Jalopnik has gone down the toilet ver. 3.0

Cellos88GT;n3545566 said:
If you defend FCA on Jalopnik, you get banned. So much for objective journalism... The FCA smear campaign is very much alive and well.

Not surprised.
 
Cellos88GT;n3545566 said:
If you defend FCA on Jalopnik, you get banned. So much for objective journalism... The FCA smear campaign is very much alive and well.

TIL, not only are you banned, but all of your past comments are removed as well. Seems like the skin of the Jalopnik staff is pretty thin. It is clear that they have it out for FCA since any level-headed opinion is ignored, mocked, and/or deleted. They might claim to be objective by having David Tracy but that dude has been out of the industry for some time, they're not fooling anyone. Jalopnik is the place for the casual automotive enthusiast, you know, the posers at your C&C claiming their dad use to have a 964 Turbo when they were little and that they would love to own a Singer Porsche one day.
 
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*update on Jalopnik thread*

"Oh, I guess they said something about FCA today"
 
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gaasc;n3546133 said:
*update on Jalopnik thread*

"Oh, I guess they said something about FCA today"

When ad revenue is slow there, an FCA article with the usual low-hanging fruit is their go to solution.
 
Cellos88GT;n3546130 said:
TIL, not only are you banned, but all of your past comments are removed as well.

Someone should publicly call these douche bags out on a loud popular medium.
 
JCE;n3546232 said:
Someone should publicly call these douche bags out on a loud popular medium.

I made a post on /r/cars about it, but it was promptly taken down because it violated a "rule" that doesn't even exist on their list of posting rules.
 
Cellos88GT;n3546280 said:
I made a post on /r/cars about it, but it was promptly taken down because it violated a "rule" that doesn't even exist on their list of posting rules.

Wow. Just wow.
 
Cellos88GT;n3546138 said:
When ad revenue is slow there, an FCA article with the usual low-hanging fruit is their go to solution.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

You do realize that advertising is a completely separate department we have no insight into on the editorial side, by design? And why on earth would the ad folks encourage us to post negative coverage of an automaker when those are prime clients to sell ad space on an auto site to? The logic doesn't follow.

Keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel good, I guess.

(Delayed response, activate!)
 
ninjacoco;n3548390 said:
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

You do realize that advertising is a completely separate department we have no insight into on the editorial side, by design? And why on earth would the ad folks encourage us to post negative coverage of an automaker when those are prime clients to sell ad space on an auto site to? The logic doesn't follow.

Keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel good, I guess.

(Delayed response, activate!)

The number of clicks and visits to the site have no bearing on its revenue and/or the ability to sell advertising space? This is news to me.

Look I'm over it, the online automotive enthusiast space has become more about memes and beaten to death car jokes (that were never funny) than about the cars themselves and why we enjoy them. I'm not interested in reading article after article feature little digs at cars, manufacturers, and their owners/fans or full on smear pieces because of small and fixable engineering mistakes. That's not what being an automotive enthusiast is about. You find less of that riff raff with the builders, engineers, and racers.
 
ninjacoco;n3548390 said:
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

You do realize that advertising is a completely separate department we have no insight into on the editorial side, by design? And why on earth would the ad folks encourage us to post negative coverage of an automaker when those are prime clients to sell ad space on an auto site to? The logic doesn't follow.

Keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel good, I guess.

(Delayed response, activate!)


The Goodyear story is positive?
 
Sean Macdonald did an AMA on reddit recently and had this to say about his split from Lanesplitter: "In the end, they weren't able to monetize it they way they needed to and preferred I go back to lists and crash videos, which just wasn't what I was interested in." I don't think there is clearer evidence than this of Jalopnik's journalism standards (or lack thereof). Now, I definitely won't ever shake my suspicions that their Anti-FCA and "Italian cars are unreliable" articles are written just for clicks and eyeballs. Never mind the fact that when I was recently reading something there, it was littered with Porsche-ads. The Jalopnik-cult is just as bad as the Cult of Musk.
 
