After 20 years of service, Motorcycle USA is going to shut its doors at the end of this week.
The news is a shock to anyone in the industry, as Motorcycle USA was one of the largest daily news outlets in the space, with extensive industry knowledge, racing coverage, and bike reviews on its pages.
The news came over Twitter, though we are sure that the MotoUSA team will have a prepared statement on their site shortly, which will explain the MAG Retail Groups decision more clearly.
The start of a new year, and though there is little going on in the world of motorcycle racing in the first week of January, there is still enough to fill our weekly news round up. Here’s what happened this week.
I was surprised yesterday when I saw that respected news service Reuters was pushing a story about how Apple was the reason Mission Motors closed its doors.
That very premise couldn’t be farther from the truth, and is readily apparent to anyone who has followed the San Franciscan startup at even a casual distance for the past few years.
On its face, the story’s logic is akin to the idea that the Carpathia, the first ship to arrive at the wreckage of Titanic, should be accused of poaching the ill-fated ocean liner’s passengers, but digging deeper into the story shows how toothless our media has become, and its willingness to parrot stories that will grab headlines.
The premise of the of the assertions made by the Reuters article’s headline rests on statements made by one of Mission Motors’s former-CEOs, Derek Kaufman, who like our comedic parody of the Captain of the Titanic, blamed the iceberg for his misfortunes.
I should be typing to you from Valencia right now, instead of sitting in my house in Portland, nursing the plate and nine screws that are in my shoulder.
To make matters worse, every time I try to turn a doorknob with my left hand, I’m reminded that my radius is broken at the elbow; and every time I sneeze I remember that my ribs are bruised as well. I’m a bit of mess medically, but getting stronger every day. This job catches up with you sometimes.
That being said, I was ready to cut the cast off my arm and grit my teeth when I got the call last week that Honda had an RC213V-S for me to ride.
For me, some endeavors are worth the pain, and riding the RC213V-S was probably the closest I would ever get to riding a MotoGP bike – that’s the selling point of this particular machine, right? Unfortunately for a number of factors, it was not in the cards.
Regular readers will know that I haven’t been all rainbows and candy canes about the Honda RC213V-S. American Honda knows it too, since they had no qualms telling me as much.
Normally that’s an awkward conversation with an OEM, but this talk was very different. In fact, the coolest part about that exchange was the confidence that Honda has in its GP bike for the streets. You don’t like our MotoGP bike with lights? Give us the opportunity to prove to you how very wrong you are.
Social media and some assorted motorcycle news websites (first here, and now here) are feverishly reporting that Erik Buell Racing has been out-right acquired by Hero MotoCorp, during the company’s receivership auction, thus confirming the wet-dream conspiracy theories of Buellistas around the world.
The report was first started by the stalwart news source Motorcycle.in.th, and was then elevated quickly into the realm of semi-truthfulness by a bevy of other news outlets.
Sources close to Buell and Erik Buell Racing have since come forward and discrediting the report, calling the story a complete fabrication. Meanwhile, Hero MotoCorp stock has risen 0.50% on the news.
With the journalistic bar now set so low, Asphalt & Rubber feels comfortable reporting that there is indeed a new owner for Erik Buell Racing, but it is not Hero MotoCorp, but instead the Flying Spaghetti Monster — deity to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I have seen a lot of things in the motorcycle industry since I started Asphalt & Rubber, but never before have I seen something like this. During the autumn months, it is not uncommon for A&R to receive tips about new motorcycle models that are about to debut, and today was seemingly no different.
This morning we got an enthusiastic email from a purported regular reader (make that two readers now), asking why we weren’t covering the leaked details on the supercharged Kawasaki H2, which were apparently “going viral” all over the internet, as the email told us. To give us proof of that assertion, they included in the emails links to a Facebook page for a new web forum for the H2, which is where the leak apparently occurred.
A quick check on our massive RSS feed (roughly 600 publications now) showed the viral story had only been picked up by one other publication, Motorcycle.com. MO ran the story with the headline “Inside Info About Kawasaki’s Radical H2 Sportbike?” — which had been written by the ever loveable “Motorcycle.com Staff” author, and qualified with the profession’s ubiquitous “?” phrasing.
Our friends at MO certainly do a bit of traffic (I say that with sincerity), though I normally wouldn’t use a single publication covering a story as an indication of that story going viral, but ok whatever…hyperbole is part of the game.
Like any good editor though, I dove into the story deeper. What I found has me supremely worried.
A couple days ago we ran a story that purported to show the front section of the 2015 BMW S1000RR in a CAD rendering. We already know from spy photos that the S1000RR is getting an update, and we are curious to see if BMW will introduce a symmertrical headlight, like it seems to be doing with the S1000XR sport-tourer.
The story was bogus, and as many of our readers pointed out in the comments, the photo in question was a rendering of the original S1000RR, circa 2009. I asked our good friend Iwan at Oliepeil, who has written several times here at A&R already, to elaborate on why this bogus story was run because it’s an important topic when it comes to digital publishing.
