Does the Internet dumb down auto history?

May 17, 2013 Steve Media Analysis 0
Pop quiz: Is this a Valiant or a Volare?

In some respects the rise of the web has been the best thing that ever happened to American automotive history. Just click on Google’s “images” tab and you instantly have access to far more pictures of old cars than found in any print-based library. Perhaps more importantly, a staid auto history press has been shaken out of its complacency by a wave of upstart websites such as Curbside Classic and Ate Up With Motor and historical features by more general-interest automotive websites such as The Truth About Cars.

But then there’s the downside. Readers are confronted with a veritable wild west of information out there. Even by print-era standards, Ate Up With Motor consistently posts top-notch journalism. Unfortunately, that’s an all-too-rare exception to the general tendency for websites to dumb down auto history into the journalistic equivalent of Chicken McNuggets.

Hubba, hubba, hubcaps

The primary driver is economics. With notable exceptions such as Automotive News, car websites are funded largely, if not entirely, by advertising. That, in turn, requires maximizing page hits – day by day, hour by hour. The best way to do that is to make your website addicting. Literally.

Auto media sexism
At least writer Ronnie Schreiber has eschewed former TTAC editor Bertel Schmitt’s fascination with lesbians, dildos and bondage.

How to best feed an addiction? With a constant stream of car porn and short, breezy stories that generate lots of comments from regular Joes – but can lack the context and factual grounding of articles in the better printed magazines.

Women are almost non-existent on automotive websites – except, perhaps as objects to sexualize (Schreiber, 2013; Schmitt, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). Indeed, the dominant editorial formula for success has a lot in common with men’s magazines, albeit with more sheetmetal and fewer boobs.

A 24/7 flow of new material isn’t so hard for a legacy media outlet such as Hemmings, which can use classified ads as filler and dig into its archives for stories. But what about a fledgling website? Despite the best intentions of overburdened staff, quality will inevitably suffer. That can most obviously be seen in stories long on eye candy and short on substance. But another telltale symptom is the publishing of basic errors that would never show up in print-era publications.

Also see ‘Ate Up With Motor still one of the best auto history sites’

So what? I’d argue that automotive history should not be viewed as merely an idle pastime for bored retirees – it is an important analytical tool for understanding the present and deciding how to move into the future. Thus, the dumbing down of the topic is not_good.com.

Calling a spade a donut

Perhaps the epitome of internet vapidity is a Truth About Cars story entitled, “Volare oh-oh” (Coconis, 2013a). The photo essay has a number of basic factual problems, but the crown jewel was writer Phil Coconis describing a pictured Valiant as a Volare.

Truth About Cars posting that misidentifies a Plymouth Valiant as a Volare

How could a major car website based in the U.S. make such a basic mistake? If the writer is too young to be knowledgeable about 1970s American cars, surely one of the website’s editors should have caught the error. Right?

Nope. To make matters worse, once the errors were pointed out, Coconis (2013b, 2013c) doubled down without bothering to recheck his facts.

TTAC commentator msquare (2013) summed it up best: “This is such a blemish on TTAC’s credibility it’s scary. You blew it, boys. Publish your correction and move on.”

Also see ‘Mike Spinelli: Car buff readers can be sanctimonious nitpickers’

Former TTAC editor Edward Niedermeyer (2013) suggested that critical commentators “be more forgiving of a little inconsistency,” particularly given that TTAC didn’t specialize in classic cars. He summarized the difficult demands on editorial staff and noted that TTAC content was free. “Y’all are neck deep in a gift horse’s mouth.”

Niedermeyer’s points are well taken. Mistakes will happen. However, quality websites will issue a correction. As far as I can tell that didn’t happen (at least not explicitly). How could a website that has so self-righteously wrapped itself in the flag of THE TRUTH violate such a basic journalistic principle? Welcome to web-era journalism.

When an ‘expert’ plays fast and loose with the facts

Curbside Classic Editor Paul Niedermeyer (2013a) railed against Coconis’s article, pointing to it as an “egregious” example of TTAC’s “lack of editorial standards.”

I agree — and would further suggest that Niedermeyer is justified in getting up on his high horse given how hard he has worked to build the quality of Curbside Classic. That said, Niedermeyer is stuck inside the same hamster wheel of 24/7 coverage demands as TTAC but apparently has the additional disadvantage of relying entirely on volunteers. Thus, Curbside Classic articles can be uneven in depth and nuance. A few have suffered from factual issues that linger.

