The “Buff Books,� as they are known in the magazine trade, are those titles that appeal primarily to enthusiasts who have a narrow focus; for the purposes of this forum: automobile fans. The Buff Books are deluged with heartfelt offers from readers to begging the editors to please feature the reader's car in their magazine. For a car nut, the pinnacle of achievement is to have his or her car displayed on the pages of their favorite magazine. Let me tell the secrets of getting your car into your favorite magazine. But first, you have to understand what motivates a journalist and his editor.
As a working journalist with nearly thirty years of professional experience with one of the largest and prestigious broadcast media conglomerates in the world, I believe that I can speak with authority about the mind of the media. Although there are many media outlets that approach any topic with a predetermined point of view, the vast majority of American broadcast, print and Internet professionals bring a detached and impartial mindset to the issue or event that they try to illuminate for their audience. And nearly every journalist is a hardworking and diligent seeker of the truth, willing to sacrifice nearly everything (including a decent pay check) to serve the public’s right to know.
The classic image of a journalist is of the “ink stained wretch� that toils long and hard to reveal corruption, criminal intent or breaches in public safety for little remuneration. The satisfaction of seeing one’s word in print, revealing the truth, is the best compensation that a dedicated journalist can hope to receive because the thin margins of most media outlets means that there is not a lot of money in journalism. So while a good journalist is not willing to compromise his principles for a hand full of coins, a good lunch and a well prepared press release will go a very long way to swaying his opinion. A savvy Publicist or Public Relations flack knows that telling the press that food will be served at his press conference/media event/photo opportunity is a cinch to guarantee representatives of the Fourth Estate at his event.
But just getting the journalists to your press conference/media event/photo opportunity is only half the battle. Once you have the members of the working press to attend, you will have to deliver something noteworthy for them to include in their publication/broadcast. “Dog bites Man� is hardly newsworthy, but “Man bites Dog� is unusual enough to be included in the small news hole that most broadcasts and publications have after all the advertising space has been filled. The mundane will never get the attention of the working press.
But an unusual angel to your story may still not be enough to get a cynical editor to assign a writer/cameraman to cover you and your event. Those darn reporters/cameramen are a precious resource to the editor and can only be allocated for the very best prospective news events. But if a well-prepared story with newsworthy features walks into your newsroom on its own, a resource challenged editor is compelled to include that materiel into his publication or broadcast.
Thus armed with the knowledge of how the decisions are made by the editors of major media outlets, it is relatively easy to get your car featured in the pages of your favorite car magazine.
The most important factor to getting your car noticed and featured in a car magazine is to have something unique about your car. An unusual drive train combinations is always an attention getters so consider wedging a Cleveland 351 into your Pinto or powering your shoe box ’56 Chevy with an Allison Aviation motor. In the case of my hobby car, a 1987 Honda CRX Si, I have chosen to skip the usual engine swap that many Honda enthusiasts enjoy and have built an Old School performer from my car’s stock EW series engine. This is like making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and the Honda faithful recognize that this is as a special effort due to the scarcity of high performance parts for this old engine design. Playing the unique angle has gotten my car featured in Honda Tuning magazine.
But being different from the crowd is often not enough. Sometimes you need to go the extra step beyond having a talented wrench and a way with chrome polish. This is where your English composition skills come into play. Creating a press release for your car and having that press release available at car shows is a good way to insure that a hurried journalist covering the event gets enough background on your particular car for inclusion in his coverage of the car show.
A press release should be a concise history of the car: How the car has come to be in car show condition, a listing of special or rare parts that you used to create the car, and a profile on any awards that the car has won. You can also include a small biography about you, the owner, and be sure to highlight exactly the work that you did (as opposed to forking out the bucks to have a professional do the work) which always makes a more compelling story for magazine readers. This kind of background information makes the journalist’s job so much easier; it frees him of the task of having to ask the right questions.
But the real kicker to get your car into car magazine, on top of having a unique car that is detailed in a handy press release, is to provide the magazine with quality pictures that illustrate your car. At the very least, a series of good pictures that you can give a journalist to take back to the office will help to induce the editors to give your car more consideration. And if your pictures are good enough, the publication or website may just use them in their story. Rather than just providing a 8½ by 11 sheet of facts and figures about your car, the modern car enthusiast should burn a few CD’s with all the print info and a series of quality pictures that you can make available to any journalist who stumble past you pride and joy at the car show.
Your car needs to stand out from the crowd to get noticed by the reporters and editors of your favorite car magazine. But beyond that, you need to make the journalist’s job that much easier to stand out amongst the outstanding competitors. In my next posting I will detail how even a rank amateur can take great pictures of his car with any camera.