C/D used to be the most anti-establishnent car magazine out there. They actively campaigned against the idiotic 55 mph NMSL- testing radar detectors a couple of times a year and even publishing a spotters guide of state police cars. I remember manufacturers would yank their advertising over bad reviews. Now C/D just walks in lockstep with the herd.
The continued decline of the automotive press
- Thread starter Capt W
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Its not just automotive press. There is no money in print media anymore, so it pays nothing. They have been replaced with independent stuff - podcasts, etc - since anyone can self publish at this point.
Someone came up with an idea and literally handed it to the intern and said write. There likely paying her nothing or virtually nothing. You should hate the editor and whomever owns this rag - not hate on a young girl who was doing what they were told.
The real question becomes - why would anyone read anything the Detroit Free Press is publishing?
Someone came up with an idea and literally handed it to the intern and said write. There likely paying her nothing or virtually nothing. You should hate the editor and whomever owns this rag - not hate on a young girl who was doing what they were told.
The real question becomes - why would anyone read anything the Detroit Free Press is publishing?
I agree with the BITOG reviews, there are also quite a few true car guys on YouTube that are putting out some really solid reviews as well.
Once upon a time I was a well-known automotive journalist.
I wrote for Yahoo
I wrote for Car & Driver
I wrote for TTAC... for nearly a decade.
I even took up minor gigs at Thrillist, the Chicago Tribune, and about a half-dozen other publications. Nearly all of them paid me ridiculous amounts of money for what amounted to an hour or two of random blogging.
I was like Elvis. But with a bald head, a tweed jacket, and absolutely no sex appeal. On second thought, I was more like that old guy in Barney Miller they called Fish.
All of this changed right around 2015.
Google changed their algorithms, which gave rise to 'search engine optimization'. This led to articles that needed to have certain words and phrases used repatedly so that it would rocket up the Google rankings.
If you wrote a great article, your editor and his boss would cleverly clip out your words and add ones from an 'SEO list'.
Then Yahoo went kaput (technically) and got bought out by Verizon. Their entire automotive stable was replaced by... the photgrapher. A lot of automotive publications decided that letting inexperienced morons write about cars was A-OK as long as they had English degrees, were young, female (preferably) and followed orders.
Youtube and Tiktok became the new frontier. Some talented journalists like Alex Dykes and Doug DeMuro decided to build their own brands. Others became 'freelance journalists' and gradually spun our of their past orbits while writing for specific sites that struggled for revenue.
Magazines closed shop or were neutron bombed with fewer employees every year. Others tried to use a steady stream of fashionistas and phonies to create shows with 'automotive themes' that mainly consisted of male soap operas.
As for me? I just kept on buying and selling cars. Along the way I created the Long-Term Quality Index, Mileage Impossible, and decided that writing for untalented axe-hoes wasn't really my thing.
Any of you interested in a Toyota Echo?
I wrote for Yahoo
I wrote for Car & Driver
I wrote for TTAC... for nearly a decade.
I even took up minor gigs at Thrillist, the Chicago Tribune, and about a half-dozen other publications. Nearly all of them paid me ridiculous amounts of money for what amounted to an hour or two of random blogging.
I was like Elvis. But with a bald head, a tweed jacket, and absolutely no sex appeal. On second thought, I was more like that old guy in Barney Miller they called Fish.
All of this changed right around 2015.
Google changed their algorithms, which gave rise to 'search engine optimization'. This led to articles that needed to have certain words and phrases used repatedly so that it would rocket up the Google rankings.
If you wrote a great article, your editor and his boss would cleverly clip out your words and add ones from an 'SEO list'.
Then Yahoo went kaput (technically) and got bought out by Verizon. Their entire automotive stable was replaced by... the photgrapher. A lot of automotive publications decided that letting inexperienced morons write about cars was A-OK as long as they had English degrees, were young, female (preferably) and followed orders.
Youtube and Tiktok became the new frontier. Some talented journalists like Alex Dykes and Doug DeMuro decided to build their own brands. Others became 'freelance journalists' and gradually spun our of their past orbits while writing for specific sites that struggled for revenue.
