Is anyone bored with EVO magazine recently?
Discussion
So much of this thread is really about the medium rather than the message and it's no less interesting for that. My view is principally that good journalism is good journalism , wherever you find it and it shouldn't matter whether it's read on a tablet , a phone or on paper.
But to me there is a difference , partly because I grew up with print and partly because I sense a change in reading habits anyway. Magazines have frequently become purveyors of bite size factoids - 250-500 words max - which are ideal for digital platforms , especially when accompanied by video or still pics . And that is a battle which they can only lose as so many readers read differently - more voraciously perhaps but with a very short attention span.
If I want to read in depth stuff - and I do, far preferring 4000 words to 400, I can do it on a Kindle (words on page,nothing else) but really struggle to concentrate on a typical web page before clicking on a link and ending up somewhere else . So magazines and books have a strong appeal for me still if they have long enough pieces to enjoy and subject matter which appeals. But EVO's emphasis on track performance of road cars I find even duller than 3 paragraphs and a picture of yet another AMG Merc or M4 melting tyres ..
I am not sure I have picked the best time to be writing a book about cars and motor sport have I ?
But to me there is a difference , partly because I grew up with print and partly because I sense a change in reading habits anyway. Magazines have frequently become purveyors of bite size factoids - 250-500 words max - which are ideal for digital platforms , especially when accompanied by video or still pics . And that is a battle which they can only lose as so many readers read differently - more voraciously perhaps but with a very short attention span.
If I want to read in depth stuff - and I do, far preferring 4000 words to 400, I can do it on a Kindle (words on page,nothing else) but really struggle to concentrate on a typical web page before clicking on a link and ending up somewhere else . So magazines and books have a strong appeal for me still if they have long enough pieces to enjoy and subject matter which appeals. But EVO's emphasis on track performance of road cars I find even duller than 3 paragraphs and a picture of yet another AMG Merc or M4 melting tyres ..
I am not sure I have picked the best time to be writing a book about cars and motor sport have I ?
coppice said:
I am not sure I have picked the best time to be writing a book about cars and motor sport have I ?
You could have left a stable government job to be a motoring scribe! So far it seems to be working out OK...I'm really quite skeptical that DriveTribe is going to work. Car enthusiasts are notoriously partisan, which is why Porsche people post at Rennlist, Ferrari people at FChat, etc. PH seems to be a real outlier in that there's a wide community here, and why are people going to abandon the forums they already use and love for a new one? Also, the demands of publishing content online are quite different to the cadence of a monthly print mag.
RenesisEvo said:
Tempted by Octane...
Don't be. Tried them twice, and still have 2 or 3 unread issues from the last time (early this year)!Writing is an entire league below evo - at its worst (Croucher!) it's pretentious, condescending, cliche'd and sycophantic. I love cars in general and I REALLY like classic performance cars, so Octane should be perfect...but it's just not - they're writing as if they and their audience all get personal invites to Lord March's private garden parties...
havoc said:
RenesisEvo said:
Tempted by Octane...
Don't be. Tried them twice, and still have 2 or 3 unread issues from the last time (early this year)!Writing is an entire league below evo - at its worst (Croucher!) it's pretentious, condescending, cliche'd and sycophantic. I love cars in general and I REALLY like classic performance cars, so Octane should be perfect...but it's just not - they're writing as if they and their audience all get personal invites to Lord March's private garden parties...
I wonder if the problem with Evo stems from the cars they have to review - modern cars just don't appeal to me that much. I remember looking through the 'driven' section (or whatever it's called) a little while ago and seeing, diesel automatic, diesel automatic, SUV, diesel automatic, SUV, diesel automatic and thinking 'why am I reading this magazine?' But then this month's article on the Lamborghini Silhouette was great - of course that was by Catchpole...
I used to buy it every month without fail when I was younger, but now it's just depressing reading about yet another £2m hypercar for awful oil sheiks that i'll never even sit in, never mind afford. I'm not saying aspiration is a bad thing, but I can't aspire to stuff that i'm forever locked out of.
rohrl said:
NDNDNDND said:
God Croucher is so punchable.
He's the reason I don't bother with Octane. What a smug supercilious prick.Catchpole...is going to be a big loss to Evo - possibly the closest writer in character to Bulgin out there at the moment. Meaden is still very good as well, Vivian certainly can be when he parks his biases, but otherwise it's all very "same old..." - who is there out there whose writing is of real quality anymore?
