Jim Volgarino recently suggested in our “Story Ideas” bank that we take a closer look at the top automotive journalists of the past:
“I think Tom McCahill began the long line of auto writers that made automotive mags interesting reading after the war when he came up with the idea that the buying public might like to know his opinions about all things coming out of the car and truck factories. He even used his own ’46 Ford for his first analysis.
That long line of writers later included Brock Yates, LJK Setright, David E. Davis, Jean Jennings Lindamond, Denise McCluggage, Ken Purdy, Csaba Csere, Karl Ludvigsen and hot rodders Gray (yer ol’ dad) Baskerville and LeRoi ‘Tex’ Smith. There are others, of course, but how good were these journalists and what made people want to know what they thought about the industry. Could be a treat to relive some of that history!”
Thus far Indie Auto has written about journalists of the past in a piecemeal manner. For example, when Brock Yates died I analyzed auto media reactions (go here). One thing that I found was that accounts of his life functioned like a Rorschach test. The focus of a given article appeared to say as much about the particular biases of the writer and media outlet as it did about Yates.
For example, many stories focused on Yates’s colorful exploits such as the Cannonball Baker races but downplayed or ignored his prescient critique of Detroit in the book, The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (1983). Or they lauded Yates’s engaging writing style but did not acknowledge that in later years he could sound as cranky as Uncle Harry at Thanksgiving dinner.
What is a ‘good’ automotive journalist?
I bring up reactions to Yates’s death to suggest that assessing the automotive journalists of the past can be tricky because there isn’t a widely accepted set of standards. Indeed, I suspect that the more we share our views about what made a journalist “good,” the more we might see how much our own priorities differ from others.
Consider Indie Auto. Our primary focus has been exploring why the U.S. automobile industry experienced one of the biggest industrial collapses of the last century. Thus, I have looked at automotive journalists of the past primarily through that lens. As a case in point, I have lauded Eric Dahlquist’s surprisingly honest take on the 1970 Ford Maverick for Motor Trend magazine (go here).
Also see ‘Wheel spinning happens when car buffs and scholarly historians don’t collaborate’
Which automotive journalists we have been most influenced by may partly reflect our age. I didn’t start paying much attention to car magazines until around 1967, so Yates, David E. Davis and Csaba Csere were on my radar more than Tom McCahill.
Looking back on that era, today I find writers such as David Halberstam and Maryann Keller approached the auto industry with greater depth and nuance than those who earned a pay check from the car-buff media . . . or even “serious” journalists such as Richard Johnson of Automotive News.
Disagreements can be awkward but are inevitable
Although I have great respect for old-school book authors such as Richard Langworth, I have also pointed out analytical limitations — and he has pushed back. This experience has led me to wonder whether there may be a generation gap in automotive history that is not always bridgeable.
Like any other field, we have competing “schools of thought,” some deeply held.
Indie Auto’s approach can result in more arguments than nostalgic feelings. This may make some readers uncomfortable, but it reflects my background in journalism and academia, where robust debate is the coin of the realm.
This is a long way of saying that I’ll look into writing more about the above-listed automotive journalists, but it could play out differently than at typical car-buff websites.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
Great follow up Steve. As the auto industry grew and went through all sorts of change, journalists discovered that news about those newfangled machines caught people’s attention. And journalists found themselves becoming influences in their own right. Did they receive the same respect as the more traditional journalists of their eras? That may be a question reserved for a deeper analysis.
A great question. To me there are two aspects indispensible to good journalism.
First would be factual information. I get annoyed when I find information in a book or online which I know to be wrong. If I find something I know is wrong, can I really trust anything else that author has written? How do I know? It goes further: can I really trust anything else from that publisher/website? While I appreciate that checking information is not always easy, if an author can’t check sources, should they really be writing (or publishing) that story? Is there less respect for the objective truth of historical facts these days? Or are they just lazy?
A corollary to this would be the rise of ‘AI’, which certainly is ‘A’ but often not ‘I’. Enough said.
Also indispensible is an enjoyable style. Writing can be factually correct but dry as dust. Like your avearge textbook. I’ve read marque histories like that. Conversely I’ve enjoyed articles I nearly didn’t read because of the subject, because the author’s writing was so compelling. My late uncle edited a small-town newspaper. Being a good journalist can’t be easy, and I’m not just talking about spelling and punctuation older folk often decry (editors can fix that, but they shouldn’t have to), but style. Word choice. Sentence structure. A lack of ambiguity. Writing in a way they conveys enthusiasm, a way that stirs up the reader to keep reading. Most of what I see published these days isn’t as good as 40-50 years ago; it’s a string of words conveying meaning, but pretty basic. Little more than a regurgitated press release. I used to get eight car magazines a month, now I’m down to two, sometimes a third. I could hypothesize at length about the possible causes of the perceived decline in journalism, but I’d only be guessing – and if I’m guessing, your guess is as vaild as mine.
As a reader I get frustrated with writing that has a casual attitude about facts — particularly when making an ideological point seems to be more important to the writer than telling the truth. That said, I also don’t subscribe to a “gotcha” approach when I find a stray error. That’s particularly the case when it comes to large reference books and small media outlets. Mistakes can sneak in, particularly when there are no copy editors to support the writer. So if I find a fact error, my inclination is to flag it in a helpful way rather than getting judgmental.
When I was in journalism school I aspired to write in the colorful style of “new journalism” writers. Looking back, I arguably tried too hard because my writing could sound contrived. Now I strive primarily for clarity. There are times I will get an urge to play with words, mostly when writing satire. But mainly I’m okay with having a plain writing style. That may partly reflect spending a fair amount of my professional life doing technical writing. It can be hard to undo long-held habits.
Is journalism in decline? My sense is that it depends on the field. The car-buff media seems more “corporate” and clickbaity than when I was young. Meanwhile, automotive history has felt increasingly like it is a dying field. However, right now is arguably a golden age for political reporting in the United States. The rise of technologies that make it easier to monetize small-scale publishing has opened the door for talent that might otherwise have been stuck on some colorless, odorless daily newspaper.