright tells us that it was originally a bit of a shill rag, featuring far-from-impartial opinions to benefit its owner, who also held part of Daimler. The idea of the self-published auto magazine is still with us — nearly every major carmaker publishes an utterly worthless color rag on a quarterly-ish basis, complete with moronic reviews of luxury hotels, expensive watches, and second-tier men’s fashion — but I find it hilarious that the most dignified name in the print trade was corrupt from Day One.

As we’ve all heard, the automobile is the second-most expensive purchase we will make in our lives, unless we buy a used Porsche 928, in which it will be the most expensive purchase we will ever make. It’s no surprise, then, that buyers have been looking for advice since the nineteenth century. In some cases, such as when Patrick Bedard left an engineering career to work for C/D, or when Consumer Reports decided to pay its own money for cars to test (mostly) impartially, the buyer has been well-served by listening to that “expert advice”.

Other examples of automotive “expertise” are closer to being laughable than reputable. Consider the “Wheels” section in nearly every major newspaper. The “Wheels” writers are as numerous as Biblical locusts at the new-car launches, and they descend on the buffet table with the same legendary ferocity, but in most cases they are completely unqualified to review automobiles. They aren’t engineers, race car drivers, or even hopelessly passionate enthusiasts. They’re just the guys who sucked too hard to be permitted to write about something critical, like municipal levies, local flower shows, or country-club golf tournaments.

This is the problem in a nutshell. Real journalists go out and find their stories at their own expense, or their employers’ expense. Automotive journalists are effectively compensated by the manufacturers on which they report. And if an autojourno decides to take a “principled” approach, refusing to participate in press launches or take loaner cars… that writer will be effectively six months behind the competition.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stopping a Prius

Absent the arrival of an expected Tom-Tom, AWCom offers this expert’s report on his stopping a Prius at high speed. Tests results by Craig Van Batenburg, CEO of the Automotive Career Development Center in Worcester, MA may answer drivers’ questions about what happens when the brakes are slammed on or the power turned off in a 2004 Prius traveling 80 mph.

“Once I hit 80mph with my foot to the floor I kept my right foot down and then hit the brakes as hard as I could with my left foot. This action does two things. It shuts off MGI and MG2 (effectively setting it into neutral) and allows the ICE some limited RPMs. Then it must use only mechanical brakes as a safety back up in the PCM. It stopped the car very quickly. I did this 3 times in a row. After the 3rd time the brakes were smoking hot but still worked.

Also, just before this abusive treatment I went 80 mph and while still accelerating I pushed the power button until the dash went blank. It takes about 3 seconds. This does 2 things. It shifts the car into neutral and shuts off all electrical power to everything except a few 12-volt items that the 12 volt battery can handle. The 12 volt battery back up (black box of capacitors near the 12 volt battery) supplies power to the brake-by-wire so you can make a safe emergency stop.”