A refusal to be
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stampeded by 3r-irs3r-' Coffee
no private interest would be placed at the disposal of the industry at large '')./Ve will serve' to hold the balance between the maker and the operator.' I Have they and their successors succeeded? I think so. I can certainly recall, from my days on the staff, the strong sense of obligation to provide a reliable information service to busy business readers first and foremost, although never to the point of being a dry facts sheet.
The British trade and technical press is among the most respected and in fluential in the world because it has managed to identify itself so closely with
r MAY SURPRISE you, but 'ade journal editors are sen
itive creatures, eager to please nd having antennae perlanently extended like cornlunications satellites to catch very shift of readership aquirement or industry opiion.
Some people call this editing Py the seat of your pants, and le history of publishing sugg sts that it is at least as reliable a uide as sophisticated market Da se rc h — although,to be fair, lis may be because editors )nd to believe the message of leir own pants and apply the ?.sults more rigorously than the rid percentages which readerhip research produces.
I have always found it diffiult to get excited about sup plying the needs of the 4.6 per ent of the readers who wanted lore of this or even the 19.3 er cent who wanted less of lat. There were people?
Anyway, let's weigh up :ommercial Motor and ask what we, the readers, expect of it; what expectations are raised by Plat half-pound thump on the 'all carpet on Friday morning — ssuming that is how and when ou receive it.
It may sound dull, but I think /hat most of us expect are facts: aliable information, whether in he form of news, feature rticles, test reports, cost tables, quipment reviews or show sureys.
It was that great manager, he late Lord Thomas, who wrote to Commercial Motor: "I ave always been impressed by le soundness of your editorial iews, your refusal to be stampded by extravaganza, and the ast contribution you have lade to the progress of British
He gave that view many ears ago, as Sir Miles Thomas, /hen he was vice-chairman of le Nuffield Organisation and efore going on to become hairman of BOAC, but I think -ley are still among the principal ttributes which readers look for ithe journal today.
They were certainly among le aims set out by the entrereneurs who launched CM in 905. The editorial in the first ;sue stated that they "entered le arena determined to support le highest traditions of class wrnalism [which meant someling different then] and to iaintain ourselves in the front ink".
The novice in the industry tould be instructed, the 101 uestions from users would be nswered, and the force and Ifluence of a well-journal with
the industries it serves. Yet it has done so without be comicig a -mouthpiecein the worst sense of the word.
think there are two reasons for this. First, the un6sually high degree of commitrri\ent by individual staff members and. certainly in the case of CM, the careful balancing of recruitment between journalists and transport specialists. Second, the high level of integrity among trade and technical publishers as a whole. There is, of course, a measuie of self-interest in this. A journal bound hand and foot to its advertisers would find it hard to sustain s British readership, but there is a general acceptance among publishers in this field that integrity of information is really a large part of the product they're selling.
What, you may ask, is so special about that? For an answer you have only to look across the Channel.
At the one extreme there is the Continental journal which thinks nothing of hiiacking manufacturers test vehicles and conducting clandestine test reports; while at the other there is the magazine which is so totally in the pockets of the cart criticise products editorial s is allocated cording to how pages of advert have been booked particular man ufact If that is not the ere it is not only bec of publishing integn but, to be fair. advertise: hardly ever seem to try on. In fact, holding the balanc between the maker and th operator seldom loomed as difficulty.
One acknowledged that if advertiser had an important ro which he would fulfil only if yc provided him with a platforn but most manufacturers an suppliers clearly realise that if best platform is an editori, content which is unbiased an capable of drawing and su taming the right type of reade ship.
There are, of course, mar readers (whisper it) who bL magazines for the advertisi runts alone. I remembi watching a man buy a copy 4 CM from a station bookstal enter the train and sit opposi. me, turn straight to th classified ads and, aftf
studying them intently for half 3n hour, throw the journal under the seat.
Perhaps its easier to strike an independent editorial line when vou are top-dog in a market in ;which over one and a half million commercial vehicles are operated. It must have been a ot tougher on that first birthday n 1905.
The editorial in the first issue -emarked how it was a marvel :hat, in face of many operational and legal difficulties, "upwards of 3000 commercial motors, -anging from the 5cwt delivery ran to the 6-ton wagon" were :hen at work in the British isles.
It also took a particular kind of insight, and faith, to see a ommunity of interest which -night support a specialised -nagazine in those circum;tances. But the publishers of :hose days were mainly men -tinning family businesses whose imagination had been :aught by the surge of new .echnology and new ideas around the turn of the century.
How successful would they lave proved in the long run, I (yonder, if the First World War lad not boosted road transport ;o unexpectedly and produced a lood of ex-servicemen with vatuities in their pockets to orm the first of a great army of ;mall hauliers who have emained the major part of the ndustry?
Some of them, of course, be:ame owners of substantial ousinesses, but road haulage is are, if not unique, in still being un largely by people who have cad transport in their blood and vho find it difficult to contemalate any other occupation.
That, of course, is one of the easons why journals like CM lourish. Road transport has ernained a people's business Ind the view of the -readership orofile" from the editor's chair is af a vast crowd of human beings ind not business functionaries.
To satisfy that readership akes more than just a regular ;upply of information. A lot of oeople read a publication to lave their prejudices confirmed.
Having a 42,000 weekly ;irculation helps, but having :redibility counts for a great deal nore — especially in those :ircles where decisions are aken. We have become used to he shrill lobbying which now ieems to be regarded as an esiential part of so many denonstrations of opinion — and here is no denying that it often vorks.
