autowriters.com march 2009 newsletter

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High performance car care products.

A Netpop Research study as reported in a Center for Media Research Brief concluded, "market trends and customer opinion are being shaped by end users more rapidly and with greater impact on business than ever before as an entirely new form of leisure develops around talking and sharing, providing opinions and perspectives... and suggests that websites need to connect directly with users or the users will create their own venues." The study also found:

• 105 million Americans contribute to social media
• Social networking has grown 93% since 2006
• 7 million Americans are "heavy" social media contributors (6+ activities) who connect with 248 people on a 'one to many' basis in a typical week
• 54% of micro-bloggers post or "tweet" daily
• 72% of micro-bloggers under age 18 post or "tweet" daily

Who are the people with the time to Twitter, tweet, peep, blog, mini-blog, Facebook, get LinkedIn and generally play the Internet like a piano? You may be one according to Steve Rubel, Sr. Vice President of Edelman Direct. As reported by Karl Greenberg in Marketing Daily, Rubel told an audience, "We are amazed at the number of people who view social media and traditional media as two different things. But 75% of newspaper sites now let people comment, and 100% have blogs. The elephants and zebras have mated, and it's all one species."

He went on to say: "As the economy tightens up, people are recognizing that reputation matters. We are seeing more workers flock to social media who say they have to be there to build their own brand as an insurance policy or escape clause. Corporations should figure out who those people are, and rather than fire them, give them a soapbox. People should figure out who, in their companies, could be personal brands. Give your 'all stars' independence--let them know what the ropes are."

Max Kalehoff elaborates on that thought in an Online Spin column. He sees employee online celebrities building relationships and trusts with customers with the downside being, "A lack of personal optimization can be a serious disadvantage in a down economy. With unemployment rising, job seekers who are highly visible to employers have the upper hand. Those who are not discoverable don't exist. No wonder LinkedIn is seeing record traffic and a surge in interpersonal recommendations."

Kalehoff notes there are mature services and software to help businesses optimize but "scattered tools on the Web an individual can use to positively influence his or her personal search-engine reputation. Consider any number of free social-networking sites and publishing tools: LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as any of the blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress. But these tools are not part of any cohesive or sanctioned optimization strategy. And, collectively, they all require significant personal investment to learn, activate and maintain."

Comments? Please go to: http://autowriters.com/blog/the-road-ahead-march-2009/

TOC

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The Tom-Tom seems the appropriate place for this letter to APA members from its current president, Katie Kerwin. Neither rant nor rave, it reviews the reasoning behind the APA Board’s unexpected decision to restrict its membership and therefore, its automatic meeting entrée to working automotive journalists or PR persons and related media.

March 10, 2009

Dear APA members,

The Automotive Press Association board has reviewed our membership policy and decided to make some changes based on our mission and bylaws.

• Our mission is to put newsmakers in front of journalists. Our ability to attract the best speakers depends on being able to promise those speakers a room full of influential auto journalists and automotive PR people with a stake in their message. Hosts understand that an APA speech is open to all APA members, so it is in our best interests to ensure that our membership reflects this mission.

Katie Kerwin, President of the Automotive Press Association

• Our bylaws state: “Membership shall consist of persons who are engaged in automotive journalism, public relations activities and other interested media related to the automobile industry.”

After lengthy consideration and the creation of a membership committee to formulate recommendations, the board decided that those guidelines require us to revise our membership admission rules. No one’s membership is being revoked. But if a current member isn’t a working automotive journalist or PR person or interested media (say, an auto analyst, economist or consultant), his or her membership will not be renewed.

This affects our rules for retirees. The bylaws limit membership to working journalists or PR people. Current retiree members are grandfathered in. In the future, when active members retire, their memberships won’t be renewed unless they continue to engage in professional activities related to the industry such as freelancing or consulting.

The clarification of our policy also means that we have lifted the freeze on new members from PR agencies. As before, those firms may have a maximum of four APA members at any time. If one of the four leaves, another qualified agency employee can become a member. There continues to be no limit on memberships for PR staff at automakers and suppliers.

PR membership is restricted to PR professionals and excludes administrative staff and employees of organizations that supply support services to the industry.

