autowriters.com july 2008 newsletter

Enough readers have told us the Autowriters.com Newsletter is worthwhile that our undermanned and zero-paid staff is providing an opportunity for readers so inclined to offer monetary encouragement.  Nothing will happen if you do not, you will still get the Autowriters.com Newsletter as long as it is published and you do not take yourself off the distribution list.

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We will be taking an August Hiatus so this month's issue is a little longer than usual to carry you over until we return in September! Our email lines will continue to be open so you can send us your rants, raves and news.
 

Surprise! Wooden Horse reports a study a paid for by digital publisher Zinio found that 35% of digital magazine subscribers pay more attention to the ads than they do when reading physical magazines. It also suggests readers put a high value on ads that let them connect directly with advertisers. (Car And Driver has introduced inventory feature searches, shopping tools, photos and bar codes scannable by mobile phone cameras.) Top reasons for subscribing to a digital magazine rather than its print version included immediate delivery and access to content, the ability to store issues on one's computer, and the perception that digital subscriptions are less harmful to the environment . . . . Yet, WIRED magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, when asked in a Charlie Rose interview, "Do you have to be a print publication?” answered:

"What we're learning is that in an era where people have choices, the job of every print publication is to add value to the web. If you're a newspaper, and I say this as someone who loves newspapers, arguably you're a value-subtract medium -- the same product, but 18 hours late and it leaves smudgy ink on your fingers. If you're a monthly magazine, you are doing something the web doesn't do. It is long form, 8,000 words, photography, design, lavish spreads on high stock. I believe in these kinds of magazines in the same way I believe in books. A book is a superior product to reading the same material as text on a screen...I think a book has a place in the 21st century and I think a magazine [does] things that don't work on the web. And that is a good place to be for the magazine industry in the future."

Not necessarily for attracting the demographics that most advertisers shoot for.

An Associated Press survey of 18 to 24-year-old online readers in six cities around the world, revealed that most of them preferred skimming headlines to reading in-depth analysis of complex issues. They get their “news” when they open their E Mail and describe looking up information on the web as “work.” . . . U.S.News & World Report, is endeavoring to answer this “too much data, too little time” dilemma with its www.RankingsAndReviews.com, a growing online resource that simplifies sorting through conflicting purchasing information for a number of products. The site launched "Best Cars & Trucks" in fall 2007 to capture and analyze validated data and expert opinions from many leading sources of automotive information in one place, providing consumers with an augmented "review of reviews." (See TrueDelta.com in Pit Notes).

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Autowriters.Com invites readers to submit their own Clog
(Online Column).  Your reward: a byline and an audience of your peers.  All submissions are acknowledged, queued
and used at the editor’s discretion. 

Eric H. Killorin is a web and publishing consultant living in Middlebury, Vermont. His blog www.carpubinsider.com chronicles the “The Future of Automotive Magazines” and includes a database of 240 vehicle publications with selected circulation figures. Eric has spent 28 years in publishing in both consumer and business audiences, has won the Folio award for direct response, was founder and publisher of Mobilia Magazine, and launched the first automotive specialty website in 1995. He collects and restores vintage cars and judges at national concours.

Can Automotive Magazines Survive
the Online Tsunami?
 

Publishers’ stress levels are off the charts thanks to sharply reduced ad revenues, higher fulfillment costs, and a mass exodus of readers to online blogs, forums, and shopping services.  The iPod generation of car buyers and enthusiasts favor pixels over print, and tree huggers have set their wrath on newsstand waste. Sounds like a perfect storm.

Over 240 domestically-produced titles aimed at car, truck, and motorcycle readers are in the midst of dramatic change.  Let’s look at the trends shaping this new information age.  First, a few "stats".  Between 2002 and 2006, The Fab Four were down a collective 9.2% in paid circ. From 2002 to 2007, AutoWeek was off by a whopping 26% or 93,000 paid subs, 91,000 in one year alone.  According to eMarketer, nearly 32% of consumers in the market for a vehicle go online and, get this, check out non-vehicle maker websites.  Magazines rank 5th, or 7%, among car buyers. How many new magazine launches have you heard about lately?

Many publishers have adopted a print-centric model for their online channel that, by its nature, forces the consumer to adapt rather than accomplish a simple task.  A good example is titles that have taken on a second life as digital magazines, or “eZines,” where print pages are repurposed for the web.  A win-win, you might say?  Not so fast, eZines had their place during the web’s formative nineties when publishers struggled to identify ways to develop an online presence.  Today, content-rich blogs, niche forums, e-commerce, and ubiquitous broadband service have outstripped the ability of an inherently restrictive eZine to be a compelling online resource.  Simply put, an eZine is a Web Edsel.

