American society’s relationship with the automobile is changing but the press corps hasn’t kept up. That’s the theme of a cover story in the journalism field’s leading professional magazine.
The November/December edition of the Columbia Journalism Review includes an essay by Micheline Maynard (2013) which argues that significant changes in American transportation are happening mostly under the radar of the major news media:
“Economic and environmental concerns, along with dramatic social shifts, have caused Americans to begin to rethink their dependence on automobile. Driving, which has been on more or less an upward slope since the end of World War II, has dropped from the peaks of last decade. Teens, glued to their mobile devices and chauffeured by helicopter parents, show little interest in getting their licenses. Cities are racing to add bike-sharing programs in order to gain cachet with their growing populations of young residents. At the same time, communities both large and small are competing for the billions of public-transportation dollars that the Obama administration has been doling out.” (Maynard, 2013)
Press coverage of these shifts is largely being done by specialized publications and blogs (including one Maynard launched — Curbing Cars). Meanwhile, more than 5,000 journalists showed up for the 2013 Detroit auto show. Automotive coverage remains strong despite shrinking editorial staffs because it “still brings in the ad revenue” (Maynard, 2013).
The beginning of a shift does not a revolution make
I generally agree with Maynard’s vision of a less auto-dependent transportation system. What surprised me was that the Columbia Journalism Review would put on the cover of its magazine an advocacy piece that painted an activist’s rosy picture of a “transportation revolution” with selective use of data and anecdotes.
For example, Maynard places a significant emphasis on declining auto usage by young people, noting that “everything I’m hearing from my college-age nephews, the undergraduate and graduate students I’ve taught, the people who submit their stories to Curbing Cars, and the conversations I’ve had at airports and conferences tells me there’s something definitely afoot when it comes to attitudes about automobiles.”
Let’s put aside the methodological question of whether Maynard’s sample size suffers from selection bias (Skeptics Dictionary, 2013). What she does not show is how much farther an attitude shift needs to go in order to qualify as a true revolution.
Consider the relatively “green” city of Seattle. A recent survey found that 80 percent of adults under 35 “say that driving is a primary mode of transportation for them” (Balk, 2013). That may be a drop of 10 percent from five years ago, but it still represents a supermajority.
Media question whether the love is gone
I’m hesitant to critique Maynard’s essay in order to avoid being thrown into the same category as knee-jerk defenders of automotive culture.
Industry groupthink posits that young people still care about cars but currently can’t afford them due to a sluggish economic recovery. Once business picks up and they start families, Millennials will follow in the footsteps of their parents.
Edmonds.com Chief Economist Lacey Plache (2013) offers one variation on that theme. Plache presents data that adults aged 18-34 maintained their share of new-car purchases over the last five years after a big drop in 2007. One sign that things are getting better: For 2012 Millennials represented a larger proportion of new-car buyers in every income except under $15,000 per year.
Perhaps most significantly, Plache notes that “in every income group except the highest ($150,000 and over), aged 25 to 34 Millennials buy luxury cars to a similar extent or more as older buyers with the same income. Plus, in nearly every income group, 18 to 24 year old Millennials purchase a greater share of entry and midrange sports cars than the older buyers.”
Plache argues that “these purchasing patterns challenge the commonly held fear of industry observers that Millennials are less interested in owning cars than previous generations were.”
Without seeing the raw data it is difficult to tell whether Plache has gone on a cherry-picking expedition. For example, it strikes me as less compelling that young people are a key demographic for sports cars (haven’t they always been?) than whether their share of sales has dropped in the last decade.
In addition, might we be seeing an increasingly bifurcated youth culture where some are drifting away from cars whereas others maintain their enthusiasm, albeit tempered by economic realities?
The-kids-still-like-cars meme has been echoed throughout the media landscape, such as Automotive News (Rechtin, 2013), Fortune Magazine (Taylor, 2013) and The Truth About Cars (Kreindler, 2013). Indeed, to read these articles is to see the agenda-setting power of Plache’s research.
Not everyone thinks the status quo will prevail
Paul Eisenstein (2013) challenges this perspective by concluding that “there seems little doubt that Americans no longer have the unbridled passion for the automobile that defined the nation in decades past. The auto industry should ignore this shift at its own peril.” Eisenstein wrote this opinion piece for Autoblog but is publisher of The Detroit Bureau.
