Does anyone here read jalopnik?

I quit reading Jalopnik when on the day of the Japanese tsunami when they went to non-stop tsunami coverage, mirroring the mainstream news sites. As I recall, I think they were mostly just linking to mainstream news. When I commented on their facebook that they could just stick to auto news, go quiet, or (most interesting option) investigate and report on how the disaster was impacting the car industry, they responded that since many of their readers would be worried about what was happening, they would cover it (and banned me from their page), I decided that I didn't need them for general news coverage and left and haven't seen much reason to go back.
/rant

 

I find the comments usually more than the stories. Very interesting cast of characters to put it mildly.

 

Curoius, I went and read the article you refer to here: The Best Way To Ruin The Nurburgring

I wasn't offended by their tongue-in-cheek article, but found the site to be the same as ever. No article titles I couldn't resist, just some I had zero interest in, and some others that I just didn't wasn't confident would be worth the time to read. They're going for a certain crowd, and I'm clearly not it. I'm an Autoblog guy.

 

I read it. Nice mixture of entertainment, feature pieces and journalistic pieces that have been improving steadily. And I like the comments, for the most part.

 

For car stuff, they write one or two paragraphs (or so it seems, and with a weird page design) and then rely on the "comments" for content. WUWT?

 

It's full of haters and trolls, including the editors.

 

The National Enquirer of automobile journalism. Lots of sensationalism, snark and plain bad taste.

 

I read a great article on going to jail for speeding in Virginia. I know to avoid that place, and I would never recommend any car enthusiast to live there.


BT

 

According to the article it is a charge of reckless driving automatically for speeding anywhere when the speeder is observed at 80 or above. That includes interstates where the limit is 70. So you get a criminal charge equal to sexual assault (both the highest ranking class 1 misdemeanors) for the offense of going 10 mph over the limit. It is 1 step below a felony for doing 80 on the interstate in Virginia. I think that is perverse.

 

MEH...

 

I like it a lot. It's not the greatest from a journalism stand point but it's fun and irreverent.

 

Jalopnik is the TMZ of cars.

Oh, I should mention that I love TMZ.

 

I agree. It is occasionally entertaining but is not a good source of news, nor an example of good journalism. Some of the post authors call themselves journalists, but they are not. As long as this style of "journalism" doesn't affect more mature media, I think it is mostly harmless fun.

 

Nope. Only car thing I'll watch online is basically Jay Leno's Garage. Pretty well done reviews and I like Jay a lot. Outside of that, I get my car info on Fchat. I like the users here and their opinions on cars that I know I'll never own.

 

It has become too Gawker like. Kinja and the commenting system is too clunky. I have had a hard time visiting the site after they started linking articles from Jezebel and the other Gawker sites. The clickbait titles are annoying and the feeling I get is they're trying to appeal to the TMZ type of readers.

Doug DeMuro is the writer I like best, he would be wise to distance himself from Jalopnik and could truly get a professional gig writing for a magazine or on video with somewhere like the DRIVE channel on Youtube.

 

I read jalopnik, unfortunately. It's very easy to spend 2-3 minutes there at a time.

It's basically a car garbage site, with occasional good posts from DeMuro. But yeah it's run by a bunch of bleeding heart extra pretentious hipsters, and the content suffers because of it.

 

DeMuro is hilarious

 

Never will. They did a blog on a $500 BMW WRC car that was lies and truth strectched beyond even National Enquirer.

 

I remember that and as someone NOT in that sport (including having very minimal knowledge) - I called BS on it.

 

I do now and then but prefer the truth about cars

 

I browse jalopnik once in a while. Mr Glickenhaus linked to a great article on there the other day about BPR/GT1 racing from the 90s that I found very informative since I grew up on those cars but was too young to remember all of it. Because there was a good article I'll probably look at the site daily for a week or 2 until I realize there isn't anything else Im interested in and then lose interest until the next time someone links to them. if their quality was more consistent they'd have my interest.