It took a while for the word to filter down to the cycling press, but it seems that even a blind dog finds a Milk-Bone now and then — Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reports today that John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey both got the heave-ho last week from Velo (formerly VeloNews) and VeloNews.com. They followed Velo editor in chief Ben Delaney out the door shortly after the 2011 Tour de France wrapped. Ben was not pushed; he jumped.
I’m not a staffer with Velo or VeloNews.com; never have been. I’m a free-lancer — an “independent contractor,” in the parlance of our times — and my contract with San Diego-based Competitor Group Inc., now the owner of Velo, VeloNews.com and a number of other publications and events, bars me from discussing any “confidential information” that I may come across in the course of doing my little bit of business with the company.
Given that the information about the sacking of John and Charles has become generally known — throughout the industry, anyway, via BRAIN, for whom I also perform my one-ring circus act — I no longer feel compelled to refrain from discussing it, albeit with some circumspection. Like John, Charles and Ben, I have bills to pay.
John has covered more than 40 Tours and Christ only knows how many other races in his years with VeloNews and other publications. He is a walking, talking VeloHistory book, so crucial to the chronicling of the sport that I even forgive him for having been born a Limey instead of an Irishman. He and the original Trio — the other two being David Walls and Felix Magowan — hired me as a cartoonist in ’89, and the work that they and editor Tim Johnson kicked my way when I quit my last newspaper job in 1991 helped keep food on the table, beer in the fridge and the wolf from the door.
Charles, in his 17 years with the company, not only covered a ton of races, he became a respected authority on cycling’s governance, the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and the arcane testing/appeals process. He wrote a popular online column, “The Explainer,” and assembled a worldwide audience of devoted fans who attended his live updates from the Tour and other events as if they were papal addresses from St. Peter’s Square.
The silly sod also routinely got up at 3 a.m. to post cycling news from Europe. You might get me up at that hour to face a firing squad, but probably not. “Fuck it, just shoot me here. Bring me a cup of coffee first. And a newspaper. And Elle MacPherson. Not necessarily in that order.”
Charles and are old pals who tag-teamed the VeloNews.com op’ for a lot of years, and I always worked the late shift, because I was not born a German and have no children to interrupt my sleep. Being old newspaper guys, we have the sort of professional relationship that lets us shout “Fuck you!” at each other without anyone’s feelings getting permanently hurt.
I’d say we’ll miss these guys, but that seems kind of obvious.
Mad Blog Media 
Bummer, must be more of that shareholder thing. That and the tax cuts to make new jobs. We will miss those guys on both Velo and Brain. It’s good to be a sub these days. Good luck Mad Dog.
Really just beyond words. So many friends have lost jobs with magazines and newspapers…well not just jobs, but whole careers as there are no new jobs to replace them. I saw it coming many years ago and jumped ship early for more solid ground. Not as interesting or fun, but still have a decent paycheck where I can take a vacay every now and then. So sad…
This certainly bites. Pelkey’s alter ego, LUG (“Live Update Guy”) had me totally hooked during Le Tour this year. I tried the CyclingNews live update and LUG had them by a mile. And I especially liked the Explainer, bringing sense to all the blather.
Does this mean a new subscription site? Sign me up! For money!
Now, what about the smackdown? Turk and Mia are starting to look like the Schleck brothers.
WTF????? You’ve got to be kidding.
Looks like it might be time to delete my Velonews.com bookmark. It’d have been difficult not to notice the dramatic decline in quality there over the last year or so. Looked like the last few are putting in the good fight, but the folks at Competitor have been trying to cash in as fast as possible. Sort of like when Pacific bought the Schwinn name and put them in Wal-Marts everywhere.
I have an idea: why don’t Ben, Charles, and John get together and do a good cycling website? Seems like we’re going to be losing one here pretty soon.
“Now, what about the smackdown? Turk and Mia are starting to look like the Schleck brothers.”
Now thats funny.
Man, I wish I’d had the camera a minute ago. We have a very small living room, with four good-sized windows. Turkish, Mia and Buddy were sprawled out in three of them. Buddy barked once at some passer-by and the cats looked at him like he was bogarting the joint.
Sucks.
Plain and simple.
