Category: Journalism

Welcome to the feed zone

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Your Humble Narrator in the salad days, covering a race in Bibleburg.

A bitter wind continues to thin the herd of cycling journalists struggling to make headway in the bloody gutter of vulture capitalism.

Yet even as the ravens screeched “Nevermore!” for Zapata Espinoza and two colleagues at Hi-Torque Publications, Wade Wallace and Caley Fretz were crowing over the news that they had signed up enough committed members to launch their new venture, “the best damn cycling website on the planet,” a.k.a. Escape.

Turn your radio on.

The notion of journalism underwritten by membership is not new, not even for cycling journalism. The Greater Outside Globe-Spanning Vertically Integrated Title-Killing Paywalled Conglomerate relies on memberships (and vulture-capitalist beggary), and The Cycling Independent (which we help prop up with a monthly tenner) strives to get by on subscriptions.

It’s a rough old road, no matter how you ride it. The sport is pricey to do, and even more so to cover. Memberships and subscriptions can only take you so far. Advertising is a hard sell.

And the vulture capitalist? Basically a pimp who says things like “synergy,” “scale,” and “best in class,” instead of “bitch,” “hoe,” and “Shit, it’s five-o.” He might not take a straight razor to your lips if you don’t bring in the Benjamins, but he will cut the hell out of your masthead. He didn’t add you to the stable because he liked the look of your legs, honey; he thought you’d be a good earner.

The wild card in this bum hand at Casino Velo is the audience. A lot of people think information wants to be free. They want to be paid for whatever they’re doing for work, when they can find it, and actually show up to do it. But you, pal, don’t you bogart that information.

Lucky for you, you’ve stumbled into the cheap seats. We’re serving up another episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, absolutely free of charge, and we guarantee it’ll be worth every penny you paid for it.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: The setup remains the same: Once again I set up shop on the dining-room table, using a Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Zapsplat, Freesound, GarageBand, the 1988 world cyclocross championships, and Your Humble Narrator provided music and sound effects.

Zapped

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Another one bites the dust.

Zapata Espinoza and two colleagues just got the old heave and also the ho from their gigs at Hi-Torque Publications.

According to my man Steve Frothingham at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Hi-Torque plans to croak Road Bike Action and Electric Bike Action. Hence the pink slips for Zap, Tony Donaldson and Alex Boyce.

“(The) head winds proved too mighty” for the titles, Espinoza told BRAIN in an email.

Oof. When even a Mountain Bike Hall of Famer like Zap can get dropped you know them headwinds is fierce. Here’s hoping the lads find new homes soon.

A Charles Pelkey live update

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

The GoFundMe that David Stanley set up to help our old pal Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey is ticking along nicely, which is more than I can say for the “classic” LUG video up above.

As of 2 p.m. Dog time the fund was at $24,410 — a tip jar that we never could’ve imagined when we were begging for nickels to run Live Update Guy. A thousand thank-yous to everyone who has contributed and/or spread the word about the fundraiser.

Now, give a listen to another old pal, Diane “The Outspoken Cyclist” Jenks, who interviewed David for the most recent episode of her long-running podcast.* You’ll get a better idea of how all this good fellowship came about.

If you haven’t joined the party, here’s a link to CP’s GoFundMe page.

* One minor correction: The cartoon of Charles that accompanies the GoFundMe news Diane and I spread around is not by Your Humble Narrator. It’s by David Brinton, a.k.a. Brintoni, who did such great work illustrating “At the Back” in VeloNews while I was up front pissing on people’s shoes.®

Rock ’n’ roll

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Your Humble Narrator on the job in 2015. …

I’ve done a number of questionable things for money, but the only one with any staying power was journalism.

Earning power? Well … not so much. Especially after I left the newspaper to hang out my own shingle back in 1991.

Still, like crucifixion, it gets you out in the open air. Here’s your rock, there’s your hill, what’s your hurry?

