Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[flar]

Really?
While I agree with you about the New York Times and most other newspapers, motorcycle journalism has a different way of doing things.  (I'd suspect it is the same way with automobile journalism as well, but motorcycle journalism is the only industry I'm familiar with.)  Manufacturers have a long history of flying journalists from the leading magazines (Cycle World, Motorcyclist, Bike, MCN, etc) to exotic locales for lengthy road trips on their bikes, paying for track time, sometimes paying for spouses and families to accompany the journalists, providing tracksuits and other gear free of charge, etc.

This is, in fact, why Consumer Reports goes so far out of its way to stress the extreme lengths that they go to in obtaining unsolicited products to review - because this kind of treatment is not just common - it's the primary way that consumer reviews happen in every segment of the industry outside of Consumer Reports.

[Brammofan]

This is, in fact, why Consumer Reports goes so far out of its way to stress the extreme lengths that they go to in obtaining unsolicited products to review - because this kind of treatment is not just common - it's the primary way that consumer reviews happen in every segment of the industry outside of Consumer Reports.

Exactly!

Now, let's wait for CR to review the electric motorcycles on the market. 

When they do (or more accurately, if they do), we'll read about here, no doubt.

[ZeroSinMA]

No real journalist allows a manufacturer to pay for his flight, hotel, and meals for the simple reason that it creates an obligation, or at least the appearance of one, which is bad enough. His publisher pays for these to ensure that there is no obligation to the subject of the story.

Really?
While I agree with you about the New York Times and most other newspapers, motorcycle journalism has a different way of doing things.  (I'd suspect it is the same way with automobile journalism as well, but motorcycle journalism is the only industry I'm familiar with.)  Manufacturers have a long history of flying journalists from the leading magazines (Cycle World, Motorcyclist, Bike, MCN, etc) to exotic locales for lengthy road trips on their bikes, paying for track time, sometimes paying for spouses and families to accompany the journalists, providing tracksuits and other gear free of charge, etc.

As protomech stated, Zero provided Wes with a bike that he rode for about a month. 

Brammo flew a journalist from Cycle World up to their headquarters up in Ashland, Oregon, to review the Empulse a few days after Siler's trip.  These are just the two that I know of. 

The world of motorcycle journalism can only support a few writers at any time because it's not particularly lucrative.  One of the perks is that they get flown to various places by the manufacturers.  No, the publishers do not pick up the tab -- they are struggling as well.  Are the journalists expected to remain unbiased?  Yes.  Are they, in fact, unbiased?  No - probably not.  The magazines they write for have advertisers that expect to be rewarded with favorable stories. 

I suspect that bias creeps in at some point in the process, no matter what the integrity of the writer might be.  It has to go through the editor and the publisher.  A publication like Hell For Leather has fewer points of weakness than most because it does not have advertising and Siler (and the other writers) are their own editors. 

But, if it helps you cope or if it keeps you happy or whatever, ignore everything above and keep on believing that the deck is stacked in Brammo's favor and against Zero.  It may or may not be the truth.  The only reason I keep on commenting on this particular thread is to try to clear up inaccurate information like whether Siler works for Brammo, whether motorcycle journalists pay their own way (or whether their publishers do), and whether membership or participation in forums is some sort of violation of journalistic integrity.  The answer to all of the above is 'no.'

This is very helpful. I appreciate your thoughtful comments on this.

If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt you, then motocycle trade magazines are as corrupt as automobile trade magazines.

For this reason the only auto news and review site I read is the editorially independent TruthAboutCars.com. You can read about them here, if you are not already aware of the site:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/faqs/

Is there is no equivalent in the motocycle industry?

Sounds like an opportunity to me!

If this is the way motorcycle reviews advertisements work, Zero needs to get with the program and buy themselves some journalists opportunistic writers with free trips, meals, track time, etc., or they're going to get buried in the competition's propaganda.

[flar]

He's a member of the Brammo forums...

http://brammoforum.com/index.php?topic=1518.0

But not the Zero forums.

As noted by protomech, Wes Siler's actually been a member of EMF since May 2012:
http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?action=profile;u=1664

If someone is going to accuse a journalist with an "outrageous violation of journalistic integrity," he should take 30 seconds to research whether his claims have any basis in fact.  

The link above is where Wes is on the Brammo forum responding to members who are asking him to hurry up and publish he latest Zero-bashing, Brammo lauding review. Really? Can you imagine a Consumer Reports product reviewer, one with a reputation for giving positive reviews of that manufacturer's product, posting a comment on a manufacturer's forum explaining why his  review is late? Ridiculous.

As for fact checking.

Actually, no, the link above is where Wes is writing a review for Hell for Leather magazine and protomech quoted that external article in the Brammo forum.  Wes never posted those words on the Brammo forum - protomech forwarded them there.

Here is the original post (linked from that forum posting that you linked to) where he attributes the source of Wes's comment: http://brammoforum.com/index.php?topic=1467.msg11153#msg11153

[flar]

If this is the way motorcycle reviews advertisements work, Zero needs to get with the program and buy themselves some journalists opportunistic writers with free trips, meals, track time, etc., or they're going to get buried in the competition's propaganda.

I think what they did was fine, but they need to find a journalist (hopefully one that is well read) whose bias accepts the design constraints of their bikes.

Or one of the blog/journalists who pride themselves on unbiased reviews (though I imagine they are less entertaining and likely less widely read)...

[ZeroSinMA]

If this is the way motorcycle reviews advertisements work, Zero needs to get with the program and buy themselves some journalists opportunistic writers with free trips, meals, track time, etc., or they're going to get buried in the competition's propaganda.