With a clear policy, our membership director Mona Richard has concrete rules on which to rely and she has the full confidence of the board in applying them. No board member, including the president, can overrule her decision (so don’t even try going over her head.) A decision can only be reversed by a majority vote of the membership board.

A complete copy of the membership rules will be made available to any member or membership applicant who requests them. If you have questions, please feel free to ask APA President Katie Kerwin or any board member.

*********************

As a separate issue, the board would like to remind those who attend our meetings of a few basic rules of courtesy. We ask that you don’t make sales pitches or attempt to recruit clients or advertisers at meetings. Please refrain from loud conversations during presentations and Q&A sessions, and any other disruptive or objectionable behavior.

The board has decided that members or guests who break these rules will get a warning. Those who continue or repeat an offense will lose their membership and be barred from future events.

*********************

Lastly, guests are welcome at any event for which the host hasn’t specified a no-guest policy. Please don’t invite or bring a guest when the invitation says no guests. That decision rests with the event’s host, who is footing the bill.

*********************

Thank you,

Kathleen Kerwin
APA President

Comments? Please go to: http://autowriters.com/blog/the-tom-tom-katie-kerwin/

 Tom-Tom rants, raves, rambles and ruminations are volunteered and express the opinions of the writer.

TOC

Chris Ayres, in a Feb. 12 audio blog on The Social Net suggests that the reason newspapers accustomed to being the dominant news source in their market are failing in this country is because they can't compete, unlike England where his home town of London has 89 different titles vying for attention. . . . An American survey says don't give up on print. The Rosen Group released findings of a national poll indicating the vast majority of U.S. consumers still deem print editions of newspapers and magazines to be "indispensable" sources of news and entertainment. President and Founder of the PR agency, Lori Rosen, quoted in OnLineMedia Daily, acknowledged, "two-thirds of Americans now use Web sites 'devoted to news' as a daily source, and nearly a third consider them to be their No. 1 source of news and information. She notes: "People are looking online for news and lifestyle information, but they are not abandoning their print editions." She also reported, "nearly 60% of (survey) respondents do not consider information found on blogs to be 'credible'."

The U.S. House of Representatives apparently agrees with that assessment. Blogger Jason Lee Miller on www.WebProNews.com reports that the House version of bills moving through Congress to protect a journalist's sources says, "if journalism is a hobby or passion you do as a public service, or if you are a freelancer without a boss—both of which easily describe a blogger—then the government reserves the right to force you to tell them who told you something, much like the government tried to do with New York Times journalist Judy Miller under the Bush Administration." And that may explain this quote provided by Intermediate Network’s Press, PR and Media Digest:  "It is Ryanair's policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers." Also from that publication comes word of a BBC journalist blaming the underreporting of the country's financial crisis until it was upon them on, "an incredibly powerful public relations machine . . . whose job is to lie to the press." Surely nothing like that in the U.S. ;-)

Sylvia Marino, executive director of community operations for www.Edmunds.Com made these points in a recent interview with Karl Greenberg published in Marketing Daily:

1) "What GM and Ford are doing is engaging not just with their consumers, but with any consumers - trying to set the record straight using Twitter, their own blogs, for example, saying: 'We have more vehicles that get 32 mpg and better than Toyota does'."

2) "When you look at companies who have built relationships with consumers, across blogs, across different social media, there is question-and-answer, give-and-take--not one-way. There is an acceptance of negative views, not that everyone has to be right. I think what you are finding is, people go back to basics. Having a one-on-one conversation, you are much more likely to have a higher level of satisfaction with that person than if you get a nameless, faceless memo."

3) "It doesn't require the CEO or chairman. In fact, you want the person who has the access and voice and support."

4) "On Twitter there may be some six or seven thousand people reading any given post, and many of those 7,000 people are retelling the story. . . . And that's what we are really talking about. Yes, there is a big investment in one-to-one--but the fact is, in these environments when I'm answering one person's question, it's available to millions for viewing. It's very powerful."

Wooden Horse Newsletter reports publisher Hearst is getting set to launch an electronic reader that it hopes can do for periodicals what Amazon's Kindle is doing for books. It is a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suitable for reading newspapers and magazines and is likely to debut this year. The insider source for freelance magazine writers also reports that Popular Science, in anticipation of when e-readers become more commonplace, has launched a new digital magazine called The Pop Sci Genius Guide. Wooden Horse also states that Anderson News, one of the larger wholesaler distributors, has closed operation and laid off its employees.  Source Interlink got a temporary restraining order that effectively forces publishers Time Inc, American Media, Hachette Filipacchi Media and Bauer Publications to resume shipping copies of their magazines to Source Interlink for distribution to retailers.