I would probably take Sean with a BIG grain of salt on that, especially since he left a while ago and a lot of things have changed since then. We got rid of Answers of the Day because it was too much like a listicle, and I haven't been told to do a list in years. I don't think anyone actually in editorial right now is pro-list. We don't do annoying slideshows, either. There are rare exceptions where a list might work, but no one's been gung-ho for lists in years. (Under previous editors, sure, there was a little list action. But it's been a looooooong time.) And again, I'll reiterate that it's in our actual contract with the company that advertising and editorial are separate. You know, as someone who's still around and actually read the damn thing.

Sean didn't exactly leave on friendly terms, either. Usually I wouldn't comment on another person's employment out of professional courtesy, but Sean's made that very public on his own. So, I'm not surprised that he's a bit negative about the experience. (FWIW, that's not meant as a ding against him, either—I wish him luck wherever he lands next.)

There's a need to build an audience for a site, but raw numbers have never been the focus over quality and accuracy. We've even been told to ease off of the quick mayhem/crash posts on some days because, uh, we're not crashlopnik. Some wild crash vids here and there are fine; we share bizarre things that happen as part of the job. Too many wild crash vids and it can overshadow more important original work. There's a balance.

But hey! Believe what you want, even if it makes about as much sense on my end as someone who's railing about the illuminati turning the frogs gay. You're also welcome to avoid reading the site if you'd rather seek the safe space of an FCA fan forum somewhere.
 
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ninjacoco;n3550174 said:
You're also welcome to avoid reading the site if you'd rather seek the safe space of an FCA fan forum somewhere.

I don't read the site, the stereotypes and tropes you guys peddle about Italians and Italian build quality are old and tired.
 
Cellos88GT;n3550526 said:
I don't read the site, the stereotypes and tropes you guys peddle about Italians and Italian build quality are old and tired.

Do you have stock in FCA or something?
 
prizrak;n3550541 said:
Do you have stock in FCA or something?

No I don't, but I am Italian. I have worked for both an FCA company and a Daimler company. In my time at each company, I have not seen much difference in their engineering practices, in fact they're incredibly similar. The stereotype that Italians don't know how to engineer/build things is entirely baseless from my point of view and is purely a tired plot device to generate clicks. If Italians were considered a minority group, you would never see the kind of stereotyping that you do, but because they're considered "white" by mainstream media, places like Jalopnik get a pass for this kind of shit.
 
Cellos88GT;n3550568 said:
If Italians were considered a minority group, you would never see the kind of stereotyping that you do, but because they're considered "white" by mainstream media, places like Jalopnik get a pass for this kind of shit.
Jesus H Christ...
 
I think you are looking way too hard into this, on one is talking about Italians as people but rather their cars. And remember we did not have Italian cars (aside from exotics) in the US for decades until the 500 became a thing and when we did they were massively unreliable.
 
Yeah. It's not an attack on the Italian people at all. It's just that Fiats and Alfas do seem to suffer from the same thing VW's do when they make it stateside. The sample size is also quite low when compared to other manufacturers so any reliability foibles are more easily spotted and represent a higher relative percentage.
 
JimCorrigan;n3550592 said:
Jesus H Christ...

Be as dismissive about it as you want, but in the age of "this offends me™" you can be sure as shit that a media group would never stereotype the employees of a company that is majority-owned and employed by minorities. Italians used to be a minority group once upon a time and things like Fix It Again Tony and Alfa Repairo were pejorative terms from those times.
 
It's not a stereotype that applies to a person, but a product. And pretty much each country of manufacture has one. in the US:

American cars are big engine loud noise no cornering ability.

German cars are over-engineered to the point of unreliability.

Japanese cars are boring.

Korean cars are cheap.

All just come from how the relevant brands have performed in the market. In the US market, there was almost a two-decade gap where we had no Italian cars besides low-production supercars like Ferrari. The Fiats and Alfa Romeos we saw from the 80s and 90s were not particularly reliable, and as the gap grew, they became old as well. So as recently as 2006, the only Italian car a layperson might encounter might be something like a late 80s Alfa Spyder that's barely clinging to life.

The Fiat 500 does not score particularly well on reliability surveys and Alfa's US lineup is very new so the stereotype is going to be hard to shake.

Oh and an Italian person in Italy is not a "minority"....
 
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