Magazines closed shop or were neutron bombed with fewer employees every year. Others tried to use a steady stream of fashionistas and phonies to create shows with 'automotive themes' that mainly consisted of male soap operas.
As for me? I just kept on buying and selling cars. Along the way I created the Long-Term Quality Index, Mileage Impossible, and decided that writing for untalented axe-hoes wasn't really my thing.
Any of you interested in a Toyota Echo?
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same here, they actually care.
Several of my students this semester did that.
Also, several of my students will repeat the class.
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What are you teaching?
AI is a tool, and like any tool, you need to know how to use it effectively. The "artificial" part of AI is true, but the "intelligence" part can be misleading. AI, like Large Language Models (LLMs), can lighten your workload and help create higher-quality content if used correctly. However, it's important to remember that an LLM is not an intelligent, sentient being; it doesn't understand language but generates answers based on patterns.
In practice, a student can write a paper on a topic and then refine it using an LLM, similar to how one might use Grammarly. However, the student shouldn't rely on the LLM to generate the entire assignment from scratch. Think of using ChatGPT as a sophisticated tool for editing and improving original work rather than creating it entirely.
I am in security field.
We did numerous experiments with AI. It is astonishing what ridiculous results we get.
As for polishing, I had to polish several articles after my co-authors used chatGPT to polish it. Plagiarism in my line of work is career death wish.
If I was in medical field, they would be doing blue book now.
AI is proof that you're too lazy to do the real work yourself.
Grammarly? A pestilence that creates putrid parasatic prose. It turns all aspiring talented writers into corporate spambots.
No wonder why corporate America loves these big brother creations.
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I had Grammarly early on, before the AI craze. It was a nightmare to use. If you wanted to write something coherent four to ten times slower, Grammarly was the answer. Now Grammarly is all "AI" powered, and still junk.
AI language tools are for the tools and to be consumed by the tools. That’s the extent of the “intelligence”
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They have their uses; however, you have to leverage their strengths, not their weaknesses.
A computer is not capable of generating truly random numbers, and it will never have this ability. For the same reason, AI will never be able to create original content. Lazy people try to use it to create original content, and that's wrong. Last year, when GPT-3.5 and then 4 came out, YouTube was full of grifters "selling shovels" during the AI gold rush. The number of unaccredited experts skyrocketed, and then the "prompt engineers" came along. Well, prompt engineering came and went because LLM models got better at recognizing the input. It is a valid technology; however, like any tool, it should be used accordingly.
For example, it is very useful to correct grammatical errors, read data from scans or images (if your OCR software can't do it), correct logical errors, etc. It's the next step in the evolution of the "bicycle for the mind," if you will. At the end of the day, it's a machine, a complex program that primarily operates based on statistics and complex computations. GPT started showing some of the code used for generating responses, making calculations, etc. People should sometimes click on that little button to see the code so they can stop thinking it's magic.
There is nothing wrong with uploading a document or pasting text into ChatGPT and at the end telling to: "Correct the grammatical errors in the above text." It will do just that, without altering your content. However, as a writer, you still have to proofread what it wrote.
I'm with you there, the only true thing about AI is the "artificial" part, as it is not intelligent at all.
I find all kinds of hobbyist magazines have vanished or as you describe. The media today is generated stories to attract readers no matter how short of an attention span they may have. Long enough to hook them with an advertisement is much of today's media.As a long time subscriber to several popular automotive magazines, I've watched the quality of so-called automotive journalists decline precipitously over the past 10-20 years. This article I found today - covering manual transmissions - has to be one of the worst I've ever seen. It's so bad I couldn't make it past the first paragraph. The writer has obviously never driven a manual, and it appears none of her editors have, either.
Too bad...the Free Press used to be quite a distinguished newspaper.
Driving stick shift has become a niche craft in America
Here's a look at the role of manual transmission vehicles in the U.S. auto industry, as cars shift to automatic transmission.www.freep.com
I miss David E Davis, Jr., and all the great writers he opened doors for.