Hemmings Motor News, Trader Publications, Old Cars Weekly, along with “The Fab Four” comprising Car & Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend, and Automobile, have devoted much time and many dollars to maintaining two overlapping channels with their respective versions of eZines or similar.  As a result, their effectiveness in adapting to new opportunities is reduced, and both efforts are likely to take a beating.  Veterans of ink and paper are still making the key decisions at the publisher level and are consequently heavily invested in sustaining what they know.

Harsh stuff, you might say?  Look no further than the music industry’s ill-conceived response to digital audio.  A cheaper “shuffle” world has replaced album structures and physical media like compact discs, resulting in rampant industry downsizing. Magazines, like albums, have a start, middle, an end, but the web is continuous without “chapters” and folios.  If my 17-year old is any indication, he’ll buy his next vehicle through Facebook or a Podcast.

Readers have an unprecedented new power on the web nearly equal to writer and publisher.  Influential blogs are shaping product launches and online auctions sites allow buyers and sellers to make deals just minutes after a car or part hits the screen.  On any given day, eBay Motors has 40,000 vehicles for sale and their re-launched Winding Road web magazine has shifted from high-profile writers to no-buck reader contributions.

Yup, a perfect storm.  Yet from the receding tide comes a wealth of new opportunities.  Think of the cost savings without paper, ink, and postage, not to mention costly direct marketing and catalogs.  That’s not to say publishers can stop the presses and overnight be profitable online.  It takes sticky content delivered in a compelling format in order to monetize reader and advertiser traffic.  Nothing new here.  As with digital audio, demand for music has not abated; in fact, the web has expanded artists’ reach and consumer appetite.  So to with words about automobiles and everything associated with automotive culture.

Writers enjoy the inalienable right to communicate.  Good copy will always find an audience.  Readers need to make informed decisions, be entertained, or sold a product or service.  It’s not the need for information that’s changed, it’s the format in which the information is delivered.  With greater sources for news and commerce, comes the expectation of increased depth of content. Upcoming generations of car buyers will seek out your wisdom and advice--provided they are able to find it.

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

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Wooden Horse News reports Car And Driver publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media is revamping all their websites, beginning with the biggest, www.womansday.com.  Mediaweek reported that "a source familiar with the strategy said the emphasis seemed to be on creating community features and aggregating content from elsewhere rather than original journalism. 'They're trying to figure out what the sites will look like, but they're not expecting a ton of original content,' this person said."

Tameka Kee, writing in Online Media Daily (Searching For A New Car, You Tube Style) reports a recent study commissioned by Google revealed, “Consumers are increasingly finding out about new makes and models through online video. Nearly half (49%) of all in-market shoppers and about a third (31%) of recent buyers surveyed had been exposed to new vehicle choices for the first time through online video . . .”  That is good news for journalists who are able to generate online buzz about cars because a Nielsen CGM/Homescan Buzzfacts study revealed that more than half of consumer generated media (CGM) is posted because of product experience or response to material posted on a site.

While a good deal of the media research results tends to favor its sponsor’s interests (see Google above) it is still worth noting that newspapers are reportedly enjoying a three-to-one lead over other local market advertising competition according to a specialist in local market advertising, Borrell Associates. . . Karl Greenberg, writing for Media Post,  says a study by research firm Synovate shows that most consumers don’t get how hybrids work and the differences between them.  Once they do, the study revealed, consumer interest in hybrids doubled while interest in flex-fuel cars dropped considerably.  Also noted in the research, consumers placed Toyota and Honda well ahead of other manufacturers in the field of hybrid and alternative fuels.

A provocative quote from a study report by PR firm Fleishman Hillard, “journalists and bloggers are increasingly one and the same.” . . . In a letter to the New York Times, American Copy Editors Society president Chris Wienandt averred that despite the Newseum’s failure to document the place of copy editing in journalism, “copy editing is not going away.”  But it may be going far away.  The Associated Press reported Mindworks Global Media, which is based outside of New Delhi, India will take over copy editing duties for some Orange County (Calif.) Register stories and handle page layout for a Register community newspaper for one month.

eBay Motors has launched a division for marketing certified pre-owned (CPO) vehicles, CPO cars and trucks. The new property will be exclusively sponsored by Lexus, but initially also carries General Motors and Chrysler vehicles.