That said, Trott, Bovington (sp?) and Prosser are still better scribes than most of the guys at Modern Classic (another magazine I long to gel with but often can't), so I'm not giving up my subscription just yet - I like old-fashioned paper magazines...you don't need to remember to charge them!!!
I also agree on the comments above ref. columns by non-journo petrolheads usually being worth reading (for the last year or two they've been the first pages I've read in evo each month, ecoty included) - Porter and Franchitti are consistently entertaining (even if I don't agree), Jay Leno likewise*. Dron and Bayley I find variable - Dron can name-drop too much and Bayley on occasion can come across like a Croucher.
Out of interest, what is Car magazine like nowadays.
* Started watching his TV show in place of TopGear - different but good - his passion shines through in spades and he knows his stuff...
I paid for my own EVO subscription for ages, keeping every issue.
It was cancelled for budgetary reasons, but I bought the odd copy as I still enjoyed reading it. Then for my first father's day last year my son bought me a new subscription, and my wife renewed it for Christmas or my birthday (both December which I why I can't remember).
This paid off when in last month's issue I won a very nice watch for letter of the month.
It arrived the day before we left to go to Ireland for my daughter's christening.
So basically I won't hear a word against EVO now.
Slightly worrying though that so many are leaving at around the same time.
It was cancelled for budgetary reasons, but I bought the odd copy as I still enjoyed reading it. Then for my first father's day last year my son bought me a new subscription, and my wife renewed it for Christmas or my birthday (both December which I why I can't remember).
This paid off when in last month's issue I won a very nice watch for letter of the month.
It arrived the day before we left to go to Ireland for my daughter's christening.
So basically I won't hear a word against EVO now.
Slightly worrying though that so many are leaving at around the same time.
rohrl said:
Ahhh...it seems universal then."Founding editor" - is that why they won't kick him out?!?
Dr Gitlin said:
You could have left a stable government job to be a motoring scribe! So far it seems to be working out OK...
I'm really quite skeptical that DriveTribe is going to work. Car enthusiasts are notoriously partisan, which is why Porsche people post at Rennlist, Ferrari people at FChat, etc. PH seems to be a real outlier in that there's a wide community here, and why are people going to abandon the forums they already use and love for a new one? Also, the demands of publishing content online are quite different to the cadence of a monthly print mag.
I might be wrong but I thought DriveTribe is going to be mainly video based stuff exclusive to the site rather than forums/writing? Maybe I remembered the initial announcement wrong but...I'm really quite skeptical that DriveTribe is going to work. Car enthusiasts are notoriously partisan, which is why Porsche people post at Rennlist, Ferrari people at FChat, etc. PH seems to be a real outlier in that there's a wide community here, and why are people going to abandon the forums they already use and love for a new one? Also, the demands of publishing content online are quite different to the cadence of a monthly print mag.
It obviously has a lot of money thrown at it initially so will be interesting to see where it leads.
I am a frequent reader of your stuff by the way, well done
rohrl said:
Ahh..my thread that keeps on giving!I have to say after i started that i did feel a bit guilty that I may have misjudged the esteemed Mr Croucher esq with my criticism which could have been deemed overly harsh
The next issue of Octane he was espousing the benefits of the Goodwood members meeting as it was more exclusive than the Revival which had been somewhat dragged downmarket by the plebs.
At this point I realised that my initial supposition was spot on
If it walks like a duck..
Edited by slk 32 on Thursday 3rd November 23:35
marmite monster said:
I can't believe anyone buys magazines anymore. lets cut a tree down, mash it into a pulp, make paper, cover it in ink drive it to a shop in a truck, hope people will drive into a town and pick it up ....madness !
Sarcasm? I like to read things that are printed on paper be it books, magazines or reports/journals/work. I can't quantify it, I just prefer it.
Back on topic, I do sometimes get EVO if there's a car they've driven that interests me but I wouldn't bother buying every issue or subscribing. I never particularly liked Trott but it didn't bother me so much, Catchpole and Bovingdon leaving is much more of a big deal.
shost said:
Must be the only one but I still enjoy evo. The columns especially by Franchitti are worth a read. The tech sections are insightful. .
I find the tech stuff really hit and miss, sometimes making my skin crawl with inaccuracies or errors, or stereotypical 'this is really complex' (but really isn't) pandering to the lowest common denominator. Yet other times they manage to convey it quite well. A puzzle.A well written, insightful piece that draws you in is the jackpot, but such things seem hard to find reliably, even Motorsport can't deliver consistently. Frustrating. I don't think I'll be subscribing to anything soon.
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