Thanks for your support guys.
Chris, not returning your calls/emails is on me and I'm sorry for angering you.
That said, I'm afraid that your anger at not getting your event ink is making you the naive one in understanding how things are.
I think you should check out foliomag.com and jalopnik.com, and do a search for Source Interlink/Primedia and other publishing companies, to understand the dire situation all of publishing has been in for years now.
Next, I want you to understand that very recently, even "major" magazines are taking some big hits with budgets/staff sizes, then compare that to a small mag like GMHTP. Extremely limited resources, extremely high workload, and limited qualified contributors in limited places, even if we had the extra money for them to cover stories. Did stories/events/scoops/etc. slip through the cracks? Absolutely. It killed me that they did, but that was the situation.
Then, you should realize that as Leeper accurately stated, economics played a huge role in the types of cars we covered. I fought like hell to keep Buicks in, and as street themed stuff pulled way harder than race in GMHTP, your statement of us "missing the fact that point series is being run at multiple events" is not accurate. We got and I responded to tons of requests for event coverage/race coverage but apparently I never responded to yours. But even if they were street cars, the race-series theme never did well for us, the street angle did. The Corvette Challenge guys could say the same thing about not being covered: a great event with really good racers, and they were at E-town, no less. Vettes didn't pull hard for my market, didn't cover it. There were certain events that we decided provided a good mix of racing and street performance, we chose 'em and stuck to 'em but couldn't cover many others.
Finally, you should know that GMHTP did/does tons of stories that don't involve the "free parts" you speak of. Yes, many but not all of the parts and labor for my personal Buick buildup were graciously donated by shops and companies. But if it only takes free product/services to get some ink, why don't I have a bunch of LT1 engines in my garage after covering the LTX shootout?
I can only scratch the surface of how things work in this business on a public forum such as this. As I don't want to disrespect my fellow editors who kill themselves every day at these magazines to make enthusiasts happy, or the other employees who were so great to work with there, I won't say anything else.
But I worked hard to keep Buick stuff in the mag for you guys. And again, it was not a personal slight to not respond to you, and I do feel really bad that you got this mad over it.
But because you questioned my ethics, I suggest you leave the easy and affordable midwest, move to the cut-throat LA or NYC area, take a car mag editor job, make about half of what you need to get by, take another job to make ends meet, work with the above constraints to put out a magazine, return every phone call and email, cover every large event, get every fact, photo and caption right, and in general, make everyone happy and publish lots of pages of vehicles that the largest portion of readers don't want to see.
Do that for almost a decade, then at least both of us will understand just how difficult it is.
I love Buicks, and will miss dealing with you guys even though I couldn't do it as much as I wanted. I sincerely hope that TRs will continue to get coverage in mags and websites like TB.com. Hope to see you all around.
Chris, not returning your calls/emails is on me and I'm sorry for angering you.
That said, I'm afraid that your anger at not getting your event ink is making you the naive one in understanding how things are.
I think you should check out foliomag.com and jalopnik.com, and do a search for Source Interlink/Primedia and other publishing companies, to understand the dire situation all of publishing has been in for years now.
Next, I want you to understand that very recently, even "major" magazines are taking some big hits with budgets/staff sizes, then compare that to a small mag like GMHTP. Extremely limited resources, extremely high workload, and limited qualified contributors in limited places, even if we had the extra money for them to cover stories. Did stories/events/scoops/etc. slip through the cracks? Absolutely. It killed me that they did, but that was the situation.
Then, you should realize that as Leeper accurately stated, economics played a huge role in the types of cars we covered. I fought like hell to keep Buicks in, and as street themed stuff pulled way harder than race in GMHTP, your statement of us "missing the fact that point series is being run at multiple events" is not accurate. We got and I responded to tons of requests for event coverage/race coverage but apparently I never responded to yours. But even if they were street cars, the race-series theme never did well for us, the street angle did. The Corvette Challenge guys could say the same thing about not being covered: a great event with really good racers, and they were at E-town, no less. Vettes didn't pull hard for my market, didn't cover it. There were certain events that we decided provided a good mix of racing and street performance, we chose 'em and stuck to 'em but couldn't cover many others.
Finally, you should know that GMHTP did/does tons of stories that don't involve the "free parts" you speak of. Yes, many but not all of the parts and labor for my personal Buick buildup were graciously donated by shops and companies. But if it only takes free product/services to get some ink, why don't I have a bunch of LT1 engines in my garage after covering the LTX shootout?
I can only scratch the surface of how things work in this business on a public forum such as this. As I don't want to disrespect my fellow editors who kill themselves every day at these magazines to make enthusiasts happy, or the other employees who were so great to work with there, I won't say anything else.
But I worked hard to keep Buick stuff in the mag for you guys. And again, it was not a personal slight to not respond to you, and I do feel really bad that you got this mad over it.
But because you questioned my ethics, I suggest you leave the easy and affordable midwest, move to the cut-throat LA or NYC area, take a car mag editor job, make about half of what you need to get by, take another job to make ends meet, work with the above constraints to put out a magazine, return every phone call and email, cover every large event, get every fact, photo and caption right, and in general, make everyone happy and publish lots of pages of vehicles that the largest portion of readers don't want to see.
Do that for almost a decade, then at least both of us will understand just how difficult it is.
I love Buicks, and will miss dealing with you guys even though I couldn't do it as much as I wanted. I sincerely hope that TRs will continue to get coverage in mags and websites like TB.com. Hope to see you all around.
But you did teach me something about the business with that thread. You know at one time I thought it would be kind of neat to write for a car magazine and I'll tell you if I wasn't making twice as much as what you were offering I think I'd probably be the guy whose name is at the title to this thread instead of yours. Well at least I know you wouldn't have thrown my resume in the trash because I was a self centered bastard with an extreme bias towards GM(American) cars. (BTW that's a true story and I'm not naming the rag in question. That's the word for word quote from the editor/publisher.
