autowriters.com october 2010 newsletter

Data and The Future of Journalism

Excerpts from an article written by Paul Bradshaw for The International Press Institute's “Brave News Worlds.”

“Over the last year an increasing number of news organizations have started to wake from their story-centric production lines and see the value of data.

“When I talk about data I mean information that can be processed by computers. This is a crucial distinction: it is one thing for a journalist to look at a balance sheet on paper; it is quite another to be able to dig through those figures on a spreadsheet, or write a programming script to analyze the data, and match it to other sources of information... Adding computer processing power to our journalistic arsenal allows us to do more, faster, more accurately and with others.

“Journalists should be familiar with the open data movement and the linked data movement. The open data movement campaigns for important information, the linked data movement campaigns for data to be made available in such a way that it can be linked to other sets of data.

“Data journalism takes in a huge range of disciplines, from Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) and programming, to visualization and statistics. If you are a journalist with strength in one of those areas, you are currently exceptional. This cannot last for long: the industry will have to skill up, or it will have nothing left to sell.

“And then there is the commercial opportunity. Publishing is for most publishers, after all, not about selling content but about selling advertising. And here also data has taken on increasing importance. The mass market was a hack. As the saying goes: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

“But Google, Facebook and others have used the measurability of the web to reduce the margin of error, and publishers will have to follow suit. It makes sense to put data at the centre of that – while you allow users to drill into the data you have gathered around automotive safety, the offering to advertisers is likely to say “We can display different adverts based on what information the user is interested in”, or “We can point the user to their local dealership based on their location”.

“I have a hope that this will lead to a more collaborative form of journalism. The biggest resource a publisher has is its audience. Until now publishers have simply packaged up that resource for advertisers. But now that the audience is able to access the same information and tools as journalists, to interact with publishers and with each other, they are valuable in different ways.”

Comments: Road Ahead-Data and the Future of Journalism.

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Craig Hover has spent his lifetime in-and-around the auto industry. He is the senior editor of the 99-year-old Automobile Red Book, and currently writes articles for Chevy Enthusiast Magazine and the Examiner.

Craig Hover

I really enjoy getting the Autowriters.com newsletter each month in my e-mail, and I was pleasantly surprised when Glenn asked me to be the "Featured Autowriter" for October. I have a great deal of respect for most of the folks that are profiled on here, and I'm proud to be considered for this honor.

I guess the thing that put me on the radar was that I won an award for "Best Single Blog Written for the Internet" last year in the automotive writing contest at www.internetcarandtruckoftheyear.com. The award was for a story that I posted on Examiner.com about getting a flat tire. It was one of my first articles over there, and written in a style that is completely against Examiner's guidelines. But I had fun writing it, and most stories seem to be better when you do them to have fun rather than follow guidelines anyway. You can still see it here: http://www.examiner.com/automotive-in-kansas-city/the-big-flat-my-apologies-to-raymond-chandler?render=print.

For me, writing about cars actually fostered an automotive career, but not strictly as an automotive writer. I started in the early 1990s when I was writing race car profiles for the weekly programs at a couple of Kansas City-area NASCAR short tracks. Eventually, that led to the marketing director job at those tracks, and later, the general manager position at I-70 Speedway. We held an annual NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, as well as ASA, USAC, and NASCAR Weekly Racing Series events. That job offered solid experience in writing race recaps, driver profiles, and marketing materials and press releases.

I also was able to knock out a Master's Degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from the University of Kansas during that time, and took on a side job as the editor of the motorsports section of Kansas City Sports and Fitness magazine. After a successful run at I-70, the track was eventually sold, and I drifted away from motorsports a bit.

Seven years ago I became the editor of Penton Media's Automobile Red Book. Next year the Red Book will celebrate its 100th anniversary, which is to say that it is the oldest vehicle valuation guide in the country. It is used by many state and local governments, major insurance companies, appraisers, and auto dealers. I'm responsible for basically every editorial aspect of the book, which requires lots of research on vehicle specifications and pricing. Some of that is fairly detail-oriented and mundane, but it allows me to go on ride and drives and product previews. We also attend major auto shows and related automotive gatherings around the country to help us better understand the products that we are researching.

I felt like those experiences were teaching us more than just pricing details about new cars, so I added a new addition to the Red Book called "On the Cover." Now, every edition of the Red Book has pictures of six new vehicles printed on the cover, and I write short reviews or summaries of those vehicles which appear in the back. The reviews also appear on the Price Digests website.