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At the risk of enjoying it too much, or being caught in a Little Orphan Annie Mug kind of infinite regression with Ezra Dyer writing about Ezra Dyer writing about Ezra Dyer, ad infinitum, he gave AWCom the facts to do with as we might.

Salient among them is his uncommon coupling of humor and auto journalism that began because he loves cars (he says he was bombing around Maine woods in a 1982 Subaru wagon at age 11 and still has a stack of car magazines from the ‘80s) and because he began his writing career as a humor columnist and feature writer for The Improper Bostonian.  It is an 85,000 circulation glossy biweekly offering a calendar of Greater Boston events plus numerous features and columns.  Dyer has been in every issue since starting there in 1999.

The absence of an insistent ego, a bemused look at his world and of course, his nimble use of words has made the marriage of genres work.  It started with a query that brought a counter proposal that led to what he calls, “probably the most important 300 words I ever wrote,” a spec article for Automobile Magazine on his experience as an IROC owner, titled, "For Those About to 'ROC, I Salute You."  The editors liked it and paid him for it.  Emboldened by that success, Dyer committed to becoming an auto writer and co-opted one of his Improper columns to prove with a review of the Corvette Z06 that a car review would be read by people who don’t care about cars - if it was funny.  Sending a clip of that column to his Automobile Magazine contact, former editor Mark Gillis, brought a meeting and acceptance of his feature story idea: “They Shoot Cars, Don’t They?”  It involved buying a $350 Cadillac Eldorado and driving it to Maine to be used as a target at the Hiram Maxim Machine-Gun Shoot. 

To strengthen his “creds” as an auto writer, he joined the New England Motor Press Association, began test driving cars and writing reviews for Automobile Online.  Those led to print assignments for the magazine’s Driven section.  That began what he calls “a snowball effect.”  His Automobile reviews were read by an Esquire editor who proposed Dyer write some reviews for that publication.  Those prompted editors at the New York Times to invite him to contribute articles and then his former online editor at Automobile, Greg Anderson, relocated to The Robb Report and invited him to contribute there as well.

Dyer still does a humor column for Improper and in the last year added a regular column for Automobile: Dyer Consequences.  It allows his agile mind and light touch to wander somewhat at will in autodom.  Recent columns have included one on “Stripper Cars.”  Not the kind of high school fantasy but a nostalgic recall of cars with side vents for air conditioning and a cigarette lighter as an amenity.  Another column opined that a car’s billing influences its owner’s behavior.  Not necessarily unmarried driving a family car, but drivers conforming to a car’s miles-per-gallon estimates.  Hard to the floor with a Porsche and light on the pedal with a Prius.  With Dyer it is soft on censure and strong on affection for our car culture.

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Coventry University in England offers an MA in Automotive Journalism.  Is there anything similar in the U.S?  Or a scholarship like the 1500 pounds, trophy and internship presented annually by that country’s Guild of Motoring Writers?

The Consumer Federation of America contends there are serious specific and analytical errors in the recently mandated new fuel economy standards.  Contact: Jack Gillis, CFA, 202-737-0766 or jack@jagillis.com. . . . J.D. Power’s 2008 Manufacturer’s Web Site Evaluation survey of consumers put Kia ahead of BMW, Lexus and Ford. . . . Bridgestone Firestone is taking its “Drive and Learn Classroom Behind The Wheel” to 15 markets this summer.  Contact Susan Sizemore for a complete schedule and information at sizemoresusa@bfusa.com. 

The Trader Media Group in England is re-launching its Top Marques magazine and website this month. . . . VAuto is helping car dealers keep pace with the rapidly changing auto market by providing continual updates on how days supply and gasoline prices affect the market price of new cars on their lots. For more information contact: jcabadas@usautocom.com. 

Writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ed Wallace notes that the widely reported departure of 10 million cars from our roads when gasoline hits $7.00 a gallon does not predict what this drop in users and a concomitant price motivated reduction in use by those cars that remain on the road will mean for the per barrel price of oil.

Michael Karesh’s www.TrueDelta.com web site provides three very handy measures for buyers in the market for a car or truck or journalists impatient with screen or press kit hopping: an easy to use side-by side, feature-by-feature cost comparison of models, actual user experience with respect to repairs and their miles per gallon. The last two depend on the reports of the steadily growing number of TrueDelta site members.  Check the www.truedelta.com website or contact: michael@truedelta.com.

Source Interlink has combined its Modified Mustangs and Mustang and Ford magazines in a new monthly titled: Modified Mustangs and Fords with Mark Houlahan as editor. . . . Mazda’s SCCA Pro Racing Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup Series will have all eight races broadcast in an expanded 60-minute package by DIRECTV and DISH Network. They also will be seen on regional outlets.

