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Sam Moses is a seasoned writer who covered motorsports for SI, authored two books (working on a third) and has contributed car reviews and features to numerous other print and online publications. He recently launched his own web site: www.Sammoses.com. It is on cars and other matters and is a welcome respite from the carnival blare encounter too often on the Internet. He has more to say and AWCom plans to interview him for a forthcoming Autowriter’s Spotlight.
The Truth About The Truth About Cars’ Take
on The Truth About Newspaper Car Reviews
Your recent post on www.TheTruthAboutCars.com led me to that site, where I found an editorial titled “The Truth About Newspaper Car Reviews,” by Frank Williams. It made your editor’s note that Truth was “as they see it” just the latch to the Pandora’s Box.
Williams takes a bulb of truth and grows it into a mutant stalk. The simple truth about newspaper car reviews is that 95 percent of the reporting in the vast majority of them (sometimes 100 percent) could come without ever driving the car. By bleating that TTAC is better because it’s purer than thou, Williams is being aggressively ignorant—maybe from inexperience, I don’t know him. I’ve just read some of the TTAC reviews. You could fill many issues of autowriters.com with examples of horrible, inaccurate TTAC autojournalism that he thinks is clever and truthful—and I’d cite them if there were room here. They serve no more purpose for consumers, in fact less, than the shallow non-critical newspaper reviews he trashes.
He says that to get information from an engineer is a sign of bias. What an idiot! I ALWAYS try to ride with an engineer (or designer—see my Jaguar XF piece at www.sammoses.com), and have NEVER found them not to be candid, and it ALWAYS enhances the review. Plus, you get twice the seat time. As if a 4-hour exclusive interview with an engineer or product or PR person could somehow HURT a review.
I write for www.newcartestdrive.com because its editor, Mitch McCullough, gets it. Declarative sentences. For the consumer. Dry, yes; that’s the price of the pursuit of truth—and I’m not saying it’s always there, either. Also, btw, there’s NO ONE farther left than me when it comes to recognizing the threat of corporate media and non-critical reporting in pursuit of revenue.
What Williams is saying, is: We at TTAC are too weak to filter out the manufacturers’ spin at launches, and not smart enough to find the good technical information that’s all over the place. So we don’t go to them.
TTAC ought to just send better journalists to the launches.
P.S. Hilarious irony. While reading Williams’ editorial (in which he disses Chrysler), a noisy ad for the Dodge Journey popped up and blocked the graph I was reading.
Tom-Tom rants, raves, rambles and ruminations are volunteered and express the opinions of the writer.