Autoblog: Private Equity's New Guinea Pig
Does the iconic website stand a chance?
HAPPY RACE DAY! especially to those delivering aid in the wake of Hurricane Helene, particularly in Asheville and greater North Carolina.
Former pro driver Greg Biffle and YouTuber Cleetus McFarland were personally delivering supplies in their own helicopters. There’s pretty dramatic footage on McFarland’s Instagram page. Here’s Biffle discussing it:
Several racing teams and automotive brands are headquartered in North Carolina. This article from Motorsport.com has a great roundup of all the ways the racing community is rallying to help. Our hearts go out to everyone affected.
In today’s email: 👇
“Zombie” Autoblog: Where does it go from here?
Making it in photography: Advice from the 🐐
Ask A Millennial! The newbie racing a cop cruiser
Thanks for joining us. Read on for more.
TODAY is my 40th birthday! No joke. It’s a good excuse to reflect on how far this newsletter, and my company Carrara Media, have come.
Recently we hit 5,000 Instagram followers.
We’re soon publishing a three-part trilogy of automotive spy thrillers.
Our books are now sold at the Petersen Automotive Museum. That’s so cool!
Our biggest coming out party is right around the corner. That will be at JCCS, or the Japanese Classic Car Show, on October 12th here in Long Beach. (JCCS is the largest show of its kind in the country. You can find my December article on its history here.)
We are an official event sponsor. Find our booth to score new releases, like the JCCS Edition of Cult of GT-R. We’re only making 100 copies. Read about it here.
I’m so excited to see where Carrara Media takes me. We have huge, huge plans that I can’t wait to share.
In the meantime, you can help! Please subscribe to this newsletter and share it with a friend. Buy a copy of We Deserve This, or Waiting for the Sun to Come Down. It all helps. Thanks in advance for the birthday present.
Now, here’s this week’s main article:
Does AutoBlog Have a Future? Surprisingly, Maybe
BACK IN 2019, the influential sports site Deadspin was rocked by private equity. The P.E. firm Great Hill Partners bought the site early in the year, and instituted policies that ruffled the staff. The editor-in-chief was fired, the editorial team quit, and Great Hill replaced them with a team of newcomers that never stood a chance. By the end of the year, the site had been famously dubbed “Zombie Deadspin.”
Anyone who remembers the birth of Zombie Deadspin would have seen eerie parallels recently. In early August we sounded the alarm that Autoblog had been sold to P.E. and its entire staff laid off. It appeared to be the beginning of “Zombie Autoblog.”
In the subsequent weeks, I’ve spoken with former Autoblog staffers who are concerned for the future of the site. I’ve also heard directly from its new owners, The Arena Group, and met with countless others who worry this signals a trend in automotive media that will be hard to stop.
Car fans are understandably worried. In February we called private equity “the latest threat” to automotive media, and outlined the many P.E. firms that own your favorite outlets and YouTube channels. Changes have recently rocked Donut Media, owned by Recurrent Ventures, and the recent bankruptcy filing of Wheel Pros LLC. shone a light on how its owner, Clearlake Capital, had tarnished the reputation of Hoonigan.
So what’s next for Autoblog? After the layoffs several weeks ago, the site has continued posting content. It was slow going at first, but it’s since picked up in frequency from what appears to be a team of freelancers. (The site names one Senior Editor, but has not yet announced an editor-in-chief.) Without much to go on, I reached out to Arena Group representatives directly, who provided the following statement:
“We’re excited to bring Autoblog into The Arena Group and build the brand the way we’ve done so with our other outlets like Men’s Journal, Parade, Athlon Sports, Surfer, Powder and more. We’ll have more details and information to share soon.”
Whatever Arena Group decides to do with Autoblog does have serious implications for the rest of our industry. Several former Autoblog staffers shared concerns that the site will turn into an A.I. farm, featuring articles churned out by literal robots. These concerns aren’t unfounded — the tech site CNET experimented with A.I. to huge backlash, and the once-prestigious The Truth About Cars currently discloses articles written with A.I. assistance.
As recently as last year, Arena Group openly bragged about using AI to generate story ideas and workout tips. By the end of 2023, the firm fired its CEO for creating fake author profiles and populating them with undisclosed AI content. A few months later Arena Group missed a payment to the owners of Sports Illustrated and lost its license to publish the iconic brand. Arena’s stock price plummeted and has traded at less than $1.00 per share for most of 2024. It’s been a rough year.
As of right now, there’s no indication I could see that Arena Group has begun publishing AI content on Autoblog. I ran several articles written since the changes through an AI checking tool, which turned up negative. These tools aren’t 100-percent reliable, so I used several different ones and each returned the same negative result. When I used articles published by The Truth About Cars which disclosed the use of AI, the checkers quickly returned a positive result. So it doesn’t appear Autoblog has gotten the AI treatment just yet.
What else can we glean from the Arena Group statement? Without much to go on, we can look to its current brands. Believe it or not, there are a few bright spots.
In April, Arena hired a new EIC of Surfer, returned the magazine’s print edition and announced a sponsorship of the Surfer Big Wave Challenge.
Last month, Arena also returned the print edition of an NBA season preview for Athlon Sports for the first time since 2010.
These aren’t immediate game-changers. But they are positive signs. Arena is showing a desire to hire full-time staff, participate in the culture they’re covering, and invest in print media that strengthens brand reputation. You don’t do that if you’re going the Zombie route.
None of this means Autoblog is set for a golden era. It’s difficult to see how the Surfer and Athlon news could translate to an automotive site that has never done live events or print editions. And the firm could decide to pivot to AI any second – likely surprising no one.
