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Opinions on Journalists quoting members! 😂

2419 Views 11 Replies 10 Participants Last post by ZJetBT, Apr 9, 2021

neeyee8

Discussion Starter · Mar 29, 2021

I found it interesting that all the latest news as well as past rumors have come from this forum. As far as quoting members verbatim. Is it lazy journalism or just standard issue?

I haven't been on here in just under a year. Seems like the forum has been the go to for many publications who lack their own 'inside sources'.

Some may be indifferent or find it funny. Its just a bit unnerving for publications to print what people are saying on here almost verbatim. I suppose now that this forum is now the go to for the new Z. I think many people like me who are or were on other less enthusiastic forums finally found a more positive environment to discuss the new car.

On one side I cant blame Journalists but on the other hand its a bit interesting to use here as a source

I suppose in comparison to other Z forums none have the same enthusiasm for the new Z. Im on a forum that was pretty much negative about this new car for the last 5 years. Now its not coming to the UK even more so. Despite collating 500,000+ views and me being a major contributor where others stopped caring. So whoever started this forum had a good idea to move away from current forums and create something new.

What do you guys think?

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St00k

· #2 · Mar 29, 2021

Hey @neeyee8 . Welcome back stranger!

First up, it's great to see all the comments and discussion. I think we see now that journalists will run any half-decent rumor. They are all fighting for clicks.

That said, I do think that the rumors and info on forums tend to be the first place all of these bits of info leak out. It's anonymous, so that helps.

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MCN1SMO

· #3 · Mar 29, 2021

I wouldnt use the term journalist in a lot of these cases. these guys are staff writers or the internet version of newsreaders for the most part. Its all about content creation and forums are easy places to get content from without really doing anything. sometimes the rumors might be true or it might not but it doesnt matter. It just counts as an article for that day. unless you have the car in hand and are doing a review the majority of car news or "automotive journalism is just writing an article around a manufacturers press release releasing their materials they give you. beyond that its writing about a video you saw on youtube/social media, playing the telephone game and reworking another site's scoop articles or skimming forums for little snippets of info. So thats sort of the bottom of the barrel and sometimes you get lucky which may or may not be the case with the Z leaker. But the biggest win from those sites perspective it was an article quota filled with little effort.

Ive got a lot of experience with this as my site NAGTROC/GTRLIFE had so many scoops that would get picked up on over the years. I saw this same cycle happen over and over. I even held back stuff on purpose not to make nissan mad at times. I remember someone sent me actual photos of the 2017 refreshed GTR months before it was released. Not spy photos but actual studio shots that a 3rd party company was hired out to take. I had a decision to make about what to do. Do i release them and get bunch of traffic but at the same time upset Nissan who I had a good relationship with? Or do I just sit on them and miss out? We ended up taking door number 3. I had a guy on the forums I trusted mock up a render/ photoshop of something that was purposely only about 80-85% accurate and we presented that and never let the real pics out. There would be other examples of we would know trim levels ect or me able to analyze some pics from Nurburgring ect and that would constantly get picked up. It did generate traffic for sure which was good so I guess it was one of those mutual parasitic relationships

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kbl911

· #4 · Mar 29, 2021

St00K is right, it's really a battle for clicks and site traffic in the online "auto journalist" world. I have been of a mind recently that it would behoove us to be somewhat discerning about what we post here but, frankly, this is a fan forum and it isn't our responsibility to weed out any potentially misleading information that a journalist may opt to run with. You can see that some of them (the big ones, mainly - Motor Trend, C&D, R&T, etc) hedge a bit and see if the rumors gain traction before weighing in.

Plus, as mentioned, this forum has a very high level of civility and genuinely-interested contributors so, if there were any community from which to get unconfirmed rumors, this is probably it.

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325

· #5 · Mar 29, 2021

If'n the owner here wants get mean, he could exert copyright privileges against these skimmers. However, I don't see any copyright info at the bottom.

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Gdzilla_

· #6 · Mar 30, 2021

MCN1SMO said:
I had a guy on the forums I trusted mock up a render/ photoshop of something that was purposely only about 80-85% accurate and we presented that and never let the real pics out.

You sneaky little bugger HA HA!!

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St00k

· #7 · Mar 30, 2021

kbl911 said:
St00K is right, it's really a battle for clicks and site traffic in the online "auto journalist" world. I have been of a mind recently that it would behoove us to be somewhat discerning about what we post here but, frankly, this is a fan forum and it isn't our responsibility to weed out any potentially misleading information that a journalist may opt to run with. You can see that some of them (the big ones, mainly - Motor Trend, C&D, R&T, etc) hedge a bit and see if the rumors gain traction before weighing in.

Plus, as mentioned, this forum has a very high level of civility and genuinely-interested contributors so, if there were any community from which to get unconfirmed rumors, this is probably it.

On a forum I'm in favor of posting pretty much anything and just tossing a grain of salt on it all. Not all will be accurate, but I suspect much of it will be close.

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S30R32

· #8 · Mar 30, 2021

kbl911 said:
... You can see that some of them (the big ones, mainly - Motor Trend, C&D, R&T, etc) hedge a bit and see if the rumors gain traction before weighing in.

Yeah, this is their usual norm which sometimes we ask why the delay? Some valid reasoning. But nowadays most earlier click-bait postings are close enough especially if backed up with believable details and photos, not just renderings. The new Z is generating lots of interest, let's hope won't inflate initial pricing too much on rollout.

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Heavy Dupree

· #9 · Mar 30, 2021

The entire "proof of evidence" part of the definition of journalism is dead, making them all by default gossip columnists.

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neeyee8

Discussion Starter · #10 · Mar 31, 2021

Great responses, I think the ultimate 'Journalist' job would be a road tester and real world reviewer. Everything else is hearsay and copy/paste articles from sister sites. They may not appreciate a thread like this but the question has to be asked when you see articles with name drops lol

Im not suprised with the renders, thats why they are often close. The late Z renders were very good and turned out to be close

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Devon

· #11 · Apr 7, 2021

A big part of a writer's job on sites like Jalopnik is re-writing pressers and rumours in a hip/snide/humorous style. Sometimes it works; often it just seems like they are trying too hard.

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ZJetBT

· #12 · Apr 9, 2021

C'mon, let's be honest, real automotive journalist would sneak into test centres for spy pics or befriend engineers to extract info in a spy-like manner.
These people that quote forums are, as above stated, glorified gossip spreaders.

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