In my opinion, too many automotive journalists are writing for their next gig rather than their audience. Sure, this secures our career, but at the same time distances us from our non-enthusiast readers (the people who are buying cars). This makes no sense to me. To that end, I have only one hard and fast rule when I bring on a new freelancer to write reviews. That rule dictates that they not write for other automotive journalists, factory PR reps or enthusiasts. Write for my mother and my sister. It is people like that who are buying cars on a scale that allows us to do this for a living.

I have no sympathy for those who feel threatened by new media, old media, or the hobo who scrawls car reviews on the bathroom wall at the local truck stop. Everybody can go around grinding each other into the pavement over this. In the meantime, I’ll be doing the best I can to service the needs of my readers across every medium that is available to me, unfortunate typos and all. Maybe this means I’m not going to live up to the lofty expectations of my fellow writers, but I’ll tell you what, my fellow writers are not the ones who enable me to do what I love. That distinction belongs to my readership.

Embrace the message, not the medium.

My opinion piece was not a personal attack. I did question—harshly, I admit—the validity of your Tom-Tom entry. As to whether it was “flaming” or “bad form,” I disagree. I commented on your Tom-Tom piece, which you volunteered. And once offered for public consumption, your piece is open to opinion, fair comment and criticism, as is my Tom-Tom submittal, as was Sam Mitani’s column. It’s the same privilege that lets you or anyone else review automobiles, movies and restaurants.

You raise some excellent points on the benefits of the Internet, searchability, archiving, timeliness, convenience, relevance, and I agree with you on most or probably all of the issues you raised. But those were not the subject of my piece.

Again, the title of my piece was not “Why Everything About the Internet Sucks,” or “Why All Web Writers are Hacks,” and should not be read as such.

I defended print for what it does that other media cannot. Again, I pointed out defects in the reasoning Gary Grant used to support his premise, questioned his expertise on media and offered my opinion on those two issues.

With regard to your point that I “glossed over one of Mr. Grant’s key points,” I simply didn’t address it at all because I don’t know enough about circulation or hits or page views or unique visits to comment on them knowledgeably.

Your point about working for About.com is well taken, and it’s great to hear you make a good living. From what I can gather, it looks as though you are on staff or on retainer. My comments did not concern people on staff for large media companies such as Internet Brands, NYT or Edmunds or Source Interlink or people who have changed from print journalists to Web journalists. The comments concerned fees to contributors, by which I meant freelancers. And I stand by my view that the rates offered to freelancers and contributors by so many Web sites, including the company I mentioned, are too low to attract good writers.

Regarding your last sentence, I think your point may rest on a mischaracterization of my arguments: Nowhere in my piece did I say that print was a better way to “reach” readers, implicitly or explicitly. Much as I would like to leave this at clarifying my original points, I think adding information to our discussion might help.

Townhall.com, one of the oldest political Web sites on the Internet just launched a magazine, which I think is incredibly telling, as is the reason why. Chris Field, Townhall magazine’s executive editor?, had this to say in response to the following question: How does the magazine differ from the online tier of the brand? ?

”Our online audience has relied on us for daily news for nearly 15 years to keep them abreast of what is going on. The magazine has allowed us to delve more deeply into the core issues that our readers care the most about.”

I think it helps illustrate my points about the effectiveness of print.

Of course, there is great irony in my responding online, but obviously there was no other way to offer a counterpoint.

I think it’s also worth noting that my opinion piece was not titled, “Why Everything About the Internet Sucks” or “Why all Web Writers are Hacks.” It’s true I appreciate print for a lot of reasons, but as my bio noted at the top of the Tom-Tom, I write freelance for print and Internet, and I’m even developing a site of my own.

I outlined what print does that other media cannot. I pointed out defects in the reasoning Gary Grant used to support his premise, questioned his expertise on media and offered my opinion on those two issues.

I am plainly aware that print is declining and online journalism is on the rise—and why it’s occurring—but as I tried to point out, his reasoning was desperately thin and way off target. So, yes, in my opinion, it was baseless and irrelevant. You obviously disagree, which is fine.

With regard to the “fairly conclusively” comment, it reflects the notion that social science research, which includes media and communication, is seldom conclusive. I probably should have gone with the more familiar “research suggests.”

To counter your charges of my baselessness, here are a few citations, including one Dutch study I was previously unaware of that found no differences in recall between online and print readers. In my defense, there are more that suggest recall from print media is higher than online sources.

http://www.scarletnotes.com/downloads/onlinepaperknoweldge2000.pdf
http://agnews.tamu.edu/saas/2006/Cognitive.pdf
http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ581386&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ581386

Dutch study
http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/3/363

As for your question “Who decided that information retention is the standard by which media should be judged?” I don’t know, but it wasn’t me. I included retention as one of print’s benefits, but not as “the standard,” and where writers and/or media seek to inform and educate, I do think retention is critical.

Thank you Aaron.

Thank you Gary.

You all said it correctly, from your respective viewpoints.