But the slow erosion of online automotive media has felt to me, for many years now, inevitable. High-churn news aimed to draw traffic without a real revenue model has likely passed its expiration date. I’m gutted for those who lost their jobs, as well as those who depended on Autoblog as part of their freelance game. But it’s my opinion that the industry has been steering away from this formula for some time.
The next few years will no doubt be rough. Our industry is headed toward massive change as AI and private equity both continue to tighten their grips. I do think there’s a way forward for journalists, but not in the traditional way we’ve become accustomed to. It was once frowned upon to be a “content creator” or YouTuber, but we’re now being pushed toward independent models that reward audience building with direct revenue. We’ll likely see fewer and fewer Autoblogs, and more and more subscription TikTok accounts and newsletters like this one. (My friend Chad Kirchner just started his own on Beehiiv — go follow it.)
I’m not advocating for this shift. It will mean more layoffs and, with fewer reliable jobs around, more people leaving journalism. That’s a net loss for everyone. But I’m also not denying what I’m seeing, and what I’ve experienced first-hand. We’re being pushed, and if they don’t recognize the value we provide, why not use the available tools to turn that value into something for ourselves? Why not make it work? Why not go for it?
The other option is, well, join the zombies.
“This stuff is way too energy consuming to not be fun. I wish I had done it sooner.” — TJ Keon, on his adventures in amateur racing. Read the interview below.
Guidance From the Mountaintop
Words and photos by Forest Casey.
PHOTOGRAPHERS are a jealous bunch. Most of us work alone. We gatekeep shooting locations and covet clients. When a rival photographer gets a gig, that means we didn’t. It’s natural to eschew advice. We forge our own paths.
At least, I thought that was the general consensus. Then I saw the crowd at Race Service in Los Angeles last week to hear photographer Larry Chen.
Young creatives sat and soaked in the knowledge from Chen, who has staked his career on tirelessly capturing the import car and drift scenes. Everyone seemingly had a camera.
Hosted by Rod Chong, the agency’s creative director, topics included “Craft vs Contacts” and “Entrepreneurial $$$.” They also discussed a recent pivot for Chen, the move from capturing stills to becoming the subject in his own videos — a major shift for any admitted introvert, but a necessary play after purchasing the rights to his YouTube channel from Hoonigan.
The atmosphere was surprisingly non-competitive. Chen freely dispensed advice and emphasized the photography pie is big enough for all. “The need for content is unlimited,” he said. In the Q&A portion, Chen was quick to encourage a young photographer who confessed she was sleeping on couches and had taken the cheapest flight possible to attend the seminar. “It might take ten years,” Chen confessed. “But the only way is to keep going.”
The final question was about Chen’s future plans. He emphasized improving his own racing skills, as he showed off days later at Laguna Seca during GridLife. Yet as he approaches 20 years in the business, perhaps his next step will necessitate a look back, as any observer would agree that his incredible body of work is certainly worth celebrating.
Ask A Millennial! TJ Keon, 40
TJ is a talented photographer (follow him!) and we run into each other all the time. But lately that’s happened less and less, because he’s embarked on the awesome adventure of becoming a racecar driver. Over the weekend TJ competed in GridLife at Laguna Seca Raceway and I asked him to discuss the experience with us.
I always wanted to do racecar stuff, but I was scared. Then a few years ago I bought a Miata and started doing track days. That got me over the hump, but I needed a daily work vehicle so I bought the Crown Vic (secretly knowing I could always race it in a series called Spec P71). It’s a four car solution: it’s a work vehicle; it races; I can camp out of it; and it hauls tires.
GridLife is a community of people who love cars. Everyone is friendly and if anything breaks they’ll help you out. It’s a super cool vibe. You can go to a track day and have fun, but for $40 you can race with stickers and spectators and that’s way more fun. Im driving down the corkscrew in a Crown Vic and there’s people cheering me on. That’s incredible. It’s grassroots, it’s not super professional, but the competition is high and everyone’s having fun. I tell people it’s Woodstock with cars.
Hopefully it gets bigger, but not too much bigger. I really am just screwing around. Because of the car’s V8 engine I’m categorized against Corvettes and Porsches. There’s no way I’m competitive but they love me. They’re like please come and race with us. For me, that’s the best, because I have no business being there. And still they’re super accepting.
I did a shakedown two weeks ago and the car was not happy. Somehow I got [drifting pioneer] Ken Gushi to work on my car and fix some stuff. I was standing there like, ‘You’re my hero and you’re playing with my stupid police car?’ Then at Laguna Seca I was on-track with Larry Chen and Jonny Grunwald. Getting to drive and hang with your friends is the best part.
Surprisingly these Crown Vics are a blast to drive — they love to hang the ass out and drive sideways. I call it a Double Miata because it’s twice as heavy. I’m out for fun and we’re not pushing hard. If you drive it right, there’s nothing left in you. My back seat was completely soaked after every session and my arm is killing me today. There’s times I come out of the car and I feel like Senna or Mansell, I’m just spent.
There many levels of win. If it’s all about winning a trophy then everybody but one person is wasting their time. A win is making it to a track day. It’s going home clean. There’s a whole shitload of wins along the way — it’s not about being the fastest car for me. This stuff is way too energy consuming to not be fun. I wish I had done it sooner. Don’t wait to do the thing.
And Finally…
Assetto Corsa is back! The video game is returning with a brand new version called Assetto Corsa EVO, in 2025. Here’s the trailer:
Start upgrading your simulators now.
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