She looks like that actress in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"
He wrote “Turn Your Hymnals to 2002,” which essentially determined my automotive trajectory. I kept that issue of C/D for decades. In 1994 he spoke at the BMW Car Club’s Oktoberfest. I brought my copy and he signed it, “No Boring Cars!”
TTAC was my morning read for years
Murilee Martin/Phil Greden was one of my favorites
GM deathmarch reports, rewinds, DLO Fails
It got so bad around the recession, GM wouldn't supply test cars
There was a notable commenter on literally every article, but I can't remember why
I should probably go see what the story is over there
Journalism isn't what it used to be
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The way she looks has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of her writing. I read the article from top to bottom, and it's absolutely worthless. The writer put no effort in researching and writing the article, whatsoever.
As a car enthusiast who has owned several cars and trucks with manual transmissions, I acknowledge that it's time to put the final nail in the coffin of the stick shift. When I go to Europe, I still rent vehicles with a stick because they cost less, and I would take a manual transmission over a CVT any day of the week. However, I also acknowledge that step-shift automatics have been perfected. Not only that, but with regular maintenance, they outlast manual transmissions by a good margin. They shift faster than any human could ever do. With a few exceptions (Porsche), manual transmissions have been stuck at six gears since the '90s.
If you're someone who enjoys driving a stick shift for whatever reason, good for you. But don't be fooled for a second into thinking that driver engagement lies in that stick shift, or that, for whatever reason, a manual transmission will make you a better driver because it doesn't.
If you decide to drop them a note, don't write it in cursive.
I lost all respect, especially for Motor Trend, back when AutoWeek busted them selling the Car Of The Year Award to the manufacturer who bought the most ad pages and provided the most perks.
Followed by a decline in content: thumbnail drives turned into full "Road Tests", data tables recording only the wheelbase of an automobile and no more 73 mile real world gas mileage numbers on their test cars but just EPA #s.
Pretty disappointing all around as I had been a subscriber since I was 12. Sometime in the mid '90s I let my subscription lapse.
Now you have cretins who have a hard time explaining what a hardtop is and inventing new terms, in one instance calling a 66 Chevelle four door sedan a "Crew Cab".
Even Hemmings Classic Car has become lame and I let that one lapse as well. Compared to it's ancestor, "Special Interest Autos" one can see the decline in content. Thin on editorial. Lots of pictures. So after the first 20 years, I decided to let that one lapse in '23, IIRC
Much better information in forums such as this.
@macarose: I recognize you. One of my favorite authors and I regularly refer to your web site when doing a deep dive on a car I might be interested in.
Same quality level as Mike Lamm who used to write the "Used Cars" column in Motor Trend. I loved his writing from the time I was a little kid and picked up my first Motor Trend.
TTAC used to be a favorite but went downhill. I guess like all good things, a Golden Age only lasts so long
Followed by a decline in content: thumbnail drives turned into full "Road Tests", data tables recording only the wheelbase of an automobile and no more 73 mile real world gas mileage numbers on their test cars but just EPA #s.
Pretty disappointing all around as I had been a subscriber since I was 12. Sometime in the mid '90s I let my subscription lapse.
Now you have cretins who have a hard time explaining what a hardtop is and inventing new terms, in one instance calling a 66 Chevelle four door sedan a "Crew Cab".
Even Hemmings Classic Car has become lame and I let that one lapse as well. Compared to it's ancestor, "Special Interest Autos" one can see the decline in content. Thin on editorial. Lots of pictures. So after the first 20 years, I decided to let that one lapse in '23, IIRC
Much better information in forums such as this.
@macarose: I recognize you. One of my favorite authors and I regularly refer to your web site when doing a deep dive on a car I might be interested in.
Same quality level as Mike Lamm who used to write the "Used Cars" column in Motor Trend. I loved his writing from the time I was a little kid and picked up my first Motor Trend.
TTAC used to be a favorite but went downhill. I guess like all good things, a Golden Age only lasts so long