Also see ‘Comments about ‘grand merger’ of independents show value of dialogue’

A case in point is Niedermeyer’s posting of material from Rob Moore. His missives display detailed knowledge about the dying days of Studebaker. Certainly Moore is passionate — and self confident — in articulating his views. Alas, this writer’s version of reality conflates events in ways that are not supported by book-length histories I am familiar with (e.g., Critchlow, 1996; Ebert, 2013; Foster, 2008; Kimes, 2002; Langworth, 1993).

I suppose it is theoretically possible that Moore has access to insider information the big-name historians don’t. However, he undercuts his credibility with stream-of-consciousness prose that includes misspelling the names of key players Duncan McRae, Brooks Stevens and Raymond Loewy.

Moore’s addendum to a Niedermeyer (2013b) post on the Studebaker Sceptre argues that the concept car was intended to replace the “aging Golden Hawk.” That didn’t happen, according to Moore, because Studebaker could only afford a mild restyling under the Gran Turismo moniker. He goes as far as to argue that the automaker developed the Avanti instead of the Sceptre because it had a fiberglass body, and thus the tooling cost less.

When expert commentary isn't so expertLet’s ignore the nitpick that the Golden Hawk had been dropped after 1958; only a less-costly pillared coupe had survived into 1961. The key issue here was timing: The Sceptre didn’t take form until after the Gran Turismo had been rushed to market and the Avanti program was well along. Indeed, Richard Langworth notes that the Sceptre was the last of three concept cars developed by Brooks Stevens and had been slated for introduction in 1966 or 1967 (1993, pp. 152-154).

In another Niedermeyer (2013c) post, Moore argues that the 1959 Lark’s front and rear look similar to the 1960 Plymouth Valiant because Studebaker designers saw pictures of the latter car. In his original missive, Moore inaccurately states that McRae worked with Stevens on the Sceptre when, in fact, he had left Studebaker a few years earlier (Ebert, 2013, p. 85; Langworth, 1993, p. 110). [This fact error was subsequently deleted.] Moore’s narrative ignores other inconvenient facts, such as that the Lark’s slanted-brow rear is very similar to a proposed 1957 Studebaker that was to be built on a new, full-sized Packard platform (Hamlin, 2002; p. 625).

Also see ‘1959 Studebaker: Was it really design theft?

To be painfully blunt, Moore is a sloppy historian. But whatever his sins, Moore’s historical knowledge is far greater than Coconis’s. Indeed, one could argue that the fine points I bring up don’t matter to the average Curbside Classic reader. I would nevertheless suggest that Moore’s writing wouldn’t get past the fact checkers at Collectible Automobile without substantial changes.

The price of staying off the hamster wheel

My point here isn’t to criticize Niedermeyer’s editing standards. He is doing an extraordinary job given his resource constraints and the sheer amount of content Curbside Classic posts.

Commentator c5Karl (2013) says it well: “Keeping a blog fed to keep one’s audience interested can be tough. I’m sure Paul can testify that no one is getting rich off of special-interest blogs. I work in a newsroom where we actually get paid for our writing and editing, and the quality & volume of CC’s output boggles my mind.”

However, I do wish to offer Ate Up With Motor as a journalistic counterpoint. Here is a website that can achieve a consistently high level of quality because it isn’t stuck on the 24/7 hamster wheel.

Of course, there is a major downside to not playing by the Internet’s rules. Ate Up With Motor does not appear to generate anywhere near the advertising revenue as Curbside Classic.

Also see ‘Curbside Classic shows what small-scale media are up against’

I have wished that Niedermeyer and Severson would join forces. This would marry top-notch journalism with 24/7 coverage. I doubt it is any more likely to happen than American Motors agreeing to merge with Studebaker-Packard in 1954. Independent media outlets, like automakers, tend to be pretty personality driven.

So I will continue to appreciate Ate Up With Motor for its dogged adherence to print-era standards of journalistic excellence and Curbside Classic for doing so much to popularize — and humanize — automotive history.

What I worry about is how the automotive history field will look a decade or two from now.  Will the print-oriented media outlets go the way of the dinosaur? Will professional writers and editors be eclipsed by volunteers? Will accuracy and insight take a back seat to nostalgic car porn?

I hope not, but the underlying political economy of the Internet seems to be pushing in that direction.

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