Putting those reviews together reminded me how much I enjoyed writing about cars, so I opened up a Kansas City Automotive page on Examiner.com. Examiner gets quite a bit of flak because of the inexperienced writers that they seem to be willing to hire, and their lackluster payment. Certainly, I wish they paid more, but it isn't my real job, so I don't depend on it to feed my family. And honestly, I don't even read very many other pages on there to make a determination on how other people are doing. It has just worked out as an interesting experiment to me. I try and write the best car-related stories I can, and hope that people will enjoy them and want to come back. I think it's working, because out of some 450 local writers, my automotive column has been number one in Kansas City every single week for nearly two years now. And to get back to my racing roots, I also recently picked up the Kansas City Motorsports page on Examiner.

The Examiner led to a few other opportunities. I was able to write a couple of feature articles for Amos Publishing's Chevy Enthusiast Magazine. And it also inspired me to stretch my Internet writing efforts and create my own blog.

Today, my Internet efforts are focused on my new Hover Motor Company blog. It was named after the used car lots my granddad had from the 1930s through the 1970s, and contains car show recaps, automotive history articles, and even some personal stories. Right now, it only pulls in about 1,000 page views a day, but it steadily increases each week, and I am receiving a great deal of positive feedback. The biggest challenge there isn't with coming up with quality content, so much as promoting the site and manipulating through the rigmarole that makes it rank well in a Google search.

I am always open to writing for new publications or trying new things when it comes to my automotive exploits. I really do it because I have a lifelong love of cars, and I genuinely enjoy writing about them. And I am especially honored when I win an award like the www.internetcarandtruckoftheyear.com recognition, or I am featured on a great web destination like Autowriters.com.

Examples of my Internet material can be found at the following locations:

I sincerely thank Autowriters.com for the opportunity to be featured here. I realize that compared to most of the pros here, my story is about as exciting as watching paint dry. But it's a big deal to me, and my mom will be proud.

Comments: Autowriters Spotlight: Craig Hover

Riverside (Calif.) International Automotive Museum is holding a reception and book signing October 16 for Lenny T. Miller author of “Racing While Black.” . . .To raise funds, the ladies of the U. K.’s Doghouse Club (Women’s Motor Racing Associates Club) are producing a 2011 Calendar that features not themselves in provocative poses but race car drivers including Sir Stirling Moss and Michael Schumacher among others – in racing but not racy settings.

The $10,000,000 Progressive Automotive X Prize was divided among three teams that produced test vehicles able to get more than 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. Edison2 of Lynchburg, Va. Won $5,000,000 for its “mainstream” entry that achieved 102.5 miles per gallon running on E85 ethanol. The remaining $5,000,000 was shared equally between Li-ion Motors Corp. of Mooresville, N.C. and X-Tracer from Winterthur, Switzerland. They both built futuristic electric vehicles, with the Swiss car achieving the equivalent of 205 mpg. . . . Members of the U.K.-based Motorsports Industry Association, which bills itself as, “the world's leading trade association for motorsport's performance engineering, services and tuning industry” will spend five days in early December touring NASCAR facilities and landmarks in Daytona, including the newly re-paved track.

For the fifth time Honda has won the Union of Concerned Scientists Award for fielding the U.S. motor vehicle fleet with the lowest levels of smog-forming and greenhouse gas emissions. . . .While the Internet provides the numbers that make it both easy and affordable for car makers to dilute the value of auto writers by taking promotions and contests directly to consumers, Mitsubishi is the first in the U.S. to make it possible to actually drive a new car from your computer. According to Marketing Daily, the company is letting people around the country "drive" a real Outlander Sport on a closed course by controlling it remotely with their computers. People can sign up to do the drive starting on Oct. 15 at www.OutlanderSport.com, where they will get a code that can be used to queue for the live test drive on opening day, Nov. 1. The program runs to Nov. 10.

The awards season has begun: voting is now open for The Internet Car and Truck of The Year and entries are being accepted for the Internet Automotive Journalist Competition. Complete rules and entry forms are available for both at www.internetcarandtruckoftheyear.com. . . .The 15th Annual Urban Wheels Awards January 9th will promote "green" to people of color with a Green Car Show and Technology Exhibit in conjunction with its star-studded celebration of emerging diversity in the auto industry . . . Car Art is offering a selection of 40 Jaguar artworks in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Jaguar name.