Idea: Hit Velo.com with a thousand “Explainer” questions. Of course, would have been a better idea six months ago …
Can’t say I am surprised as the tentacles of Competitor wrapped themselves around the once great VeloSnooze. Having worked with some of the original owners of Competitor in my past I can say THEY were good people. The money hungry bastards who took it to the next step, however, sucked balls.
As for the Snooze, can’t say I miss it that much because I very regularly don’t stop by to see what TCWSNBN love fest they have going on. Once they jumped that shark, I jumped the subscription rolls and newsstand reading. Seriously if I wanted to read about the latest thing that Texas Tea did, said, heard and/or shat I would have bought Buycycling magazine.
As much as I may lament what has happened to Pelkey et al. the future for them is much brighter. Worrying about ad revenue is so 1998, tell me a story, sell me on the joys of cycling, the grit, the tears, the hard stuff, etc. Again, if I wanted to read about the latest $10,000 bike I’d read something from a ‘pretend cycling mag’ (this means you…Buycycling, Outsyde, Men’s Wealth, etc.
Somewhere in the dark recesses of a hard drive I have a conversation with Pelkey about one Mad Dog and his ‘unique’ take on this cycling thing we all love. It was truly a great piece of writing, if only because it was not for general consumption. And that, that my friends, is why the Snooze is so bad. RIP VeloNews we knew ye, now we don’t.
Fortunately, we don’t have to be circumspect. What the fuck do the bean-counters at Velo think they are doing? That’s most of the cream of the crop.
CP, JW, BD, and the Mad Dog should form a new venture.
Patrick, I realize you have to be circumspect for the, ahem, same reason I do with my employer. But I wonder what Charles, Ben, and John have to say about this.
Guess its time to delete the VN.com link from the BombTown site.
I’m gonna guess this was less about beans and more about editorial attitude. VN, both print and online was heading more and more into the Men’s Journal direction anyway — they might have considered “VeloNews-the journal of competitive shopping” for the masthead. It’s a crowded field out there on the web and in print but it’ll be a shame if John W. and Charles P. don’t end up somewhere else. I’ll bet they’ll have something new going and announced by Interbike! I think there’s still a market (though small, look at Rouleur Magazine) for intelligent, well-written commentary about our sport. Heck, if they write some stuff about actually RIDING a bike (like on a cycling vacation?) instead of just shopping for yet another one, we might even pony up for an ad!
CP has his juris doctor degree, so I’m sure he can make money with or without VeloNews. It would also seem weird if JW isn’t landing a new job, given his c.v.
But its a shame at any rate. Guess we Yanks will have to find some good electronic cycling journals on the other side of the pond.
The Byzantine machinations of Corporate “thinking” have ceased to stun me but really you are kidding me that VN would part ways with two such key guys I mean you are sacking a living history of the tour. Would Versus sack Phil and Paul cause that is pretty much what this is like. Unless they are getting out of reporting on cycling this move makes no sense. WTF indeed
Hope this stinky door closing opens up some grand new opportunities for both Charles and John – they deserve it, MadDog glad you are a free agent.
I kind of wish more of Rouleur was available online but hesitate at an electronic subscription idea since the printed magazine is so nice – and I want the guys who write this stuff to actually get paid for their efforts. So much of the US cycling journalism market, both electronic and print, is populated by hacks who can’t write very well and more-or-less give their poorly written stuff away to be inserted as little more than filler between pages of full-color advertisements. A lot of the Italian cycling mag writers actually have advanced degrees and write well. The Brits do a decent job too in some cases, most obviously in Rouleur. As to websites, I’m spending more time these days looking at Velonation and Cyclingnews rather than the “new” VN. As for OG, I wonder if he’ll be getting the heave-ho soon too? The prevailing political attitude out in Competitor-land is a far cry from his (and mine). The old joke used to be about the Repuglicans “behind the orange curtain” (in Orange County) and San Diego’s not much different. I wouldn’t let any paychecks from these folks sit around uncashed!
Larry, I don’t think any of us who remain have any illusions about job security. I’m a pretty cheap date, but that doesn’t mean CGI will want to keep taking me out. I expect there is a very long line of younger, prettier, more compliant scribes all tarted up and champing at the bit to take my place for a fraction of what I’m paid.
Is it just me, or can one not go anywhere near Velo.com without getting hit with Chris Carmichael ads and announcements?