A check on Michael Hollander’s progress since AWCom’s report of the serious ailment he contracted a few decades ago while in the U.S, Navy brought this encouraging report: “I'm still on long-term disability, battling the mesothelioma.  The good news is that we have the fluid under control. ...The bad news is that I'm still quite tired. I'm happy to chat with anyone and the pain is under control.”  He can be reached at: racing@motorsportsforum.com.

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Keith Naughton has been named Midwest Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine, adding responsibility for the publication’s Chicago Bureau as well as its Detroit bureau where he has been bureau chief since 1999. . . . Steve Levy and Jonny Lieberman, erstwhile Jalopnik commentator, have launched a new website: www.AutoFiends.com.  Lieberman continues as West Coast Bureau Chief for The Truth About Cars. . . . Rick Cotta has been promoted from Senior Editor to Managing Editor for Consumer Guide’s automotive staff. . . . Brian Chee, formerly an AutobyTel editor, has launched a website about life with cars: www.DriveThruLife.com.  He can be reached at brian_chee@yahoo.com. . . . Bob Beamesderfer, another recent alum of AutobyTel, is freelancing and can be reached at rsb95@earthlink.net. . . . Tony Barthel very definitely plans to continue his Curbside Auto column and website and in fact, has added a small newspaper chain to its self-syndicated distribution since acquiring the unique Featherbed Railroad Bed and Breakfast Resort on scenic Clear Lake in northern California. . . . Nguyet Le Thomas writes that she is settling in as editor
of the new combination of Styling & Performance and Off-Road Business Magazines at Advanstar Publications.  Former Styling & Performance editor, the peripatetic Mike Anson, will continue as a contributing writer. . . . The late Ray Plumly, has been replaced as auto editor at Safety and Research by editor president Sean Kane. . . . Greg Rager, long-time Mopar writer for Amos Publications and its predecessors, is now freelancing and can be reached at gregrager@aol.com.  Although retired, Jim Meachen continues to serve the Goldsboro News Argus as contributing auto writer. . . . Ari Natter has succeeded Earle Eldridge covering trucking and government regulations for Traffic World. . . . James Amos has replaced John Norton at the Pueblo Chieftain. . . . Dan Passe is now Director of Communications and Marketing for Penske Racing in Mooresville, NC. . . . Jennifer Capasso departed
Ketchum Public Relations to manage PR at Mazda Raceway, Laguna Seca, CA. . . . VINTAGE RACECAR JOURNAL named veteran writer/editor John Zimmermann as an associate editor.

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added starter

Jeff Mohr, CEO of Mohr Mfg. submitted a clog that was a cogent assembly of facts on the most expensive SUVs to fix after a rear-end collision. It made good reading but amounted to a pitch for his product. However, he tells us he welcomes journalists quoting from it with proper credit or from the 50 others under “White Papers” on his web site, www.superbumper.com. Among them are:

• Why Pickup Truck Bumpers Will Never Get Better

• Only An Absolute Fool Would Buy Another Receiver Hitch Toy If They Read This

• Why Women Almost Always Get Injured In A Rear End Collision

• The Two Most Frequent Vehicle Accidents

• Three Reasons To Throw Away Your Spare Tire

• Don't Let Naked Drivers 'Lay You Up'

• Why Auto Body Repair Shops 'Hate Our Guts'

• How A Bumper Can Save More Lives Than A Backup Alarm Or Camera

• Five Fairy Tales Of Automobile Bumpers

• Four Myths of Whiplash

• Protecting Your Rear From Weirdo's, Losers and Lunatics

• The Most Common Trailer Hitch Mistake - You're Probably Making It Right Now

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Glenn

Glenn F. Campbell
Principal
autowriters.com

table of contents

• the road ahead

• the tom tom

• road signs

• autowriters spotlight

• pit notes

• lane changes

• added starter

• 2008 vehicle awards

• awards, honors & events

• calendar

• motoring press organizations

• talk back

subscription info

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vehicle awards list

CONSENSUS AWARDS ANNOUNCED

Americans love a winner and for those who bought a 2008 new car, there is a good chance they have one.  Autowriters.com has identified 274 possible winners crowned by 26 different press groups, print or digital magazines, web sites, research firms or independent panels.

Of course, it may be “mud buster of the year” cold weather champ” or “cup holder sweepstakes winner” or another unique distinction, but a win is a win, right?

Many models share their award with one or more other “winners.”  And, there may be disagreement about the relative significance of one award versus another.

