Just To Put This Auto Journalism Business In Perspective
Today, Jalopnik's Matt Hardigree announced his intention to disregard manufacturer embargoes, and I offered some commentary on the matter. I support Matt's actions, although in an era where very few people are capable of recognizing anything other than a braying binary declaration of total adoration as "support" I doubt he'll thank me for it.
I'm slightly frustrated with our industry this week for other reasons, however. I'm depressed that Jalopnik harvested 664,000 clicks out of Paul Walker's death --- but I'm even more depressed that Doug DeMuro made a deliberate attempt to raise his profile on the back of Paul's death with a spectacularly uninformed statement, only to walk it back in the most pansy-assed and low-profile manner possible fewer than forty-eight hours afterwards. There's nothing quite as cringe-inducing as the combination of naked ambition, a desperate need to be liked, and a paralyzing fear of saying anything at all worth remembering, all in one person. As stupid as the CGT statement was, I'd have respected him for standing behind it, or for admitting he was wrong. But I've learned the hard way that if you wait around for the average dude to do something worth respecting, you'll wait a long time.
At least I can take comfort in the relative insignificance of automotive journalism. We may be idiots, we may be cowards, we may be openly for sale to the highest bidder in an auction where the largest sum mentioned wouldn't purchase a new Camry, but at least we aren't very widely read. Want proof? Some time ago, a young lady of rather plain looks and testy disposition wrote a CNN citizen-journalist report concerning her recent trip to India. She wrote it for free, of course: CNN's iReporters are not paid, nor are their contributions reviewed in any way by CNN. The post, which is badly written even by the standards of my industry, is a rambling complaint about how people tried to jerk off onto her while she was riding on buses. She claims it gave her PTSD and caused her to drop out of school.
Well, I don't doubt that her story is true; I've worked with enough fellows from the subcontinent to know that they have some real freakazoids among the billion-plus inhabitants over there. I know this because the fellows with whom I work, who are often plenty freaky themselves, love to complain about the wackjobs they left behind when they boarded the 747 to the land of the H1-B and the home of the depraved. Nor does India have the exclusive franchise on masturbating in the general direction of women --- and this is the part of this story where I apologize, rather belatedly, to Erika Eleniak and her Playmate Of The Month pictorial from July of 1988. To be fair, I didn't actually do anything in the presence of Miss Eleniak herself, but it's not like I had the chance to be in her presence. I don't know what I would have done in the presence of Miss Eleniak. Well, that's not true. I know what I'd have done: stare at the ground and mumble something about Herman Melville. I know this because when I was on a study date with the most beautiful girl in my English Composition class the following year, that's what I did, and she wasn't even close to Erika Eleniak.
It frustrates me that I cannot remember her name. I think it was Julie Stephens but I'm not totally sure. If you're reading this, girl whose name I cannot quite recall, holla.
Anyway, I'm wandering from the point, and the point is that this tossed-off post about tossing-off in India has, since August, managed to come up with
1,186,641 VIEWS
1,831 COMMENTS
107K SHARES
and that's copied directly from the post as of a moment ago.
So. An iReport, written for free, is massively, hugely, bigger than the biggest story in automotive journalism at any given time. Sure, we occasionally get million-view stories in this business, although they are so few as to be individually noteworthy... but the comment count is beyond our ken, and the share count is staggering.
One hundred and seven thousand people thought it was worth sharing on Facebook.
The population of a reasonably-sized city.
Shared a report, written for free, that briefly appeared somewhere down the fold on CNN.
My Performance Car Of The Year story, which is kind of a big deal around here, has 6,100 Facebook shares right now. That's one for every sixteen shares the guys-touched-my-ass-in-India story got.
That's automotive journalism right there.
Small potatoes.
But it's all we've got, so let's be as vicious as possible about it!