Motor Sport Business Forum preview: the future of F1 media, part three – better coverage in the internet age

This is my final post looking at some of the issues that’ll be covered by the media panel at this week’s Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco, featuring James Allen, Jonathan Noble, Joe Saward and Ian Burrows.

Advocates of free market economics and devotees of Adam Smith (there’s a big overlap; maybe I should draw a Venn diagram) still believe that consumers act in a rational way. Unless you’ve spent the past couple of years living in a loft, catching up on the entire series of Heimat, you’ll know this is utter cobblers.

You don’t have to rub yourself down three times a day with a copy of Blog Your Way To A Six-Figure Income to know that if you don’t update your site regularly, your traffic will fall off more dramatically than Richard Chamberlain in The Towering Inferno. And that indicates there’s a big distortion in this ‘ere market; even in the niche that is Formula 1, people want to read news every day. And if the sites they visit first don’t have any news? Well, they’ll carry on looking until they find one that does.

Where there is demand a supply surely follows, with the result that an entire industry has grown up to provide these addicts with a daily fix of not-necessarily-news; usually some quote-based bilge usually bearing no relation to what was originally said or meant. The big fish among these bottom-feeders is the rightly derided GMM, a sloppy outfit which never lets the facts get in the way of a non-story, and which only began to acknowledge the sources it was plagiarising when those sources threatened to get legally medieval.

But he isn’t the only person out there pretending to be something he’s not

GMM’s main ‘journalist’ is Andrew Maitland, an individual who has never entered the F1 paddock and probably never will, owing to the queue of people waiting to give him a thorough kicking if he ever does. But he isn’t the only person out there pretending to be something he’s not. Anyone with a computer and the merest modicum of literary ability can now pass themselves off as an F1 journalist, and there’s a lot of them at it.

On the outer reaches of the spiral arm of the F1 news galaxy there lurks a particular brand of goon. Often they have day jobs, but by night they dress up and play at being journalists, merrily cutting and pasting information from elsewhere, usually adding next to knack-all to it. The mere fact that someone else has carried the story renders it fit to print without further interrogation.

A month or so ago m’learned colleague Joe Saward indulged in a little schadenfreude at the expense of a minor F1 news site, which was complaining that its contents had been pilfered. He called the piece Thieving from the thieves and had a good giggle at the irony because the site in question carried a GMM feed.

What he didn’t expect was the vehement response of some of the forum-dwellers there: the proprietor posted several rather miffed comments on Joe’s blog in which he made a series of bafflingly illogical claims, including that he knew GMM’s output was dirge but spared his readers the worst of it, and that while he would dearly love to be a full-time F1 journalist, he just couldn’t afford the ‘luxury’ of all that travel. His chums, meanwhile, accused Joe of being a meanie without ever actually getting to grips with the point, and then they all went back to their forum, where they could deconstruct Joe’s personality in more detail without fear of moderation.

It was like watching an old Norse raiding party trash a neighbouring village – set the livestock loose, burn down a couple of huts – before returning to camp and congratulating themselves on a pillage well done. The proprietor opined that there was no need to attend events anyway, since he had recently composed a perfectly adequate news story about the Brawn-Mercedes deal using just two press releases. Surely, I thought, he should be aspiring to do a better, more thorough job than this?

F1 fans find the ‘echo chamber’ effect just as vexing as the professionals do – because many of these fans blog about F1 and rely on an accurate information to make their efforts worthwhile

Elsewhere on the web, a site has recently come into being called Formula 1 Blogger. It is cleanly designed and optimised for smartphones, and its creator (full-time job: web developer at Sony Computer Entertainment) Twitters its every update and Diggs assiduously under the peculiar pseudonym of ‘Mootymoots’. The content, though, is the same old tosh, regurgitated without any analysis, insight or comment, and very briefly at that. Every post reads like it took half a minute to write. You kind of wonder what the point is.