We were just talking the other day about how Outside magazine used to be a place for 10,000 word essays from great writers. Krakauer, Quammen, Coyle, Randy Wayne White, Cahill, Junger … and now it’s basically GC with gore-tex. Forget about the details of the latest Everest expedition … tell us what they were wearing.
Just a matter of time before the Velomeisters followed suit.
For me the beginning of the end was when Velonews.com started doing bike and gear reviews. Once a mag or website does gear reviews all credibility is lost. How am I suppose to trust their review on the latest Trek or Specialized Plastic Fantastic when, oh lookie-thar, there’s an add for that same bike company right next to the review. These guys know who writes the checks, and ain’t no way they’re gonna bite the hands tha feeds them.
Oh, and on a completely unrelated topic, how goes the latest touring bike review for Adventure Cycling, O’G?
John, the great thing about Adventure Cyclist is that while it accepts advertising, it is not dependent upon advertising. It’s the membership publication of the Adventure Cycling Association.
It remains possible to speak the truth in publications that are ad-dependent, too, as long as there is a solid wall between advertising and editorial. This setup used to be the rule rather than the exception: You don’t tell me how to cover the news, and I won’t tell you how to sell an ad, or to whom.
A righteous publisher has to know that honest reporting will cost him advertising from time to time, and must back up his editors when a pissed-off advertiser starts making threats. I’ve seen it done on my behalf a time or two, and I was always appreciative.
Where there is no local control, and when both the economy and the publications biz are in the shitter, boundaries can become a bit less clearly defined. Having been off-site for 20 years, I don’t know what restrictions the Boulder lot are laboring under.
But they are no longer a family op’, locally owned. They have to feed the monkey in San Diego, and I hear he’s a real big eater.
This is the same setup that croaked many a local newspaper, by the way. They were profitable enough to survive, had they been standalone operations; but they were owned by giant chains, which demanded equally giant profits, and when the bucks did not appear in the proper quantity, the newspaper disappeared.
I’ve often wondered whether it would be more profitable for local papers to simply jettison the ravenous national monkey on their backs and re-invent themselves as real, local newspapers. That, of course, assumes people would want to buy them and they could raise enough ad revenue to stay afloat in competition with the nationally owned fish wrappers. I suspect neither are good assumptions.
Jezus, I guess bad stuff comes in pairs. According to CP’s Twitter account, he is in cancer surgery today. Here’s riding to his health.
Yeah, I didn’t make mention of that, figuring that it was a tad more personal than losing a job, which seems to be happening to just about everyone these days.
Of course, some days it seems as if everyone is getting cancer, too. We’ve had at least four or five cases in the neighborhood — two of them fatal — in eight years.
Hi, Patrick
It is more personal. I wouldn’t have brought it up except it was on CP’s Twitter page, ergo in the public domain.
Yeah. Its getting to be that time of life. One of my wife’s best friends just went into hospice today (end stage cancer) back in Honolulu. Between that and the fire, tis not been a nice summer.
Pelkey is very-well liked on velonews.com and they have not posted anything on his leaving. Patrick, any follow-up to this would be appreciated.
Good wishes to CP. On the Adventure Cyclist subject interestingly enough, they hit us up regularly to buy advertising for our tours – despite the fact the parent organization is in the tour biz and the editorial content (at least in the issues I’ve seen) leans towards pushing their products. So for me the question is “why would I spend ad money supporting a publication/catalog who is at least in indirect competition with us?” Separating editorial from advertising is often tougher than you think.
Best wishes to CP and JW!
I heard JW speak two years ago……his incredible knowledge, insight, and passion for bike riding and racing came thru loud and clear!
And I thought CP “made” this year’s “live” VN Tour coverage (THANK YOU Clif too!)!! Knowledgeable, witty, viewer-inducing! Good health!!
To both……THANKS for your longtime support of and to cycling, your talent for sharing that with us “literary mortals”, and tailwinds in the big ring.
JD
Charles speaks thusly on Facebook:
“Well, I guess I can quote one of my favorite Python flicks: ‘I’m not dead yet.’
“Surgery went well. Pathology reports pending. Thank you to all of you who sent kind messages of support and good karma. You guys are the greatest.”
Ah, yes.
Oh dear me….and that’s the absolute BEST way to hit the hay. all the best to the (former) VN boys, i’ve grown up on you all since i was a teen….thanks fellas, you’ll be well missed but we’ll look forward to seeing you soon in another arena.