John McElroy (2013) argues that the auto industry could be facing a long-term decline in sales that will threaten its size and scope. This is due to a variety of factors ranging from Millennials’ declining interest in cars to the rise of car-sharing services. McElroy notes that a “study by the Transportation Research Board finds that every shared car eliminates 15 privately owned cars. Zip Car alone has removed over 150,000 cars from the road. And car sharing is just getting started. Let this play out for another decade and the impact will be significant.”
Meanwhile, Richard Read (2013) of The Car Connection sums up a report about why Americans have been driving less since 2004 with this provocative question: “Clearly, the future of car sales and ownership will be radically different from how it’s been in the past. The question is: which car companies will survive the shift?”
Encouraging people to ‘drive light’
At her website, Curbing Cars, Maynard is helping to provide information and support for readers to “drive light.” This is defined as “relying on a mix of transportation that includes personal cars, as well as bicycling, bike sharing, car sharing, public transit, and walking” (Curbing Cars, 2013).
This relatively new website has thus far focused on the implications of a more multi-modal transportation system for individuals as well as communities. However, Curbing Cars also promises to study “what all this means to the future of the auto industry.”
That strikes me as a crucial area of research. Today’s auto-dominated transportation system has been significantly molded by the auto industry.
As a case in point, when cars first appeared, they were viewed as “wildly dangerous” — partly because they intruded upon what were then pedestrian-dominated streets. Jeremy Hsu (2012) has argued that what turned the tide was an auto industry campaign that included inventing the derogatory term “jaywalking.”
The auto industry continues to be powerful enough that a revolution in American transportation won’t occur until automakers redefine what “success” means in the 21st Century.
UPDATE:
A commentator to Maynard’s article takes the Columbia Journalism Review to task for publishing a piece so “heavy on anecdote and extremely short on statistics, written by someone who obviously is set on a particular point of view on this topic” (Dave, 2014; comment no longer posted). His statistical critique is similar to mine but he sidesteps a key theme of Maynard’s article: Automotive journalism largely reinforces industry groupthink. That, in turn, makes it more likely that basic transportation patterns won’t change. Does journalism have a responsibility to go beyond functioning as an industry mouthpiece and “just-the-facts” reporting? If it does, why shouldn’t CJR dig into this issue more deeply?
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Balk, Gene; 2013. “Is car culture coming to an end in Seattle?” Seattle Times. Posted July 4; accessed Nov. 2.
- Curbing Cars; 2013. “About Curbing Cars.” Accessed Nov. 2.
- Eisenstein, Paul; 2013. “Why American motorists are walking away from automobiles: What’s Leading Us Away From Our Love Of Cars.” Autoblog. Posted Aug. 13; accessed Nov. 2.
- Dave; 2014. Commentator in “The love affair is over.” Columbia Journalism Review. Posted Jan. 6; accessed Jan. 9. Comment no longer posted.
- Hsu, Jeremy; 2012. “Why America’s Love Affair with Cars Is No Accident.” Scientific American. Posted May 24; accessed Nov. 5.
- Kreindler, Derek; 2013. “Generation Why: Finally, Some Hard Data Shows That Young People Do Care About Cars.” The Truth About Cars. Posted May 29; accessed Nov. 2.
- Maynard, Micheline; 2013. “The love affair is over: America’s relationship with the automobile is changing. The transportation beat has to catch up.” Columbia Journalism Review. Posted Nov. 1; accessed Nov. 2.
- McElroy, John; 2013. “The Auto Industry’s Existential Threat.” Edmunds.com. Posted Oct. 29; accessed Nov. 5.
- Plache, Lacey; 2013. “Millennials Take the Wheel: Why the Youngest Generation of Drivers Is Buying More New Cars.” Edmunds.com. Posted May 15; accessed Nov. 2.
- Read, Richard; 2013. “It’s Not The Economy After All: Americans Began Driving Less In 2004.” The Car Connection. Posted May 21; accessed Nov. 3.
- Rechtin, Mark; 2013. “The death of driving? Don’t make any funeral plans.” Automotive News. Posted May 17; accessed Nov. 2.
- Skeptics Dictionary; 2013. “Selection bias.” Accessed Nov. 5.
- Taylor, Alex III; 2013. “America’s love affair with its cars is far from over.” Fortune Magazine. Posted July 3; accessed Nov. 2.
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Author’s photo gallery: “Is the love affair with the car really over?”
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