Now, my great-great-grandfather was a blacksmith in a little village called Catford, now part of the suburban sprawl of south east London. History doesn’t record his response to the invention of the motor car, but he was probably rather miffed to watch his livelihood disappear down the swanee. In the same way, many old-school F1 journalists are having to cope with the inevitable disappearance of many of their revenue streams, particularly syndication deals. But they cannot stand in the way of progress.

Times change. We just need to make sure they change for the better. The comments in response to the earlier pieces in this series show that many F1 fans find the ‘echo chamber’ effect just as vexing as the professionals do – because many of these fans blog about F1 and rely on an accurate information to make their efforts worthwhile. There are plenty of blogs out there which have readable, well-crafted and compelling content, regardless of how many F1 races the authors (or their visitors) have attended. You don’t have to work in the F1 paddock to talk or blog about the news; but at the same time we need to be cautious about those who are pretending to be something they’re not, because ultimately they are doing their readers a disservice.

You can demand better…

To establish long-term credibility, new media has to adopt some of the better practices of the old (and before some of you start stamping your feet, yes, I know that old media doesn’t necessarily follow all of these rules all of the time). Transparency, accuracy, fairness, attribution, inquisitiveness – it may take a little more time and effort, but it will make the product better.

There is no way of enshrining this in law. Hard-working, hard-bitten journalists like Joe Saward can huff and puff all they like about having their work stolen, but ultimately change will only come through the demand side rather than the supply side. The cut-and-paste genie is out of the bottle. Servers the world over are groaning beneath the weight of all the jibber-jabber.

But you, the readers, have power. You can demand better. If a blog or news site is dealing in regurgitated slop, tell them. Leave a polite comment, pointing out that their stories have been rehashed from elsewhere without proper attribution, interrogation or verification. Let it go up there for other readers to see. And if the moderators remove it, or respond with a Pitpass-style “You’re not paying for any of this, so bog off elsewhere,” then reward their churlishness by doing just that. There are plenty of elsewheres to bog off to and nicer people to converse with.

Hurrah for the internet!

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  • Comments (12)
  1. *Claps* Well done sir – I shall quote this article from now on whenever I see someone trying to pass off a GMM or other false story as news!

  2. Excellent post Stuart and one I fully agree with.

    Like I said in a previous comment on this ‘ere blog, AUTOSPORT provides a trustworthy source of up to date news stories for me. Everything else is merely regurgitating the same news, perhaps shifting quotes and rewording paragraphs to make it look original.

    What these all fail to see however is that without their beloved source for news titbits, they wouldn’t exist, and as everything becomes more and more diluted readers will switch off.

    Well I am at least. I don’t have the time or inclination to spend precious moments of my life reading the same tat over and over again.

    There are plenty of blogs out there which have readable, well-crafted and compelling content, regardless of how many F1 races the authors (or their visitors) have attended. You don’t have to work in the F1 paddock to talk or blog about the news.

    Bingo! House! etc.

    It seriously baffles me why people strive to want to be THE FIRST WITH THE F1 news. There’s hordes of people on the Internet and Twitter getting a kick out of trying to be seen as an authority of the latest goings on.

    For what though? Personal gratification? Jeez…

  3. I personally loved this sentence most:

    It was like watching an old Norse raiding party trash a neighbouring village – set the livestock loose, burn down a couple of huts – before returning to camp and congratulating themselves on a pillage well done.

    It’s the perfect analogy for that entire episode.

    This article is so complete – I don’t think there’s anything I can add to it. It’s also nice to see that you don’t seem to hesitate in naming names if necessary. Keep up the good work! :)

  4. great post. nothing much to add, only to ask your thoughts on the subject of image copyright. a personal pet-hate of mine are bloggers who regularly steal copyrighted photographs in order to enhance their missives. often the same bunch of low-life’s happy to regurgitate other peoples text.

    i’m amazed the likes of LAT/Sutton/DPPI don’t appear to do more to protect their works.

  5. Had to laugh at this one:
    “You’re not paying for any of this, so bog off elsewhere”
    Yep, been on the end of that advice and yes, it seemed like good advice.