Speedway Illustrated has a new owner, Anthem Media Group, a marketing firm and magazine publisher. It acquired Performance Media LLC, the publisher of the magazine, from Down East Enterprise Inc. Founder and former driver and TV commentator Dick Berggren will remain as executive editor. The magazine has a monthly circulation of about 120,000... NEWSWEEK will transition away from covering the week's news events to become more of a "thought leader" publication such as THE ECONOMIST and THE ATLANTIC. . . . Beginning in April, Consumer Guide will no longer print its Car & Truck Test Magazine focusing instead on online delivery. In making the announcement, associate publisher Tom Appel notes that www.Consumerguide.com now enjoys an average of 2.5 million unique visitors a month.

TOC

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Michael Karesh

Michael Karesh's uncommon blending of sociology, statistics and car ownership has produced a unique tool for auto journalists and consumers to quickly and easily compare features and costs, repair experiences and real-world gas mileage of competing vehicles. It is called True Delta and began when Michael's enthusiasm for cars and companies that make them was sparked by a preview photo of the 1983 Ford Thunderbird on the cover of a car magazine. "Those were bleak times for both cars and the auto industry. Jack Telnack's revolutionary aero design and the turbo under the hood were signs that cars were about to become exciting again. I’ve been avidly following the industry ever since."

In the mid-1990s, Michael was pursuing a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and needed a topic for his thesis. While other sociologists performed fieldwork within urban communities, he opted to move to Detroit and essentially live inside GM’s product development organization for a year-and-a-half. "To really know what goes on inside these companies, you’ve got to get deep inside them yourself," he said. While completing a thesis that focused on the role of interpersonal trust in creating great cars, he taught marketing at Oakland University and wrote car reviews.

While at Chicago, Michael received extensive training in survey research and statistical analysis. After earning the degree, he deployed these skills to gather car information he personally wanted to have but couldn’t find anywhere. "In my car reviews, I tried to include thorough price comparisons that accounted for feature differences, but with existing sources this took forever and it was too easy to miss some of the differences." So he developed a tool that produces thorough car price comparisons--in seconds. This tool, launched in September 2004, formed the basis for TrueDelta.com.

Site visitors were invited to join TrueDelta's survey panel. "With dots and blobs, how much one car differs from another in reliability has not been clear. As a result, many car buyers think these differences are much larger than they actually are, and this has distorted purchase decisions." To provide actual repair rates, TrueDelta surveys members monthly on any repairs that occurred the previous month. "Why monthly? Because we’ve learned that memories fade quickly." Actual repair rates are promptly updated four times a year to include new models sooner and closely track cars as they age. "When buying a new car, do you want to know how reliable it was a year ago, or how it’s been doing recently?"

Later, TrueDelta added a real-world Gas Mileage Survey that includes data on how and where the cars are driven. The most recent addition: a "Why (Not) This Car?" review survey where car owners explain why they bought the car they did buy and why they didn’t buy their second choice.

While TrueDelta.com focuses on the needs of car owners, it can be a very useful resource for automotive journalists (who are invited to visit the site and apply for media access). As Karesh notes in one of the blogs on his site: Why is it important that TrueDelta’s car reliability information is, on average, over nine months ahead of the information provided by other sources? The plight of the domestic auto industry provides the most significant answer yet. These companies are fighting for their lives. They continue to have trouble selling cars because of lingering perceptions, sometimes well founded, more often not, that domestic cars are unreliable. If these companies are making improvements in the reliability of their products, getting awareness of this improvement to the public up to fourteen months earlier could make the difference between surviving, and not surviving.