Jack Baruth in his recent derisive The Truth About Cars descriptions of automotive journalism and its practitioners prompted a thoughtful response from Toronto Star Wheels editor Mark Richardson. It can be read at: http://thestar.blogs.com/wheels_world/2010/10/wheels-journalistic-ethics.html  . . . The Peking to Paris Rally is still in progress and scheduled to end opposite the Ritz Hotel on Saturday, Oct.16 at 1:00 pm. Leading in the Pioneer Category (cars through 1926,) is a Vauxhall 30-98 driven by Hugh and Nellie Bishop. Steven and Jane Hyde, driving a 1938 Chevy Fangio Coupe competing in the Vintageants Class (cars through 1940) are the overall leaders and a 64 Holden driven by 74-yer-old Gerry Crown, leads the Classic Category.

Comments: Passing Scene: October 2010

The October 6 Media Digest reported a survey conducted by Carleton University that revealed, “a website has as little as 50 milliseconds – or just 1/20 of a second- to make a good first impression.” And, compounding that snap reaction, “once a visitor forms an impression on a subconscious level, he or she will selectively search for information confirming that impression.”  We like to be right and if that first reaction is negative, we will “tend to overlook positives for further negatives, regardless of quality of the product a business might be selling. “ The moral of the survey, Media Digest writes, “Best hire a good designer.”

Ypulse president, Dan Coates, billed by Media Post as “a leading authority on tween, teen, college and young adult insights, writes on the, “Social Network Disconnect” in that publication, “Gen Y is the first generation in human history to, as children, be more technologically advanced than their parents. Their use of technology is pervasive and sophisticated. You can pretty much count on the totality of Gen Y to be online and connected. Research conducted by the Insights division of Ypulse in September 2010 shows 94% of Gen Y to be on Facebook, spending 11.4 hours a week within its pearly blue gates. This connectivity is nearly ubiquitous, with more than three quarters (78%) of high school and college students connecting to their preferred social network via their mobile phone. Mobile devices and the Facebook platform are the glue that keeps this generation connected. (Gen Y: those born between 1982 and 2004). Generation Y is accustomed to multi-tasking, processing information five times faster than do their parents but as Kate Yarrow points out in her book, Generation BuY, having grown up with technology, they learned they can get what they want when they want it. Therefore they are impatient but, because they have grown up with a surfeit of information instantly available, they are also in search of reliable, trustworthy guidance.

Mike Doherty, president of Cole Weber United agency, wrote for Marketing Post: “To successfully engage this group, you can't advertise to them; you have to invite them to participate in something bigger than advertising. Marketers need to give young people ready access to the content they create and enable them to participate with it, create their own and share it. They need to inspire and engage youth and then reward them for participating.

Comments: Road Signs: October 2010

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Tom-Tom rants, raves, rambles and ruminations are volunteered and express the opinions of the writer. Autowriters.Com invites readers to submit a tom-tom.  Your reward: a byline and an audience of your peers.  All submissions are acknowledged, queued and used at the editor’s discretion. 

Keith Griffin's reviews of new cars and articles about the automotive industry have appeared in national publications like AutoExec magazine and leading regional publications like The Boston Globe and The Improper Bostonian. His automotive writing regularly appears in Hartford Magazine, AutoExec Magazine, Stonebridge Press Newspapers and Life Newspapers among others. He is also a regular guest on local radio stations to explain automotive issues and has done research for a major new car website. Keith belongs to both the International and New England Motor Press Associations and is founder of the Internet Car & Truck of the Year awards.

Automotive Bloggers Need To Come Together To Move Forward

Keith Griffin

Since creating the Internet Car and Truck of the Year awards in early 2009 I have more closely followed the automotive blogging community. In those 18 months I have come to the following conclusions: there’s a lot of talent out there, mystery revolves around what makes one blogger more important than another, and bloggers need to come together as a group to professionalize what we do.

Talent

One part of the Internet Car and Truck of the Year awards is the Internet Automotive Writing Competition. Open to anybody who writes about automobiles on the Internet, last year’s inaugural contest attracted scores of entries, including some from manufacturer reps who maintain a company blog.

I took an important message away from judging the entries (along with others) and my increased interest in automotive bloggers. Not all writers are twenty-something gearheads with no formal education clacking away one finger at a time in their mothers’ basements. There are talented bloggers on the web with engaging, intelligent writing styles. Names that come to mind include Alex Nunez from Autoblog, Jason Fogelson from About.com, Lyndon Conrad Bell of Sports Car Monitor (who won for a piece written at Examiner.com of all places – the horrors!), Jil McIntosh from Canada, and most things written by Jonny Lieberman, even if he has defected back to the Dark Ages of print.

Actually, bringing up Lieberman reminds me of something else. Good Internet writers can work on both sides of the fence but print scribes struggle when trying to handle the intricacies of search engine optimization, good linking, and other things. Print journalists will sputter in their coffee but there is a science to Internet automotive writing.