    • Stuart C
    • December 7th, 2009

    a personal pet-hate of mine are bloggers who regularly steal copyrighted photographs in order to enhance their missives. often the same bunch of low-life’s happy to regurgitate other peoples text.

    i’m amazed the likes of LAT/Sutton/DPPI don’t appear to do more to protect their works.

    The magpie mentality doesn’t seem to differentiate between text and images, does it?

    I took quite a few pictures at GPs in 2008 and happily stuck them up on Flickr without worrying about the high-ish resolution. I suppose that because I’m very much an amateur photographer, it never occurred to me to do anything to protect them.

    A couple of blog sites emailed to ask if I wouldn’t mind them using specific images, and I said yes. One of them – I don’t know if it was just clumsy phrasing, or whether they really meant it – seemed to imply that they intended to use the image whether I said yea or nay, and that if I didn’t like it then there was nothing I could do to stop them.

    The quandary for the F1 snapper is that they need to get their work up and out there for people to see. If they slap an enormous watermark on it, or run it low-res, then it loses impact and isn’t as saleable. And if it’s big enough to see properly then it’s big enough to steal.

    So, yes, I find the image thieves maddening. After all, when I go to GPs I sit in the dry and compose my thoughts on a compact, lightweight laptop – I’m not out there in all weather hauling around expensive, cumbersome, fragile equipment.

  6. A brilliant post.

    It is so very hard to break the aggregator habit, of course. I am constantly surprised at the number of comments we get starting with: “I know it’s GMM but…”

    But nothing!

    It’s a tough tide to turn, but it will turn in the end.

    • Steven Roy
    • December 7th, 2009

    The trouble with bottom feeders is that they pick up detritus lyong around on the floor and don’t relise that the detritus used to swim around above them. The only hope we have is that a few dead whales land on their heads.

  7. Very amusing read Stuart. With writing this enjoyable, who needs pretty pictures!

  8. The only hope we have is that a few dead whales land on their heads. {Steven Roy – 2 comments ago}

    :D Great comment, Steven! A quick reminder of how the F1 ecosystem works would do no harm and a lot of good…

  9. Sir,

    Just caught up with this, and find the following amusing:

    “the proprietor posted several rather miffed comments on Joe’s blog in which he made a series of bafflingly illogical claims, including that he knew GMM’s output was dirge but spared his readers the worst of it, and that while he would dearly love to be a full-time F1 journalist, he just couldn’t afford the ‘luxury’ of all that travel. His chums, meanwhile, accused Joe of being a meanie without ever actually getting to grips with the point, and then they all went back to their forum, where they could deconstruct Joe’s personality in more detail without fear of moderation.”

    That’s a load of bollocks, to be frank. I wasn;t miffed, but amused, and I did nothing other than tell teh truth. Many of the comments from ‘my chums’ came from people who, in fact, I had never heard of, and who don’t frequent my site. Most of the comments from those who do attend our forum who posted comments in support found they were mysteriously left unpublished by Mr Saward.

    Nobody accused Mr Saward of being ‘a meanie’, merely questioning his stance on the matter, and we all agreed that GMM leaves a lot to be desired. However, there is little difference between what it peddles and what Autosport publishes these days.

    I would suggest you accept that, in this day and age of ‘instant news’ it is not the news hounds who will prosper but those – like Mr Saward – who can give an opinion and an insight; his attack on UpdateF1 – through that on GMM – was largely unecessary – he has nothing to fear.

    Interesting site, by the way. I shall read more.

    regards
    Steve Turnbull
    Editor – Updatef1

    • Stuart C
    • February 4th, 2010

    Good to hear from you, Steve.

    I do accept that ‘news hounds’ per se will not prosper, as you can see from this post and others on the site. That’s why I don’t do news; nobody is willing to pay for it, so it doesn’t put bread on the table. The post was not intended to carp about this, merely to state it as a fact.

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