Comments? Please go to:  http://autowriters.com/blog/autowriter-spotlight-michael-karesh/

TOC

When it rains on the Detroit auto scene it pours, literally. The Detroit News reported that leaks in the roof of its Cobo Center exhibit hall threatened to splash salty and corrosive water onto priceless cars on display in the Championship Auto Show held there recently.  Bob Larivee, Jr., chief executive officer of Championship Auto Shows Inc. in Auburn Hills, which runs 18 auto shows around the country was quoted, "You're not going to get a guy to bring his $400,000 hot rod here from L.A. if the car might sit in a building with water leaking on it." Worse, the newspaper noted, the political squabble over who will repair the facility could threatened the North American International Automobile Show.

A white paper by Auto Pacific substantiates that auto industry atomization, increasing sales by creating more models to fit specific needs, no longer works. "With 2007 showing more models with fewer industry sales, the industry became unstable. By the end of 2008 with industry selling at a 10-million per year rate, sales per nameplate cratered. 2009 promises to be even more dire." The paper charts some of the consequences of nameplate proliferation on profitability and the effect on dealers, autoworkers and consumers when nameplates are eliminated.

The Texas Auto Writers Association has established a scholarship fund of $50,000 and is forming a committee to establish rules and standards for a Scholarship Program. Entries open for its Excellence Craft Writing Contest open June 1 and close September 1. . . . Two GM retirees living in South Carolina wrote CEO Rick Wagoner suggesting he, "view your retirees not as legacy costs but as an army of volunteers willing to help in the fight to return GM to profitability." They offered 400 hours of work for $1.00 per year. For example, they wrote, "Do you have an OnStar call from someone who is stranded in Greenville? We'll pick them up and fix them dinner while their car is being fixed. Do you have a truckload of tires at Michelin in Spartanburg. We'll drive them to Bowling Green, if the teamsters don't mind. Did your only door seal release engineer just quit? We'll come up to Warren and break in a new one."

Noted in passing: The customized Cadillac De Ville Parade Phateon "Popemobile" has been acquired by the Petersen Automobile Museum. . . . Racer Joel Miller, borrowing from a long-standing Jack Daniels promotion, plotted the entire body of his Star Mazda Championship car with 5 inch square "billboard" spaces available at $200.00 each for the season. (The distiller awards brand-loyal drinkers deeds to one inch square land parcels.) . . . GM might have considered something like that before disbanding its performance group or tried auctioning paddock passes as now being done by Formula One, although it is for charity. And last, the 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that clinched the first and only World Manufacturers Championship for the U.S. when Bob Bondurant drove it to victory at Reims, France is expected to bring a record eight-figure price for an American automobile when it is put on the block during the Dana Mecum Spring Auction, May 13-17, in Indianapolis, Ind.

TOC

Hachette Filipacchi Media has named Eddie Alterman, vice president and editor-in-chief of CAR AND DRIVER. He replaces John Owen who served as acting editor following the departure of Csaba Csere at the end of 2008. . . . The hundreds of thousands of former auto industry workers flooding the job markets include thousands of uniquely skilled specialists in varied fields from lumbar support to lubricants, fabrics to fasteners.  One such is John Donabedian who specialized for 10 years in getting inside a vehicles designer's head, seeing his or her vision and then capturing it digitally in development and at birth. He likens it to revealing the "soul" of the product. A kind of passionate involvement the industry can no longer staff full-time, so he too, is one of the highly skilled looking to change lanes. Contact John c/o armenphoto@gmail.com

WINDING ROAD E-magazine named Seyth Miersma as managing editor. . . After a lengthy but unsuccessful search for a new owner, The Rocky Mountain News closed the doors on the 150-year-old daily. Dave Van Sickle has a new email address: dvansickle@myfairpoint.net and is in the process of launching a new website of product news and reviews: www.allaboutautos.info

Finbarr O'Neill, whose name and frequent job shifts, keep him memorable, is now president of J.D. Power & Associates. Previously, he was a top executive with, Toyota, Hyundai, Mitsubishi and Reynolds & Reynolds. . . .Royal Ford, writing for his new employer, Global Post penned a moving tribute there to the late Porsche PR man Bob Carlson. If the link doesn't work, click on beats at the site then select wheels.

Comments? Please go to: 
http://autowriters.com/blog/lane-changes-march-2009/

TOC

George Blumberg, freelancer, wrote for NY Times, Chicago Tribune, AutoWeek

John Sweeney, a long-time member of NEMPA and former Executive Director of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts

David Scott, 90, once London, England correspondent for Ward’s Auto and former European editor for Popular Science and Automotive Engineering.

