Business As Usual

Business as usual

UP FRONT

David Edwards

THANKFULLY. IT WASN’T THE KIND OF phone call I get very often. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to the representative of a well-known high-performance aftermarket company. The company was deciding where to spend its advertising dollars, he informed me. “We support the people who support us." he said, then not-so-coyly asked what kind of editorial coverage his firm could expect in Cycle World.

I'll tell you exactly what I told him. but first some background. This magazine is a business, one that has to show a profit if it’s to stay afloat. Like most other forms of media—newspapers, radio, television—the bulk of CW's money is made through advertisements. As ever-increasing as the newsstand price and subscription rates have become over the years, these two forms of revenue don't even cover the cost of printing and mailing. And. yes, we do accept advertising from motorcycle manufacturers and aftermarket accessory firms, the very companies whose goods we run road tests and product evaluations of.

A conflict of interests?

Apparently, some people think so. Recently. I read an article in a small Southern California publication, a motorcycling newspaper that’s distributed free at various riding spots around the Los Angeles area. The article contained some not-very veiled slurs about the professionalism of motorcycle magazine staffs. 1 called the editor for clarification. While she admitted that the article could have benefited from closer editing, she excused the unfavorable comments by saying. “Well, many oi' the magazines have sold out.” She was referring to ethics, not the display shelves at the corner 7-Eleven.

I know this woman to be an ardent motorcvcle enthusiast, a hard-worker

j

who not only edits the newspaper, but sells the advertising, assembles the thing on her kitchen table and. for all I know, probably hand delivers bound bundles of papers to the distribution points. She also doesn't know what she’s talking about.

Had she spoken with anyone here before she came to her “the magazines have sold out" conclusion, we would have told her the story of another ardent enthusiast, another hard-worker, who in 1 962 hocked his boat and car, mortgaged his home and borrowed money from friends to start a magazine called Cycle World. That man. Joe Parkhurst, became the magazine’s Publisher, Editor, Art Director. Writer and Guy In Charge of Licking Stamps, all because he had this crazy idea that motorcyclists wanted better things to read than glorified, never-met-a-bike-we-didn’tlike newsletters, which is exactly what the industry publications of that era were.

Parkhurst promised readers real journalism, and if that included writing negatively about a product, well, so be it. Advertisers weren’t too crazy about this, and some declined to buy space, perhaps hoping that this upstart magazine would quickly go belly-up.

Didn’t happen. Instead, something wonderful did. Readers voted with their hearts and pocketbooks, and within the year. Cycle World could proudly claim to be “America's largest selling motorcycle magazine.” Not wanting to be left off the CW bandwagon, recalcitrant advertisers saw the light and signed up.

Not that the advertising-editorial relationship has always been a harmonious one. There was the time in 1975 when a motorcycle company— which shall remain nameless, as the culprits have since moved on —tried to intimidate us by pulling all of its advertising. One phone call and $100,000 worth of ads was yanked. Seems someone at the company took exception to Cycle World telling the truth about its new wonderbike. “Remarkable for its smoothness and engineering, but little else." we said about the bike, going on to note its “styling foo-foos," including “turn indicators pirated from the roof of an ambulance." Functionally, we took exception to a hot-running engine and coolant overflow tubes that dumped directly in front of the rear tire. We also detected “throttle slop,” a gearbox that “never becomes a smooth shifter," a “noise level on the objectionable side," and leaky fork seals and an overactive chain oiler that covered the bike in so much black ooze that it “looked as though it had been run in a stock car race."

Cycle World made no changes in its editorial policy after the ads were withdrawn—and hasn't to this day. Incidentally, the manufacturer was advertising again within months.

What that company forgot, what my recent phone caller wasn't smart enough to realize and what the lady editor didn’t bother to find out is that Cycle World is published not for the manufacturers, not for the aftermarket, not to be some kind of blindfolded cheerleader for the industry. Cycle World is published for people much more important than that: its readers.

Enlightened advertisers (and in CIT’s case, those are in the majority) realize that a magazine has to be credible if it's to be of any real use to its readers. Painting a rosy picture of a bad product may serve in the short term, but readers aren't stupid. Fool them once, and they stop believing. Fool them again, and they stop buying. Joe Parkhurst knew that almost 30 years ago: we're not about to forget it today.

Now, back to t he ph one call. When this short-sighted spokesman asked just how much editorial exposure his company could be assured of by buying advertising in the magazine, I took all of two seconds to reply.

“None," I said.

I hope you already knew that. 0