When Readers Get to Peek Under the Hood

"Leaked docs show Motorcyclist caved to advertiser pressure, fired editor" is the title. The gist is, due to advertiser pressure, Brian Catterson (Motorcyclists' editor) fired staff writer Dexter Ford for a story he wrote about Snell helmet standards for the New York Times last fall. I'm not much of a fan of Motorcyclist, mostly because of the magazine's overwhelming endorsement of hooligan exhaust system noise and Catterson's generally abrasive attitude toward anyone who disagrees with him, but this series of emails shows that Brian is even more erratic in reality than he seems in his magazine.

Pretty funny stuff. The Hell for Leather article includes this line, "If true, the emails raise troubling questions about a potentially unethical relationship between advertising dollars and editorial content at the popular magazine. . . " Sorry. I don't think any reasonable person reads Motorcyclists or any other major product-based magazine expecting to see information critical of that industry. Rick Sieman (Super Hunky) with Dirt Bike Magazine was the last seriously critical editor (in my memory) in the history of mainstream motorcycle journalism. I think the manufacturers set fire to his ass and tossed him into a swimming pool full of high test.

Advertisers have the power in the ragstock publication business. Honest industry magazines have stopped asking for subscription contributions because subscribers just don't pay the bills. The folks who pay the bills call the shots. That's pretty much all there is to it. I wish Mr. Ford well. He is a good investigative journalist, but there isn't much call for investigative journalism these days. We've moved into the newspapers/magazines-as-press-releases phase of written communications and, until folks can figure out how to make money on the World Wide Web, that's where we're going to be for a while.