But in the quiet seats of tower it is the reasoned case nade by the informed spokes
man that often carries weight, especially if, as is so often true, an industry journal is promoting the same view as the trade associations.
One of the duties of any selfrespecting publication is, from time to time, to hold up a mirror to show the industry a frank image of itself. I think CM has done this better than most. In seeking to lead or mould opinion, a journal can tap more sources of information and views than are readily available to the average reader and, as an onlooker seeing more of the game, is well placed to point out the pitfalls in a particular course of action.
Now back to basics. For example, are road test reports objective and unbiased?
I don't think anyone has ever questioned that the tests themselves, or indeed the testers, are objective and unbiased. If a vehicle returns 7.2mpg over a given route then that is a matter of fact. If a vehicle breaks a half-shaft on a test hill, that is also a matter of fact, but it requires the tester to go a stage further and at least try to establish whether the vehicle has a habit of eating half-shafts or was the victim of an isolated fault.
The tester owes it to the reader to record the failure, but he also owes it to the manufacturer, and the reader too, to assess the relevance of that fault in the context of an overall appraisal of the vehicle as a good, bad or mediocre buy.
Test reports are, I think, as objective and honest a view of a vehicle as it is possible to reach on the basis of a fairly isolated sample — although a fair amount of probing and exchanging of information goes on in the background to establish how typical an incident may be.
When I was working as a journalist on a different magazine, our testers rang in to report that, under full-throttle, standing-start conditions, the test vehicle had simultaneously blown its head gasket and exploded its top water hose.
If this proved to be a typical fault rather than an isolated incident, there were some pretty heavy consequences in store, because the vehicle was already in quantity production 6nd about to be launched as a new model.
A quick call to a rival journal with an identical model on test revealed that they had had exactly the same experience. We both reported immediately to the horrified manufacturer that his new baby had an Achilles heel. Sending his test drivers out to do full-throttle standingstarts, he soon confirmed the fault. While a crash programme to remedy it was put in hand, at the same time he invited his experimental department to explain how a model which had undergone such a long period of development could have reached this stage without the fault coming to light.
The answer was cruelly simple. The test drivers had been told to go easy on the prototypes: "For gawd's sake don't break 'ern, because we've only got six test vehicles to play with."
So perhaps it is not the objectivity of journal tests which is the whole story, but the closeness with which they simulate real life and the force and authority with which failures or failings are brought to a manufacturer's attention. As readers we expect to be told about them.
The testers usually have a rare combination of practical and theoretical knowledge and skill and they build up their credibility with manufacturers as much by their ability to get the best out of a vehicle as by their readiness at times to push a machine to its limit to see what happens.
I recall the horror with which we in CM's editorial department first viewed the photographs taken by staff photographer when assistant technical editor Ron Cater secured a loaded trailer on top of another trailer and drove the resulting unstable outfit round a circular track at increasing speed to prove a theoretical point about artic rollover.
It was done, I hasten to add, on private ground. But there is nothing like the practical suckit-and-see to convince people about a theory, and the result of Ron's intrepid exercise was not only to provide some first-class copy for the magazine, but also to open up some new trains of thought on a very important problem of road safety.
The risks of testing are not always the result of deliberate frontier-probing. A later assistant technical editor, Trevor Longcroft, mercifully escaped virtually unharmed when the one-ton concrete blocks mounted as a test load on a vehicle submitted for trial broke loose and struck the cab.
CM has always been strong on the engineering side, and its technical staff tend to arrive from a job with some wellknown manufacturer or eventu
ally leave to join one. Technice soundness is therefore taken fo granted, but the journal has els( done at least its share o pioneering new services to thi engineering-orientated reader.
Not that innovation is alway appreciated. Soon after CA started its long-distance roe( tests, involving over 700 mile of varied road conditions on ; return journey to Scotland, sought an opinion on the rout( from a company chief whos, latest product had just corn pleted the test with impressiv, results. "Well," I said, "an( what do you think of our nev test?"
He thought hard for a ful minute and answered very de liberately: "It's cost us a blood, fortune in diesel."
As the operator's eyes, CA, technical staff have been able t( provide a much broader view o vehicle and equipment develop ments and trends than ar operator, engineer or enthusias could ever spare the time to ge at first hand.
In reporting foreign exhibi tions particularly, the journa has provided an invaluable ser vice. There is no question tha. the technical press has been E great influence in getting idea: tried and accepted across fron tiers.
Of course, the contributior has not always been in the forrr of words. CM rescued the Lon Driver of the Year competitior when it was at low ebb and buil. it up into a nationwide event My predecessor started the Flee. Management Conference, ver) much as a forum where maker; and user could meet and sharE their views of the future. And ir a host of ways the journal ha: championed the road transpor industry and helped to solve itE problems.
A journal which has built up its reputation and circulatior over 75 years must expect itE readers to demand higlstandards.
Readers will expect it to carry on challenging the excesses cot bureaucracy, to assess trends in technology, and report on novelties and notions. And I've no doubt that even if newsprint has given way to electronic information,access systems by then, the "readersof 2055 will be just as demanding in their way: The intergalactic show reports should be worth reading, and the classified ads alone, full of used low-mileage space shuttles, will still be worth the subscription.
And there won't be misprints in the read-out of an electronic databank, will there?