The awards are not weighted. All are treated equally and in the case of ties all are counted as a winner. In the bragging game, however, who cares about details. Forget that it was one of 10 new models similarly honored or that your car shares its accolade with three other cars in one of 78 classes. It’s a winner!

Compiling the proliferation of distinctions is not meant to suggest that awards do not have benefit beyond the added awareness or increased circulation/ readership of their sponsors.

GM took top manufacturer honors with Buick, Cadillac.  Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac compiling 51 awards between them. Toyota followed with Lexus, Scion and Toyota models garnering 38. Then Ford with 19 plus Mercury, 5 and Lincoln, 7, totaling 31. Audi had a surprising 14 accolades.

If you discover an award that is not listed, too late for this report. But let AWCom know in case we decide to undertake this exercise for 2009 models – which, incidentally, already has two winners.

A complete breakout of the various awards and winners can be had in either a PDF or Word format - gratis! Click on the link:

CONSENSUS AWARDS FOR 2008
 

awards,honors&events

motoring press organizations

The 14 regional automotive press associations provide information and background not easily found elsewhere.
  If they are too distant to attend their meetings, belonging usually gives you access to transcripts or reports of these events and other benefits.

talk back

Hi there,

I just wanted to drop you a line to say how much I enjoy receiving your newsletter. I am a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), and also a member of the IMPA. I’m basically freelance, but predominately, I pen new car reviews and automotive news articles for www.auto123.com. I also contribute to www.cartest.ca, together with a couple of local Toronto lifestyle magazines.

Naturally, I keep abreast of what’s happening within the journo scene in Canada. However, as I’ve made several good friends on my annual trips to the IMPA Test Days, and met some wonderful American scribes on press trips that I’ve made to the U.S., I enjoy following the industry news south of the border.

So keep up the good work, I for one, very much appreciate it.

Regards,

Kevin “Crash” Corrigan
 

The boys at Microsoft would like nothing better for all media to be sent electronically. They truly wish to control everything electronic but I think Balmy (excuse me, I meant Mr. Balmer {sp?}) has it wrong saying that within 10 years ALL media would be electronic. For one thing, receiving electronic media in a readable format -- and I don't mean miniscule cell phone screens -- means carrying around a battery-powered laptop or book reader. In a decade, I am sure these devices will be offering better technology but any kind of screened device is difficult to read at the beach, in the bath, etc. Plus, you can't roll up a notebook and stick it in your pocket and you daren't lay down your electronic reader for a moment since it will get stolen. Lose a magazine and you are out $5. Electronic devices are considerably more pricey. Besides, how would be able to read the new media reliably on Microsoft-"engineered" software. I've been using their products since 1981 and while they now offer lots of bells and whistles, there hasn't been much quality improvement.

When the TV debuted in the 1940s it was said that it would displace, radio, the movies and the printed publication. Guess what, we still have all three! And if I remember correctly, back in 1981, when the first Kaypro and Compac computers came out, a lot of people said that we would be in a printless world within 10 years. Not only did that not happen, we now have more paper than ever! True daily newspapers are hurting, but there are more books and magazines being published than ever before.

Peter D. duPre
Editor, MC2 Magazine
http://www.autoword.net

duPre adds: Living in the Seattle area, as I do, it is important to understand that it is like living with an elephant in the garden (Microsoft). They are huge and there isn't much you can do about them!
 

Hi Glenn --

I enjoyed the April autowriters.com, with its many interesting items. I wonder if the death of newspapers isn't that they are so far out of touch with the population. They are all for immigration, legal and illegal, but the man on Main Street has to pay the hospital bills of those people. They are in favor of ever bigger government, while the population wants it smaller, etc.

Thanks for printing the thing on the John Fitch oil tank problem. I've been doing a bit of work on that myself. People are getting behind him and I hope it turns out OK.

The item on the Alcan Rally highlights the problem in journalism of thinking that participation in a field eliminates objectivity. It's the made-up rationale of getting too close to people and events being covered. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. This is ignorance masquerading as objectivity. In fact it is the elevation of ignorance to cult status.

Finally, your mention of Tom Bryant's retirement prompted me to send him a note. I worked with him recently on an article for an MG magazine - it included a profile of Henry Manney.

More later

Carl (Goodwin)

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table of contents

• the road ahead

• the tom tom

• road signs

• autowriters spotlight

• pit notes

• lane changes

• added starter

• 2008 vehicle awards

• awards, honors & events

• calendar

• motoring press organizations

• talk back

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