Rating the Bloggers

Unfortunately there is no exact science when it comes to rating the automotive blogs, which can end up with one blog getting more prestige based solely on who writes it vs. other blogs attracting tens of thousands of page views a week.

There’s also a disturbing trend towards denying the tools of the trade to automotive bloggers in favor of "mommy bloggers" with the belief the latter is the only place a woman will turn to for car-shopping advice. (It’s the age-old problem of lifestyle vs. trade but in a digital world.) Does nobody else think it’s insulting to women to think them incapable of researching a new car purchase thoroughly by seeking out experts in the field? I wouldn’t buy a car because some guy at www.AllAboutGuys.com told me to nor would I expect women to base a purchase on advice from www.MommyKnowsBest.com. (Neither site offers car advice by the way.)

Both bloggers and manufacturers need to remember that 91% of all automotive purchases begin on the Internet. We’re the information portal for people actually buying cars and not just ogling the pretty pictures. We’re the influencers when it comes to signing on the dotted line.

I’m also aware that word-of-mouth is a valuable marketing tool but when all is said and done, people still come to the Internet to research their new car purchase.

Self Promotion

Bloggers as a class need to do a better job of promoting their readership. Some print journos (which is my background) like to say, for example, they have “100,000 readers.” But they don’t – their publications have 100,000 readers. Who knows, in the case of newspapers, how many people are even reading their columns and not “Dilbert”?

On the web, with simple software, you know how many readers you have. It’s a defined measurable quantity. An Internet blogger with 100,000 page views a month has trouble getting review cars, yet a writer for a crappy little daily with 9000 total circulation gets invited on press trips. There needs to be a better system.

That’s one reason the Internet Car of the Year is in the early planning stages of creating an Internet automotive writers group. One thing the Internet does surprisingly well is dilute the influence of its many little fiefdoms. If they could come together, they would be the ruling class instead of being the serfs.

Such a group is going to be necessary because one thing the blogging world needs to do is finally vet itself. A credentialing process, of sorts, needs to be created to bring us as a group out of the basement and into a professional environment. Admittedly, we have to differentiate those of us committed to the craft and those hoping to scam a free Mustang for the weekend.

Just like the members of the MPG, IMPA, NEMPA and MAWA can work together while still being competitors, so, too, must the automotive blogging community. While we will still need to be part and parcel of those groups (if for nothing else than track days), we need to come together to promote ourselves going forward.

Automotive bloggers are at a point in their existence where they need to set definable standards for what they do and demonstrate once and for all they belong at the table.

Comments: The Tom-Tom: Keith Griffin

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Forbes’ new plan to mix editorial and paid blogs further dims the line between editorial and advertising but if it catches on, it could mean opportunity for out-of-work journalists. As reported in Advertising Age by Michael Learmonth, "this isn't the 'sponsored post' of yore; rather, it is giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand.” Learmonth goes on to quote Forbes' Lewis Dvorkin, "There's fewer ways to get your message out, because there are fewer reporters, and that's a fact.” Instead of the publishers hiring more writers, corporations and advocacy groups would employ professionals to provide a flow of contextual content not only to Forbes’ web site but the magazine and “everywhere Forbes content is published. This is where publishing is headed.”

Not necessarily direct opportunity for writers but possibly indicative of a trend, Bloomberg Markets Magazine is relaunching in November with a redesign and more editorial space. . . . If the following quote from the U.K.’s Media Digest is correct, there certainly must be a new road ahead for The New York Times: “Speaking at the Wan-Ifra International Newsroom Summit, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. admitted ‘we will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future’." The Digest added: “The NYT is fighting to stay relevant to a new generation of readers by adding social networking features, supplemented with plans to introduce a paywall to the website early next year.”

Worse news comes from a NY Times article by David Carr about the new approach at The Chicago Tribune, now in the midst of bankruptcy. He quotes a Tribune announcement: “The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance.”  And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

Comments: New Roads: October 2010

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With a focus on bloggers in the Tom-Tom and The Autowriters Spotlight we add some helpful comments on the art by Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University and Press Think blogger where they were posted:

Jay rosen

“Dave Winer, one of the founders of blogging, says a blog is not defined by the software or features in the format (like comments) but by a person talking: 'one voice, unedited, not determined by group-think.' Blogging, he says, is 'writing without a safety net' and taking personal responsibility for the words.”

