Last week I was once again reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On),” when surveying the automotive media. The major outlets fell all over themselves to cover many of the same banal topics in much the same way.
Does the world really need yet another story on the 2022 Ford Bronco or Tesla S Plaid? New-model launches dominate virtually all auto media outlets even though they often post the same images and add only a wee bit of literary color to the automaker’s press release. It’s the media equivalent of badge engineering.
What’s the point? Why not save a ton of money by merging all of these publications into one big, Auto Obsession Warehouse. Then all the laid-off journalists can go get jobs writing press releases for automakers. Would most readers notice much of a difference?
Of course, media consolidation has already been happening. Automobile is being digested by a boa constrictor named MotorTrend (2021). Mustang 360 Degrees, which was a mashup of four smaller magazines, has apparently been absorbed into Hotrod, whose URL is now motortrend.com/hotrod/. And as we’ve discussed, Road & Track has been turned into an upper-crust version of Car and Driver magazine.
I get that the buff media are in crisis due to falling ad revenues. But instead of trying to survive by slavishly copying the competition, why not attempt to be more unique? And draw in new readers who aren’t the usual gearheads?
Auto media need to break out of a ‘self-isolated world’
Bruce McCall (2002) once argued that the U.S. auto industry has a worldview which “matches that of any West Virginia hollow for insularity.” Back in the 1960s a few renegade buff magazines such as Car and Driver challenged that insularity to a certain degree. However, today robust journalism has mostly disappeared (go here for further discussion).
A big part of the problem is that the titans of the buff media seem to assume that the key to success is to offer the most aggressive “boys with toys” content. A good example of this mentality is a testosterone-drenched video on the homepage of the MotorTrend Group (2021).
Meanwhile, industry trade journals have recently thrown around trendy buzzwords like “mobility” while still focusing mostly on sales figures, product launches and resume-polishing features of auto executives. Little attention is paid to the social and environmental impacts of an auto-dominated transportation system.
Indeed, a good metaphor for the typical front page of Automotive News is a line from a Dire Straits’ song: “We’ve got to move these refrigerators, we’ve got to move these colour TVs.”
If they took off the blinders, what might they see?
As a case in point, two weeks ago a “thousand-year” heat wave scorched the Pacific Northwest. Temperatures got so high that roads buckled and power cables melted (Fischels, 2021). Scientists say that this was not just another heat wave but a product of climate change (Cappucci, 2021). That means we can expect even more extreme weather in the coming years — which spells trouble for the automobile.
“The way we designed our transportation systems hasn’t taken into account major changes in the climate,” a spokesperson for the Portland transportation department told The Oregonian newspaper (Eadens, 2021).
Also see ‘Automotive News backtracks on shift to electric vehicles’
This raises an important question: Does infrastructure legislation currently winding its way through Congress adequately address the increasing stresses that climate change may place upon the nation’s already fraying transportation system? What say you, Automotive News?
If that sounds too wonky of a question for a buff magazine, might readers want to know whether the roads and bridges they drive on will continue to be safe?
Who dared to venture outside of the hollow?
Over the last two weeks I have tried to find examples of auto media outlets that in some way addressed the Pacific Northwest heat wave. Although my survey was not exhaustive, I looked at dozens of websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The most direct coverage I found was from Jalopnik. Mercedes Streeter (2021) discussed how temperatures got so high that Seattle workers repeatedly hosed down drawbridges to prevent the steel from expanding, thereby interfering with their opening and closing.
Car and Driver had an overview of the latest infrastructure proposal (Blanco, 2021) but nothing on the heat wave.
I was surprised that Electrek didn’t address the heat wave, but it has recently covered a wide range of other news relevant to electrifying the automotive fleet. What I find particularly useful about this website is it gets that how electricity is produced and distributed is highly relevant to the auto industry. Thus, Electrek has covered efforts to block rooftop solar adoption (Lewis, 2021b) and how Texas’s regulatory approach has not responded well to weather extremes (Lewis, 2021a).
Of course, neither Jalopnik nor Electrek are perfect. For example, both devote a meaningful proportion of their content to product launches. However, each hints at a future where auto media address issues of importance to people outside of the auto industry’s self-isolated world.
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RE:SOURCES
- Blanco, Sebastian; 2021. “Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan Spends Billions on Roads, Bridges, EVs.” Car and Driver. Posted June 26.
- Cappucci, Matthew; 2021. “Pacific Northwest heat wave was ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, scientists find.” Washington Post. Posted July 7.
- Eadens, Savannah; 2021. “Buildings, bridges, roads mostly withstood ‘heat dome,’ but can Portland area continue to handle climate change?” The Oregonian. Posted July 2.
- Fischels, Josie; 2021. “The Record-Breaking Heat Wave That’s Scorching The Pacific Northwest.” National Public Radio. Posted June 29.
- Lewis, Michelle; 2021a. “Texas is sweltering, and majority of power plants down produce natural gas.” Electrek. Posted June 15.
- ——; 2021b. “How US utilities are trying to block rooftop solar adoption.” Electrek. Posted June 17.
- McCall, Bruce; 2002. “Hogs on Wheels.” The New York Times. Posted October 6; accessed April 14, 2018.
- MotorTrend; 2021. “Big Changes, Big Benefits: Automobile Is Joining MotorTrend.com.” July 6.
- MotorTrend Group; 2021. “Home.” Accessed July 9.
- Streeter, Mercedes; 2021. “The Pacific Northwest Is So Blazing Hot That Roads Are Buckling.” Jalopnik. Posted June 29.
VIDEOS:
- youtube.com: Bruce Springsteen (1992); Dire Straits (2016)
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