But it’s not their fault, it’s ours.
That’s primarily down to one main factor – the internet. The arrival of the internet with Ebay and Gumtree and all the other sales outlets virtually killed off newspaper and magazine advertising, the main source of income for most print publications. So the cover price went up and as it did so, the punters stopped buying. The result, fewer pages, shorter reports and less news coverage because fewer journalists could be employed and freelancers hired.
The big surprise is that MSN has managed to survive so long. Circulation is less than a twentieth of what it once was
So don’t blame young Luke for his short report or Matt the Editor. Luke would have been given a word count by the Editor which was determined by the number of pages he could afford and the number of articles he could fit in the space dependent on the amount of advertising generated for that week’s issue and the paper’s current circulation.
And I’m as guilty as anyone. I don’t have a subscription now either. At £3.99 per issue it’s far too costly but I bought this week’s paper to read the Mull report having thought they might have made a better effort for an event comprising 20 Special Stages totalling some 140 miles of the most tortuous twisting terrain in the kingdom with 150 crews fighting it out on the ‘best rally in the world’. I should have known better.
Sadly, there are no ‘proper’ rally magazines any more. No more waiting with excited anticipation for the next issue of the monthly ‘Rally Sport’ magazine with its general informative overview followed by individual crew by crew reports. Not only have we lost Rally Sport but also PaceNotes, Rally Car, Road Sport North, Scottish Clubman, and many others like Car & Car Conversions and Competition Car. As for the weekly Autosport, it wouldn’t recognise the difference between the back end of a rally car and the arse end of a F1 reporter.
And we’ve lost them all for the same reason. Newspapers and magazines of old used to have back page sections full of adverts for cars, bits of cars and things needed for fixing cars. Now it’s all on-line. Instead of taking a loo-break to sit down with trousers at ankles to read the back pages, we’re still in the same position, but flicking through telephone screens instead.
Another factor is that younger readers appear to have shorter interest spans and won’t sit down to read a full report or article, more content to flick through social pages looking for shaky film clips and information on friends and rivals. But is that really true? Better journalism and more entertaining reports could possibly reverse that trend.
Browsing social media for rally news is like viewing a house through a letterbox. It’s hard to find a full and comprehensive rally report on there, all we seem to get is mere snippets, and try to piece the bigger picture from that. Then there is the question of accuracy and believeability. Who exactly is the author of such ‘news’ and ‘information’? Can the unknown name be trusted? You only have to look at the F1 chat lines and blogs to read the conspiracy theories. All too many of these ‘fan’ outlets are more concerned with ‘clickbait’ than imparting facts.
Of course, rally results are more plentifully available thanks to the internet, but they can only offer a black and white view of this colourful and vibrant sport. Sets of result simply cannot convey the exciting, dangerous, intoxicating, compulsive, nature of the sport or soothe the skint knuckles, burnt fingers and bruised shins which can result from such a frenetic activity.
So what’s the answer? There is no answer. The regular, reliable, comprehensive dedicated rally magazine is dead, and if MSN disappears, what will we be left with? So be careful what you wish for.
All we have now is this bluidy internet monster. R.I.P. ‘Rally
Sport’.
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