Rosen continues, "If 'ethics' are the codification in rules of the practices that lead to trust on the platform where the users actually are—which is how I think of them—then journalists have their ethics and bloggers have theirs:

In all these ways, good bloggers build up trust with a base of users online. And over time, the practices that lead to trust on the platform where the users actually are… these become their ethic, their rules.”

Comments: Pit Note: October 2010

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Hachette Filipacchi Media US has changed its name to HFMUS and adopting a forward-slanting logo to associate its name with speed and innovation. "It's more symbolic than anything else," Alain Lemarchand, president/CEO of Hachette, told MediaWeek.com "It's a reflection of the new spirit, or new culture, the evolution we want to be part of, the speed required to achieve these innovations."

Steve Parker has a new email address, new telephone numbers and a new hat added to the many he wears for different auto media platforms. They are, respectively: steveparkermotoring@roadrunner.com, 310-867-9901 or 323-845-0255 and Auto Consultancy, the latter most recently for Peugeot . . .. Joe Pappalardo has been promoted to senior editor at Popular Mechanics: jpappalardo@hearstcom . . . Wooden Horse News reports that former Speedway Illustrated editor Karl Fredrickson formed a company to purchase the rights to the magazine that was shut down recently by Anthem Media. The new company, Traction Media, will resume publishing and will honor all active subscriptions to the magazine. Founder Dick Berggren and most of the editorial team is returning.

The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) chairman David Cole is turning that title over to Jay Baron but will remain active with the program. . . . AutoSavant publisher and editor Brendan Moore’s new email is: bmoore@autosavant.com  . . . Michael Alan Ross is now emailed at: marossfineart@gmail.com  . . . Greg Basich’s new outlet at Bobit is Mobile Electronics Magazine. His email remains the same: greg.basich@bobit.com  but his telephone number is now: 310-533-2572 . . . Special sections editor at The Victorville Valley Press (CA), Micki Brown’s new email address is: micki_brown@vvdailypress.com  . . . Neal White’s new email address at the Waxahachie (TX) Daily Light is neal.white@wninenews.com.

The two persons responsible for the weekly car reviews and other auto news at The New Orleans Times Picayune are: James Gaffney and Vivian Hernandez at: jgaffney@timespicayune.com  and vhernandez@timespicayune.com, respectively. . . . Dawg House Radio Productions host Ken Kaplan’s email is “net” not “com”: mgmtt@devildawg.net  . . . Steve Kelly, editor of Frontline News You Can Use (American Honda) has a new email address: skelly78929@yahoo.com  . . . Tim Higgins email address at Bloomberg in Southfield, Mich. is: thiggins21@bloomberg.net  . . . Ed Kim has succeeded James Hossack, retired, as Director of Industry Analysis for Auto Pacific, Inc.: ed.kim@autopacific.com

Jeff Glucker is now an associate editor for Autoblog but remains a non-contributing co-owner of Hooniverse.com. a web site created for automotive enthusiasts, hence his email: jeff@hooniverse.com  . . . Peter Meier is now group technical director for Advanstar’s automotive group which includes 2 Wheel Tuner, Aftermarket Business and American Big Twin Dealer. . . . MAMA member Cliff Leppke has a new address at WITI-TV6 in Milwaukee: Cliff.leppke@fox6now.com  . . . Simon Sproule returns to Nissan as global marketing communications chief, including PR. He is based in Tokyo.

Sharon Silke Carty has trekked across town from USA Today’s Detroit bureau to do her auto writing for the AP office there. . . .Jenny White has a new email address at The Rocky Mount Telegram: jwhite@rmtelegram.com . . . Nick Yost covers the auto industry for Examiner.com. His new email address is nickyost9@gmail.com.

Comments: Lane Changes: October 2010

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Glenn F. Campbell
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The 15 regional automotive press associations provide information and background not easily found elsewhere. If they are too distant for you to attend their meetings, belonging usually gives you access to transcripts or reports of these events and other benefits.

Hi Glenn, thank you for all the RTM coverage in your current issue of autowriters.com. As always, it's full of useful and interesting info. I look forward to it each month. One minor correction for your department of corrections‚ is that our new east coast address is 3228 Patriot Way, not 3229 patriot way. Thanks. I love your newsletter.

Courtney Caldwell, Editor-in-Chief
Earth, Wind & PowerMedia® &Road & Travel Magazine

Eds,
He’s definitely a sterling gentleman, but he spells his name Stirling.

I like your newsletter.

-mike taylor
(former auto editor, san Francisco chronicle).

Stirling Moss, not Sterling, although some of his work has been.

Barry Winfield
bkwinfield@aol.com

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