Here’s the problem. Most young car journalists are paid less than £15,000 a year, which means they have barely enough money left at the end of the week to buy food. And yet, each week, a brand new car is delivered to their house, full of fuel and insured.
What’s more, twice a week they will be flown, first class or on a private jet, to Florence or Tokyo or wherever. Here they will stay in a 38-star hotel where they will be showered with tasty morsels and refreshing wines.
The next day, after driving the new car through some lovely scenery, they will have a £150-a-head lunch and then board the jet for home clutching a nice freebie. A laptop computer, perhaps, or some expensive luggage.
So, are they going to give up being Elton John by saying something awkward about the car they’ve been driving? Would you? Or would you bend over backwards, or forwards even, to ensure you were on the guest list for the next big global freebie? The car industry PR people know this. They know they have the power. They also know they have the budget to make sure that every single new car, no matter how dull, is guaranteed to get full-page coverage in all the magazines and all the newspapers.
This, then, is one of the best jobs in the world. You farm out the tiresome business of writing press releases to some poor hack who’s down on his luck and then you spend all day eating grapes while telling journalists that if they want some new car for a photo-shoot ahead of the launch there’d better be a lot of sucking up.
You don’t believe me? Well ring Porsche or BMW in the morning, ask to speak to the press office, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll spend the rest of the day bouncing from voicemail to answerphone.
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/art...001968,00.html
What’s more, twice a week they will be flown, first class or on a private jet, to Florence or Tokyo or wherever. Here they will stay in a 38-star hotel where they will be showered with tasty morsels and refreshing wines.
The next day, after driving the new car through some lovely scenery, they will have a £150-a-head lunch and then board the jet for home clutching a nice freebie. A laptop computer, perhaps, or some expensive luggage.
So, are they going to give up being Elton John by saying something awkward about the car they’ve been driving? Would you? Or would you bend over backwards, or forwards even, to ensure you were on the guest list for the next big global freebie? The car industry PR people know this. They know they have the power. They also know they have the budget to make sure that every single new car, no matter how dull, is guaranteed to get full-page coverage in all the magazines and all the newspapers.
This, then, is one of the best jobs in the world. You farm out the tiresome business of writing press releases to some poor hack who’s down on his luck and then you spend all day eating grapes while telling journalists that if they want some new car for a photo-shoot ahead of the launch there’d better be a lot of sucking up.
You don’t believe me? Well ring Porsche or BMW in the morning, ask to speak to the press office, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll spend the rest of the day bouncing from voicemail to answerphone.
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/art...001968,00.html