The Last Days of the Print Car Magazine

The iconic Automobile magazine which combines the usual performance car writeups with some lifestyle considerations and literary flourishes will no longer be on newsstands Also among those on their way out are Car Craft Classic Trucks Lowrider Mopar Muscle Street Rodder Truck Trend the SUV and pickup sister to Motor Trend and Vette The company said it will continue to offer its discontinued print titles online but it was unclear if this included all the booksquotWe are doubling down on our bestinclass digital product experiences while maintaining support of the three most popular profitable and strategic brands across digital and printquot TEN said in a statement In 2017 TEN chief marketing officer Jonathan Anastas said that its auto brands had a quotcollective reachquot of 123 million with Automobile in the vanguard That same year the publisher tried to quotrelaunchquot Automobile with more coverage of classic cars and a new upscale formatIn the recent memo to staff MotorTrend Group president and general manager Alex Wellen wrote quotI know this is difficult newsamp8230 Simply put we need to be where our audience is Tens of millions of fans visit MotorTrend39s digital properties every month with the vast majority of our consumption on mobile and three out of every four of our visitors favor digital content over printquotThe only MotorTrend Group magazines to remain in print are Motor Trend Hot Rod and Four Wheeler Hot Rod was founded in 1948 and Motor Trend in 1949 amp8212 both were Petersen titles then But longevity doesn39t keep a magazine safe in these troubled times for print Autoweek was founded in 1958 it recently switched to a twicemonthly print schedule But that too was discontinued in October when it was announced that the title minus its print edition would go to Hearst which also publishes Road ampamp Track and Car and DriverMeanwhile back in January Road ampamp Track founded 1947 decided to close its Ann Arbor Mich operations and put its digital editor in charge of the publication Car and Driver laid off a large number of staffers approximately 13 last yearKim Wolfkill had two stints at Road ampamp Track most recently from 2016 to 2019 as editor quotWhile unfortunate it39s not surprising to see how many print magazines went downquot he says One reason he cites The ad agencies that buy space in car magazines have become entranced with digitalsocial media influencers and TV as well as the quick returns they get in terms of metrics that measure ad performance quotPrint is considered old schoolquot he says Indeed I39ve been given this precise response from auto executivesWolfkill also pointed out the willingness of many young writers on digital platforms to work for very little money amp8212 with free test cars and trips to exotic locations as the payoff That results in a plethora of automotive titles available free to anyone with a phone The writing quality may not be high but the information is there instantly when a new model is announcedquotThe demand for longform storytelling is going downquot Wolfkill says quotThe audience doesn39t necessarily care They just want to go online when the embargo on the car is lifted and get all the technical specifications and maybe a video of it going around a trackquotDespite their advertising woes print car magazines still have a lot of readers Road ampamp Track has about 550000 to 600000 subscribers and Motor Trend and Car and Driver 12 million eachMediaVillage wrote in October that print car magazines seemed starved for advertising with the notable exception for many titles being the WeatherTech floormat company whose fourpage spreads dwarfed the few car company placementsquotUnfortunately the economics of print publishing just don39t seem to work anymore amp8212 in pretty much every vertical not just cars amp8212 with ad revenue way down and costs upquot says Sam Abuelsamid principal analyst at Navigant Research quotIt39s sad to see some of these longrunning titles get shut downquotAnd according to Eric Evarts a former auto reporter at both Consumer Reports and Green Car Reports quotYouth is always the most desirable demographic for marketers because they have their whole consuming lives ahead of themquot But today39s youth are famously disconnected from cars and driving and quotcan39t support 14 newcar magazines all covering the same new intros and updates every monthquotTwentyseven percent of 18 to 29yearolds said in 2017 that they never read a print magazine according to Statista The average age of print car magazine readers has been rising amp8212 up by seven years at Automobile and Hot Rod in one survey and up by five years at Road ampamp Track Automobile magazine39s current press kit says its average reader is 37 years old which is much younger than the average print magazine reader but the statistic doesn39t say if that includes digital Wolfkill says that Road ampamp Track39s average reader is in their 40sIt appears unlikely that there39s any magical formula that would make a print car magazine work in 2019 Wolfkill thinks there may be room going forward for maybe half a dozen beautifully produced and written auto publications perhaps issued quarterly Such magazines gorgeous to look at and dedicated to classic cars thrive in Great Britain quotWe live in a different agequot he says quotNothing that has happened has surprised mequotClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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The Last Days of the Print Car Magazine

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