Today's blog is going to focus on a subject that is very dear to my heart: What were they thinking? What's going on with these guys who write auto journalism? Do they not get it at all, because really the stuff they are cranking out is so bad it just makes you want to puke.
Okay, let's get into it and let's get this settled once and for all. Part of the problem with auto journalism is that there is the perception on the part of the writer that everybody reading the piece is primarily and only interested in lurid tail slides, power oversteer and drifting to the max. You know, this is really not what car reviewing should be all about, and that is a big underlying dynamic with car journalism, that in every significant piece of automotive journalism that you find -- comparison tests, road tests, and these even include magazines of the highest caliber, such as Car Magazine from England, etc. -- "The Pop Shot" is the segment that focuses on power oversteer sliding and drifting. This is really not something that occupies what most people do on public roads. It is certainly great for track driving, and certainly any discussion of a car on the track would take that into account, but it is just not relevant for what goes on the regular highway. But it goes so far beyond that.
What about the multimedia aspect of cars? It is amazing how little time is spent on multimedia, when, in fact, multimedia systems are one of the most important elements in a car overall, and secondly are becoming vastly more important to buyers than many, many other factors that used to be important. So, why are journalists missing the multimedia beat? Well, it's pretty simple. They don't spend the time, or aren't smart enough to figure out the multimedia. In fact, they often say in the review, "Well we couldn't really figure out how to work the Nav system," or "The Nav system seemed inscrutable to me." But, of course, that is because they didn't take the time to really figure out on their two-day or three-day loan of the car what was going on with the multimedia or it wasn't important.
Another element that car journalists often miss is the question of color and aesthetics. They completely don't get it. They don't understand how the aesthetics of color, choice of interior trim pieces such as wood and exterior color could really affect the way the car looks, how it pops on the street. This ultimately has had a doubly negative effect on manufacturers because manufacturers reading these pieces assume that buyers also don't care about color and aesthetics, and therefore are producing more and more horribly monochromatic and uninviting and unexciting color schemes for their cars. Occasionally you will see a journalist say, "Our photo car was in a great shade of black and really made that car pop." Well, of course that is one of the few times that a journalist will actually look at the question of color and aesthetics and how it affects the car. What are these guys and gals thinking? What's going on? They just don't understand that these are some of the basics of analyzing a car. And, while we are talking about auto journalists, we must talk about auto photojournalists.
I ultimately feel in my heart that it is probably not their fault they’re being told by their editors to get down on the floor of the car and take a great shot of the accelerator pedal and then overexpose it 82 times, and that is going to be great for readers. What's the matter with these idiots who write and run these car magazines. Don't they understand that what people want to see is the beauty, or, the ugliness of the interior of a car in all of its anatomical glory. People want to be able to get the feel-good factor (if there is one) in a car by seeing a picture of what is actually going on. They don't want a distorted, bizarre image of one-quarter of the steering wheel and one magnesium shift paddle. That is not a photograph that is going to help anyone become involved with understanding what the car feels like and what it is like to actually be in and live in this car. What is wrong with these people? They just don't get it.
So we have a situation where we've got to correct these flaws in auto journalism. We've got to start making reviews of cars exciting, relevant, and exploratory about the main themes that are going on inside. In my blogs, and all the stuff that goes on in the Dream Drives site, we will certainly try to take that attitude.
JLS:M&M
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