I finally left that rock at the bottom of the hill about this time last year, and I can’t say I miss rolling it. Both rock and hill had shrunk over the years. But so had the pay. And the people who owned the hill at any given moment still seemed to think they were doing you a favor by letting you roll that rock.

“Well rolled indeed!” they’d exclaim as you reached the summit, gasping for air. “Sign here. And here. And here. And here. Yes, payment 30 days after publication as specified in the contract. Did we mention we’ve rewritten the contract? No? Well, we have, in Cretan Linear B this time, and I’m afraid we can’t cut you a check until you’ve scrawled your X on that old bottom line.

“Oh, dear, rock’s rolled down the bloody hill again. Be a dear and fetch it, won’t you? And do have your attorney or shaman or whomever look over that contract. Ta.”

Lacking professional support I eyeballed that contract myself and came away thinking the rock looked pretty good right where it was. It still does.

Doesn’t mean I’ve quit rolling rocks altogether, of course.

… and off it, as 2022 limps to a long-overdue finale.

Many years ago, between paying trips up and down the hill, I acquired my own tiny mound on the Innertubes and in my spare time nudged the odd pebble up its gentle slope. Strictly for giggles, mind you; if I were to charge admission it would feel like work.

I think I started blogging on AOL in the mid- to late Nineties; for sure I was doing my own self-hosted thing on a succession of small-time ISPs by 1999. The Wayback Machine has a capture from December 2000 that shows a visitor counter which started tallying the rubes a year earlier.

So, yeah. I’ve been at it for a few years, and I’m not giving it up. Not this year, and not next, Dog willing and the crick don’t rise. The bells and whistles come and go — the cartoons, the videos, the podcasting — but the blogging remains.

Who knows? It may just be The Next Big Thing.

But even if it isn’t, my thanks to all of yis who have gathered upon the hill — and who keep gathering, against your better judgment — to watch Your Humble Narrator perform his one-man, dinner-theater production of “Bowling with Sisyphus.”

I know, it’s only rock ’n’ roll. But I like it.

Out out out!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
They said they wanted to get everyone outside. Turns out they just wanted them out of the building.

Well, Outside Etc. is at it again, driving an additional 12 percent of its staff into the vast publishing wilderness.

Newspapers and magazines made it possible for a wastrel like Your Humble Narrator to earn a meager living and even have a bit of fun while doing it. But at times it seemed that half the job was keeping one step in front of the headsman.

I got laid off once and frequently fled under my own steam upon hearing the thin keening of file upon blade. Oh, it’s not good here. How about over there? Or there? After a half century of this I managed to coast across the finish line more or less intact, albeit with two flats and a broken chain.

Lucky doesn’t even begin to describe it. I could’ve been broomed off the course and into the tumbril at any point, and plenty of spectators and competitors would have cheered as the ax finally fell.

It was and remains a rough old road. Betimes I miss it. But not often.

“Information wants to be free,” someone once said. Not someone who actually collects and distributes the information, of course. But plenty of their customers feel that way, even as they insist on being paid for their own labor.

I haven’t “joined” Outside Etc. for the same reason I don’t watch “sports” on the TV. I’d rather be doing something than reading about it, listening to it, or watching it.

Hell, I didn’t even want to work for Outside Etc. Not once I’d seen the contract. And they were proposing to pay me, not the other way around.

Maybe some things just don’t scale up well. I think I grasp the general concept — build a one-stop shop for all your sweaty fun — but it struck me as sort of a Spandex Ballet, some anonymous cable company with a thousand channels I didn’t want to watch.

It sucks to get the heave-ho. And I know a few of those heaved, and also ho’d. But some of them will stagger away from that crumbling tower of babble to build something a little homier, maybe more like the corner bike shop instead of the sporting-goods section in Sprawlmart. The rumblings are already out there, in forums, on Substack, even Twitter (though this last may be about like shouting “Fire!” in Hell).

Who knows? Without all those grandiose schemes weighing them down, Outside Etc.’s refugees might just find a living in it. And maybe a bit of fun, too.