I think what they did was fine, but they need to find a journalist (hopefully one that is well read) whose bias accepts the design constraints of their bikes.

Or one of the blog/journalists who pride themselves on unbiased reviews (though I imagine they are less entertaining and likely less widely read)...

Without financial independence there can be no editorial independence. The economics of the motorcycle trade mags is such that no periodical can afford to pay its writers' expenses; editorial independence is economically impossible.

That's fine as long as readers know they are not reading truly independent reviews. I bet most do not.

Reminds me of Jim Cramer's Mad Money show. The innocent think the show is about investing in stocks. In truth the show is about getting viewers to watch the show and trade stocks so that the show's producers and distributors earn advertising dollars from brokerages that earn fees when investors trade stocks. Statistically viewers lose money by following Cramer's advice. Millions watch him because he's entertaining as hell and they don't know that they will lose money if they follow his advice. There used to be a site that you could go to that tracked his calls but TheStree.com's lawyer's shut it down. A boring stock advice guy who actually makes viewers money will have a tiny audience that doesn't make the shows distributors money. These are the guys who sell expensive newsletters.

Consumer reports is a consumer products version of an investor newsletter. The reviews are independent because readers pay CU to pay for the tests. CU controls every aspect of the tests to make sure they are fair and comparable, and does not accept advertising.

A CU review of Brammo vs Zero will be boring as hell but balanced and informative.

CU only reviews shipping, production products, so that will have to wait until the day Brammo has one that competes with Zero.

[Richard230]

I have a friend who is an independent journalist and wrote a lot of motorcycle reviews during the 1990's.  He particularly favored BMW motorcycles and was flown and wined and dined by BMW, along with many other motorcycle journalists, all over the World when they had a new model to introduce.  In addition to that, he got to ride the new motorcycle on race tracks and/or exotic highways in the country and always ended up with lots of nice swag.  It was a very pleasant lifestyle and he wrote favorable articles about every new BMW model, got paid for it and made a reasonable living doing so (in addition to writing technical journals) .

Finally he bought a new R1000S in 1999 - with his own cash.  Then he started to have problems with the bike and when he tried to get BMW to make warranty repairs to what he considered legitimate build-quality problems, they blew him off (in his opinion).  After that, in the article about the next new model that he reviewed, he outlined its warts and little design problems that a new owner might want to hear about.  That was too much for BMW and not only did they not invite him to any more new model introductions, but they actually "blackballed" him in the industry.  None of the major motorcycle magazines would print any of his articles about anything for the next 10 years.  Only recently has he been able to write motorcycle review articles for a local free motorcycle publication and he never gets to review BMW motorcycles, but has been testing and reviewing every other brand.  If you write articles for manufacturers that have a large advertizing budget, you have to leave some of your objectivity behind - otherwise you will be out in the cold.

As far as Consumer Reports goes,  you never want them to review any type of motorcycle.     I have been subscribing to their magazine for over 40 years and they have only reviewed (IC) motorcycles three times, twice during the gas crisis of the 1970's and once a few years ago.  Each time they were not very complementary to two-wheeled vehicles (they keep falling over when you stop them and are not safe when you run into a brick wall).  I don't even want to think what they might write about an electric motorcycle, but I am sure that it wouldn't be anything that would help the industry much.   

[protomech]

CR does follow motorcycles. I don't know if they don't make it to the magazines you receive, Richard230, but they've even covered the Zeros.
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/07/zero-s-electric-motorcycle.html
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2011/03/new-electric-motorcycle-zero-xu-is-easily-charged-anywhere-.html
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2011/11/new-zero-electric-motorcycles-promise-100-mile-plus-range.html

TTAC is the only automotive news site I follow on a somewhat regular basis. They typically pass on the press junket, though I recall that even they get flown out from time to time on a manufacturer's dime to various events. They're good about disclosing it, as Wes did in the Jalopnik review. Of course, like every other news side aside from CR TTAC receives and reviews press cars, and the manufacturer can and will cut them off from future press products if they dislike the review (see: Subaru Tribeca "flying vagina" and JB from all porsche things forever).

Particularly with pre-production models, Brammo doesn't have time to ground ship a bike to a reviewer. It's faster (which == cheaper) for them to fly a journalist in to ride and report on the bike. In an ideal world, the publication would pay for the journalist's air fare and lodging.

We don't live in an ideal world. I would bet that CycleWorld didn't pay their own airfare either, and further that it won't be disclosed.

Wes claims HFL has a higher reader count than any print magazine in the US. That may or may not be true - no idea what his number of unique visitors is - but it's certainly true that his review has been published for 3 weeks, and we haven't seen a peep out of CycleWorld.

[Richard230]

I have never seen any of those articles in the CR magazine.  I haven't heard motorcycles even mentioned since their November 2010 issue, when they reviewed the Aprilia Scarabeo 200 and the Honda SH150i.  Prior to that they tested small motorcycles and scooters in their June 1981 and had a general article about motorcycles in their January 1973 issues. And that is it for their their monthly print magazine over the past 40 years.

[ZeroSinMA]

The more I think about this the more I think it's a waste of time to think about how Brammo and Zero market their products.

I came to this after reading Richard230's story about his friend who was a BMW employee for 10 years plus without, apparently, knowing it.

How could he not understand that treats and money for good reviews was the deal?

Denial, I guess.

I see these hugely fat dudes on Harley's riding down the highway in t-shirt, shorts, flip flops and no helmut and I wonder what kind of fantasy world they're living in.

If they don't die from a head injury the fat-clogged ticker will get them. All part of the same romantic philosophy of life, I suppose.

Motorcycles attract people who are trying to escape reality. What makes Zero riders different is that we are very much into reality. We're just trying to figure out how to ride quietly through it.