New 20 ounce tumblers available now! Forum donation credit with purchase. https://www.wildguzzi.com/Products/products.htm#Tumbler
I think that all of the motorcycle publications, including MCN, are captured by the industry, and that the reviews are worth nothing.Independent reviewers on YouTube and elsewhere are perhaps the way forward, starting with this review of the Triumph Bonnevile: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKFsce5phw
How is MCN a slave to the industry or OEM?
Print media? How so 80's.
Yes it's the free content that's killing the publishing industry.But the sad thing in a case like MCN if that they took the time to verify specs that manufacturers provide and measure specs OEM's don't. On doing so they created a table of apples to apples comparison data much of which is not available anywhere else, and certainly not by the free content sources.
I didn't say that MCN is a slave to the industry. I said that it is captured by the industry, which is not the same thing.If you want to understand what I'm getting at, watch the YouTube review that I referred to. Whether you agree with it or not, there's a level of integrity that none of these publications provide, and what's more, you'll get a smile from it :) There's a reason why, as a review by someone with no video rep and no "motorcycle reviewer" rep, it has over 800,000 views.
Even a magazine that carries no advertising needs to maintain a civil relationship with manufacturers, distributors and retailers -- if only to maintain access to test products and even news. Consider what would happen to a publication or journalist who so alienates a segment of the industry that companies refuse to lend products for review or even to send in press releases and photos. In some industries, or if the publication is well-enough funded based on a huge paying audience, editors may be able to buy products for review (Consumer Reports for example?). But if the stock-in-trade is expensive products sold to relatively few enthusiasts (motorcycles, aircraft, boats, sports cars) that's not happening.
Jokes aside, I do think (as many here already said) regularly printed materials are soon to be a thing of the past.
What a lot of publishers did was to use the most inept and unqualified people on the planet to write for their on-line editions. Readers simply looked elsewhere, not just away from print but away from the big branded names too.Why read some trash from a big name publisher when you can get as good and likely better from someone who experienced what they are writing about?A magazine might publish an article or review about a certain bike and gloss over most of what is important. Then some rider takes the same bike out and gives you their impressions and backs it up with video to boot. Why would you want to read the filtered stuff from the branded magazine?MCN and the others could have followed the future instead of living in the past. They didn't so that's the way the cookie crumbles.
True, but it's not just a case of crap editors or crap content on the web.Magazines for enthusiasts were based around a couple of concepts:1. Photos/Specs/Reviews of new products (vehicles etc.) that their readers didn't readily otherwise have access to.2. Advertisers to pay the bills.Looking specifically at vehicles (but the model probably holds true to other areas) the entire content of the press kit, text and photos, is usually available online from multiple sources by the morning after the embargo date.And the OEMs put a heck of a lot of it on their own websites too.That just leaves reviews.Now MCN and CR and what not attempt to provide additional objective data which I personally find attractive.But the majority of most reviews are just subjective thoughts from someone who has had access to the vehicle for a week or two.AND THAT can be found for free, and in MUCH GREATER DEPTH on motor vehicle forums. Penned by enthusiasts with a lot more experience in that model than a journalist can ever have if it's just an assignment. Sure the content is often biased as well, but at least committed bias and you know to expect it.That leaves nothing unique for the magazine to deliver, effectively making it obsolete UNLESS it can come up with unique data/copy.
What magazine could match the reviews given out right here? None I think.