- 30-

Glenn

Glenn F. Campbell
Principal
autowriters.com

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• the tom tom
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talk back

Subject: Thanks for a very informative and thought-provoking newsletter

Hi Glenn,

I especially enjoyed reading your Feb. 2009 Autowriters.com newsletter.

For starters, it was encouraging to read that viable payments-for-contributors models may finally be emerging to replace the opportunities that are being lost to us in traditional print publications. It is high time that potential readers and advertisers realized that skilled contributors (writers and photographers alike) could not and would not continue to provide free or unrealistically low-priced content, and thus publicity, for automotive and motorsports products, services and events forever. We need (and, dare I say, deserve) to generate a living wage from our work.

Changing subjects, as a Miata owner (I’m on my third), I look forward to seeing the new quarterly Mx-5 (Miata) publication that you told us about. I forwarded that information to the San Diego Miata Club, via our newsgroup

Jan Wagner
Black 2006 Mx-5
jwagner2@san.rr.com
www.AutoMatters.net

___________________________

Subject: Re: 12.008 Autowriters.com Newsletter

Glenn:

I don't know what category to which my observations belong, but I'll offer them anyhow.

1. While print newspapers continue a downward spiral and auto blogs are on the ascendance, I predict that these blogs and on-line auto reporting will suffer a fate similar to most of the dot.com companies back in the 90's.

Ultimately, we will come to see that the Internet, while extraordinarily useful, and indeed timesaving, is built on sand and will eventually collapse. It may take decades for that to come about, or it might be the arrival of as yet unthought-of of way of communicating.

I'm sure that when the telegraph arrived, there were many observers who believed that this was the ultimate in rapid, widespread communication. For a while it was, but then the telephone, radio, and TV came into being, and the telegraph was ultimately relegated to past history.

2. Farrago used a meat cleaver when a scalpel would have done a more precise and accepted job. Add to his proclivity for the profane, his views and observations might have been more accepted by his colleagues had he not been so vulgar. GM may die, but it probably won't. If it survives under present conditions, even with a bailout, it will live a long time as a cripple.

Also, Farrago’s coming on the automotive scene in relatively recent years (he is only in his thirties) often contributed to his erroneous references to the automotive past.

I don't know if what I wrote fits into any categories, but it felt good writing them.

Russ Dodge

___________________________

Hello!

We have added a new dimension to Media Digest from this week, aimed at our readers from the automotive industry but also, I hope, of occasional interest to others as well. It's a weekly update from Carfacts and Vanfacts – our own automotive data specialists – which highlights changes to Great Britain’s new car & van prices and specifications. It's real and raw industry intelligence, and that's an incontrovertible fact!

Yours,

John Blau
Immediate Network Ltd
6 Wey Court, Mary Road, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4QU
www.immediatenetwork.com

___________________________

Hi Glenn:

Just a quick note to say I really enjoy getting the newsletter. It's one of a handful of things I get in my in-box that I read start to finish.

I thought I'd also mention that in amongst all the bad news about the publishing industry, Hemmings is doing some pretty exciting things.

First up, in the last three ABC growth rankings, Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car continues to be the fastest growing automotive publication in circulation. We're coming up on our fourth year of publication now, and we're continuously seeing growth between 17 and 24 percent in circulation. We're up over 40,000 subscribers these days and we're beginning to eclipse some magazines that have been long-standing household names in the publishing industry.

And this is true of all of our magazines (Hemmings Motor News, Hemmings Classic Car, Hemmings Muscle Machines). Each magazine saw growth over the last six-month period.

What are we doing to make this happen? We're featuring cars that people want to read about, and that they won't find for free online. We're taking our readers' feedback seriously, and we're strongly active in the hobby. We put on at least five events over the course of the summer, and that's in addition to bi-weekly cruise-ins we have here at our corporate offices in Bennington, Vermont.

Just thought you might be interested that it's not all bad news in publishing.

Regards,

Craig Fitzgerald
Editor
Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

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table of contents

Main

• the road ahead
• the tom tom
• road signs
• autowriters spotlight
• new roads
• pit notes
• lane changes
• across the finish line

Sidebar

• awards & events
• calendar
• motoring press organizations
• talk back

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