work lives
In the next eight years, I built up a business that requires me to turn my hand to all kinds of work. I contribute news stories and reviews to a national newspaper website every week; I write buying guides and reviews; I write features for specialist, fleet, design and business publications; I edit a magazine for the country’s biggest driving instructors’ trade body; and I supply copy for content marketing – an increasingly important source of income. Because, as we all know, working as a
journalist is an increasingly precarious existence. The combination of lower rates than 20 years ago, fewer outlets, media businesses that don’t want to pay for content and scores of wannabe Clarksons adds up to a recipe for a potentially disastrous future. Essentially, we’re being squeezed by blaggers and bloggers: the blaggers are the numerous retired and semi- retired former regional newspaper motoring correspondents who supply free copy, based on attending launches or borrowing press fleet cars, while the bloggers are the hobbyists who claim
that their site has so many thousand regular readers or are prepared to write for “exposure”. The last Top Gear series showed what happens
when amateurs think that an enthusiasm for cars is a substitute for real journalism. Whatever you think of the team whose tenure ended in a food farrago, it was successful because Clarkson and James May are motoring journalists, with over 60 years’ experience between them. As fine a TV presenter as Chris Evans is, his column in the Mail on Sunday (don’t get me started on “celebrity” motoring journalists) has betrayed a lack of real understanding of cars. Life as a motoring journalist in 2016 isn’t easy,
but I think that I’m one of the luckier ones. I enjoy a decent work-life balance. I travel to car launches a couple of times a month (enough to appreciate them without taking the lifestyle for granted – it can go to some people’s heads). I can work my own hours, taking time off to run errands or do stuff with my kids. And I get a new car delivered to my door every week. With luck and hard work, I might make it to retirement age – and pick up some Avios points on the way. Oh, and in case you were wondering: no, I’ve never met Jeremy Clarkson.
It’s not all glamorous, but I’ve had my moments …
Racing driver I once qualified for a racing licence for a feature, but never actually used it – until I was offered a drive in a Mazda MX-5 by the head of PR. Despite tuition from a
great driver coach, I came last in all three races. A great experience, but a complete
absence of the required cojones forced my retirement.
African safari A Toyota Hilux launch in South Africa (it’s built in Durban) involved a safari in KwaZulu-Natal. We glamped in the bush and I even had my own butler (I know). The adventure continued on the way back, when our connecting flight was cancelled, so the PRs used their credit cards to charter light aircraft to get us to Johannesburg to catch our plane home.
Off road in the US Spain, Portugal and the south of France are popular destinations for car launches, because of the climate (photographers don’t like rain). But I’ve also tested cars in California, Arizona and New Mexico – where we got an off-road puncture opposite the cliff that Paul Newman and Robert Redford jumped off to escape a posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Too fast in France Driving a high-performance BMW M3 back from southern Spain after picking my wife up in Madrid, we made our way home via the Rooja region and Bordeaux. However, speeding on the
French autoroute to catch a ferry led to my collar being felt by the gendarmerie – and a hefty €750 fine. It could have been worse – I know of journalists who have been banged up for same offence.
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