Who rakes cycling’s muck?
Posted on 03. May, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Marketing
I was going to write yet another post criticizing the UCI, this time for its obtuse rules regarding ProTour teams racing in non-UCI events and its ridiculously arbitrary enforcement of those rules. Perhaps you heard about this when Lance, Levi, and Horner had to race Tour of the Gila for Mellow Johnny’s instead of Astana, while BMC had to send five guys home.
Had I written that post, it would have been just the latest of my many such digs at our friendly governing body. But it occurred to me that the UCI is pretty much the only organization in the sport that takes any heat whatsoever from the cycling press. Then, it occurred to me that, of the major players in cycling, the UCI has the fewest business ties to the companies that advertise in cycling publications. Coincidence?
Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ of media posits that “the news” is simply a means by which to put advertising in front of people with buying power. The product is the audience, not the content, and the customers are the advertisers, not the readers. So stories that make people not want to buy stuff or that speak ill of advertisers may be subject to “filtering.” This kind of filtering affects all advertising-supported media. But I believe it’s compounded in cycling, where there’s basically nothing to write about except the products and sponsored athletes of current and potential advertisers.
In addition to the filter of advertising, there’s a community filter that affects the cycling press. The people who cover the sport for the endemic publications are themselves enmeshed in a cycling community that expects all its members to defend cycling’s reputation and “support the sport.”
These filters contribute to an atmostphere in the cycling press where potentially unsettling news can be underreported. For instance, I’d consider a recent AP story that Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer didn’t get paid for a month to be a pretty big deal. But Cyclingnews buried it in their daily news and VeloNews.com didn’t run it at all. Is that because Trek, SRAM, and Giro are big advertisers? Or because the editors didn’t want to drag the team’s name through the mud? It’s unlikely that either one of those concerns was the direct cause, but it’s those questions in aggregate that keep the boat from being rocked too much.
Granted, it’s my job to help cycling’s advertisers talk to you about their wares. But I also believe that brand communications should always be clearly identified and, as someone who loves cycling, I want to know the whole story about what’s happening in the sport and the industry.
So, you’re a cycling fan. You ride and you love the sport. You’re obviously fit, charming, healthy, and attractive. Do you feel well served by the cycling media? Seriously, I want to know. Please comment.
(In case you were wonder, the answer to the question posed in the title of this post is Bicycling contributor Joe Lindsey.)
(first photo by Levi Leipheimer from the podium at Tour of the Gila; second by me)
