Journalism in a Tough Automotive Industry
2/25/2010
By Gina Goodman
To put it mildly, the last few years have been difficult for the automotive industry. With the frail economy, car companies have experienced bankruptcies, bailouts and plummeting sales. The most recent recall of Toyota cemented the state of a weak automotive industry.
Trade publications have reported on all of these developments, but how are the magazines themselves doing business while reporting on a declining industry?
One big problem is dealing with the advertising slump. Most magazines nationwide have seen decreasing ad sales and auto industry publications are no exception.
“Ad pages are down from a couple of years ago,” said Dave Guilford, senior writer at Automotive News. “We are a trade publication rather than a consumer publication, and advertising to some segments of the industry has been fairly consistent. However, we are writing a lot of stories, obviously, about the recession and its effects on the industry.”
Mark Gillies, executive editor of Car and Driver, agrees.
“Spending is down from the ad community,” he said. “And newsstand has been affected a bit. There aren’t so many casual buyers picking up magazines because they are in the market for a new car.”
Another subtle change in auto reporting can be seen in the types of vehicles being covered. Some publications have noticed a more economy-friendly trend.
“We have certainly done a lot of coverage of fuel economy, hybrids and electric vehicles,” Guilford said.
“We don’t feature exotics quite as prominently on the cover,” added Gillies. “But we have discovered that our core enthusiast readership thinks that interesting American products go down well with newsstand buyers.”
Stuart Fowle, senior editor at Vortex Media Group, a publishing group of automotive-related enthusiast Web sites, said the economic downturn has encouraged coverage geared toward the general public.
“We try to talk more about used and less expensive vehicles and we think more positively about them,” he said. “I've noticed this trend elsewhere as well, especially [at magazines] where they're even putting good used cars on their covers.”
Since Vortex Media Group consists of online-only publications including Kilometer Magazine, Fourtitude, MWerks and VWvortex, Fowle said they have an advantage when it comes to weathering the slumping industry.
“While print publications have taken a pretty large hit from decreased budgets in a down economy, Internet publications naturally run leaner,” he said. “We have never received the bulk of ad budgets, so we've fared a little better. The question for publications with both an online and print presence is how to balance content between the two so that both will remain attractive to readers—and as a result, advertisers—going forward.”
However, he said, they still feel some negative effects.
“Within our own company we have had to scale things back, because we projected a larger amount of income potential based on how the economy was two years ago, and that growth hasn't been there,” he said. “Let's say there were four major magazines where advertising would be sold a decade ago. Now let's say there are 100 online sources with decent traffic today. There is an exponentially higher number of publications fighting for the same, if not less, money.”
Another aspect of budget problems hurting the automotive media is the availability of cars to test. Most magazines cannot purchase every car on the market, Fowle said.
“We rely on vehicle loans from the manufacturers,” he said. “To provide these takes budget for a fleet of vehicles across the country, budget for fleet managers in major cities, and budgets for fuel and maintenance. For some manufacturers, that has meant fewer or no cars to loan out, while for others, it has meant having to turn down more journalists looking to do reviews.”
Still, the outlook for automotive journalism isn’t all bleak. Wes Raynal, editor of AutoWeek magazine, said it is business as usual at his Detroit office.
“It has not really affected my staff,” he said. “We’ve done the usual bit of belt tightening here and there, but we’re not out of business.”
“A good car is a good car, or a bad one, bad,” Gillies added. “Car enthusiasts seem keen to keep reading about their passion.”
Fowle explained that writing for a car magazine is not always about testing out the top car of the minute.
“It's our job to not say which is the best, but to accurately detail the type of customer each car will attract,” he said. “Without having driven every car on the market, that's hard to talk about. And that's why I think our industry is safe. People will always buy cars, and people will always look for a professional opinion.”
Making the Pitch
Gillies said when receiving story ideas and press releases, he looks for unique feature ideas and “off the wall, wacky stuff.” He said he does not want to see straight industry stories.
“[PR professionals] assume we want to cover very ordinary products,” he said.
At Automotive News, Guilford looks for industry-related pitches and “stories important to our audience of automobile company executives, suppliers and dealers.
“We do not cover aftermarket accessories, stories about new products that companies hope to sell to automakers or consumer-oriented stories,” he said. “Be familiar with the publication, Web site and what we cover.”
Fowle agrees that unique pitches are the best way to get his attention.
“The most important thing is originality,” he said. “There are a lot of people trying to write about cars on the Internet.”
He added, “I think a lot of the original stories involve personalities, be it people in the car business or just some guy who is building a really cool project car in his garage. Or cutting-edge technology that can push the car industry forward to a safer, more eco-conscious era. I think those things are interesting.”
Fowle advises public relations professionals to be up-front.
“I talk with a lot of different PR representatives from a lot of different companies, and after a while it gets easier to tell who the honest ones are and who seems to be hiding something,” he said. “If a story idea isn't good or isn't going to work, I just want to know that so I can move on. Sometimes that just doesn't happen. We're guilty of it too, though. Journalists sometimes feel the need to speak only positive about every car when they're face-to-face with the representatives of those companies. But that doesn't help build better cars for the future. Not being straight with the media doesn't help build better writing, either.”
Contact Information
Automotive News
1155 Gratiot Ave
Detroit, MI 48207
(313)446-6000
Dave Guilford, senior writer
(313)446-0321
AutoWeek
1155 Gratiot Ave
Detroit, MI 48207
(313)446-6000
Wes Raynal, editor
(313)446-0332
Car and Driver
1585 Eisenhower Pl
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734)971-3600
Mark Gillies, executive editor
Vortex Media Group
945 Parkview Blvd
Lombard, IL 60148
(630)268-9511
Stuart Fowle, senior editor