I don’t pretend to boast that Asphalt & Rubber is immune from the follies of online journalism, though we might be the most transparent. Any reader online, reading any subject matter, should consider their sources and apply critical thinking to what they read. If you’re ever looking for ours, they’re at the bottom of ever story, usually with a link. – Jensen
Maybe you’re asking yourself how all those websites and magazines are able to bring motorcycle news to you every day. Let us explain how that works, with an example.
Our amazingly handsome and hyper-intelligent Dutch friends at Oliepeil.nl, the best motorcycle website in the world, have quite a reputation of serving up scoops, for which they often upset the worldwide motorcycle industry complex, every now and then. We are also known for our pratical jokes.
So the site I run, Oliepeil, put up a photo of the 2011 BMW S1000RR on our website, with a hint and a link to a spyshot of the rumoured 2015-version of that bike here on Asphalt & Rubber. We didn’t use a real photo, but a rendering that we “borrowed” from a website that sells 3D CAD models. What happened afterwards shows how news is being made in 2014.
Contrary to what the AMA or motorcycling gentry may believe, not all motorcycles are created equal. Due to a combination of marketing, riding styles, and environment, the following five types of motorcycles are the country’s most dangerous.
While the NHTSA doesn’t track motorcycle accidents and crashes based on the type of motorcycle being ridden (among other things), the cultural factors that surround motorcycle injuries and fatalities paint a stark picture, which we’ve shared with you here.
I am very proud to announce that my good friend and colleague David Emmett (check the reflection in Nicky’s sunglasses) has been named, not once, but twice in the 2013 Silverstone Media Awards for his coverage of the MotoGP Championship and for his website MotoMatters.
For the third year in a row, David has been named the Best MotoGP Blogger, something we already knew here at Asphalt & Rubber, which is why we feature his work, and this year marks David’s first time as the series’ top account on Twitter.
David is too humble to do anything other than announce his hat-trick of trophies, but I have no problems saying that his work is the definitive source for MotoGP commentary.
David’s true journalistic ethic and keen understanding of the internet as a medium of information has quickly distinguished him from his colleagues in the MotoGP paddock, and for all the hard work of his that we read on our computer screens, there is an iceberg of change underneath MotoGP’s murky waters that he has brought about.
Keep up the excellent work my good friend, I think I speak for all the Asphalt & Rubber readers when I say that Silverstone couldn’t have recognized a better man in MotoGP.
If you want to help support David’s site MotoMatters, you can take out a subscription; get one of the stunning MotoMatters.com 2014 Motorcycle Racing Calendars; buy a print from Scott Jones’ website; or simply make a donation.
In 1952, Doris Lessing, a Nobel prize-winning author, was one of a group of writers and prominent intellectuals who visited the Soviet Union, then in the iron grip of Joseph Stalin, one of history’s greatest criminals and murderers. She was introduced to the political leaders of the country, and escorted around the nation by the Russian secret police. Lessing, along with the others on the trip, returned home to write gushing praise of the Soviet Union, describing it as ‘a land of hope.’
In her later years, Lessing wrote a damning condemnation of her own naiveté during the visit. “I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’… that’s what my role was. I can’t understand why I was so gullible.” She had seen only what had been shown to her, believed what her guides – all of whom worked for the secret police – told her, and accepted the testimony of the workers she spoke to, workers who had been carefully selected, and briefed to project the right message, or sufficiently intimidated to not let any of the real truth slip.
A ‘useful idiot’ is exactly how I feel all too often working in the MotoGP paddock. With no formal training in journalism, and only my gut instinct to follow, it is hard to sift out the underlying facts from the fiction being projected all around me. Most of motorcycle racing journalism – in fact, most of sports journalism – relies almost entirely on the word of others.
A journalist will speak to a rider, or a team manager, or an engineer, or a press officer, and write a news story based on what they have just been told. If they are a good journalist, they will try and verify what they have been told by checking with other sources. If they want to sell newspapers, they will write what suits them, and let the checking be damned.
Motorsport Aftermarket Group (MAG) is probably not a name that many of our readers are familiar with, but it is the company behind brands like Performance Machine wheels, Roland Sands Design, Renthal handlebars, Vance & Hines exhausts, along with a list of other lesser-known aftermarket brands. Straying from its namesake, MAG made some waves recently when it acquired the Motorcycle Superstore online retail outlet.
Another story of interest involves a division of Motorsport Aftermarket Group: the MAG Media Group (MMG), which bought Cycle News back in 2010 and acquired Motorcycle USA with the Motorcycle Superstore purchase. Owning one of the oldest print publications in the business, as well as the largest web-based publication in the industry, MAG has realigned its MMG operations to consolidate the management of the two publications, with longtime editor Paul Carruthers taking on the role of Editorial Director in the business reshuffling.