30 Oct 2011

Recently I was linked to a review of sorts about a colleague’s custom bike frames. I use this term loosely because I don’t really know him but our business (or lack thereof) theories are similar. One of the things that urks me - especially in regards to US and Aus bicycle media is the lack of intellectual rigor when it comes to reviewing product. It seems that - especially with online media - all you need to become a ‘journalist’ and/or a ‘product reviewer’ is the right combination of geek, wealth, and the desire for self promotion. The best media doesn’t reign, just the loudest and the most self-interested.

The ‘review’ on this peers product was little better. There were a few home truths in there, but then also comments such as -

Gone are the days where pro riders used to secretly, or not-so-secretly in some cases, have custom bikes made for them and rebadged with their official sponsors’ logos. Sponsorship contracts have become so large and important to the bottom lines of teams that this practice is now economically impossible.

This is largely true, however it does not extend to components. Parts such as tyres, saddles, and numerous others are systematically ‘camouflaged’ with sponsors logos despite not being sponsors products. Frames would probably still be ‘badge-engineered’ if they weren’t carbon - it’s pretty hard to disguise a carbon frame despite the fact most of them look like they came out of the same mould anyway.

The decision to use aluminum to create this racing machine was a simple one: Aluminum provides the optimum characteristics necessary in a race frame.

Firstly, ‘Aluminium’ is a noun, so it should be capitalised. Secondly, this is highly debatable. I’ve still yet to experience an Aluminium or Scandium frame that I think provides the optimum characteristics for a race frame. They’re still too harsh for me, and one of the advantages of Aluminium is the ability to make the shapes more aerodynamic of which this particular frame takes no advantage of. For my money, USD2800 would almost buy me a Titanium frame from a good lower profile custom builder, and that’s where my money would be for a race frame. They just simply ride nicer.

Virtually the entire pro peloton competed on bicycles with aluminum frames because they had ideal performance characteristics.

This is patently untrue. The big Taiwanese manufacturers realised after Klein and Cannondale emerged to prominence in the late 1980’s that Aluminium was cheap and more importantly, light, and THAT was a major selling point and point of differentiation from the 80 year dominance of steel. 7005 series tubes were even better because they required no solution heat treating and so were even cheaper again. Cheaper tubes, cheaper processes, Giant’s ‘invention’ of ‘compact’ frame sizing (originally came in only three sizes), nice big tubes for big graphics - these were the reasons for Aluminium. Performance came a distant 5th.

And then there’s this paragraph -

The Xxxx is designed for stiffness, robustness and longevity, not to be the lightest bicycle possible. But, the most recent complete bikes we’ve built have ranged between 14.5 and 17 pounds depending on build kit and size. We spec the Xxxx fork with a 1 1/8” to 1 ½” tapered steering column with each Xxxxxxx frame. Presently, every frame is built to order. Current lead-time on Xxxx is 4 to 5 weeks unless otherwise noted.

Sorry, “We spec”? Who wrote this blurb?

And this is my main issue with online media - there is essentially now no ethics, no quality, little transparency. I honestly can’t see how you can have a magazine or news service, and then sell the things you review. In the previous life of the media, where there was division between advertising and content, if things were ‘advertorial’ there was something there informing the reader that the thing they were reading was an advertisement.

This magazine in my mind can no longer inform, review or comment upon any bicycle because they have a conflict of interest. It’s not enough for owners and editors to think to themselves “well, we’re honest people, so what” - the seed is there. Everything you comment on is now suspect.

Why does the bicycle industry not understand this? Or perhaps it’s just the New World of the online media, where news and media outlets are just not staffed by anyone who has any media training, nor have they spent a single second thinking about ethics and the duty to their readers. The classic example of this was when cyclingnews.com put together a pair of Independent Fabrication bikes - one 26″ and one 29″ - with the aim of coming to some conclusion regarding wheelsize. What happened? The ongoing test ‘magically’ disappeared from the website. Complaints from non 29″ wheeled bike advertisers, perhaps?

In defence of the unnamed website in question, they DO attempt to mostly have either editorial that isn’t really product based, or ‘product releases’ that are simply a regurgitation of a press release, but they do still venture into suspect territory -

Over the past few years, we’ve used pretty much every cross tire on the market and we’ve come to understand what tires do well and what they don’t. Let’s just say we have our opinions and we’re sharing them with you now.

Unfortunately, this ‘opinion’ only extends to the one brand they actually sell.

This sort of thing is all over the web. The other stream of this kind of blurring of the lines, is the prevalence of the ‘expert’ online product reviewer. There’s numerous of these types of people in the online bike world who seem to have essentially built a career based on the fact that they are wealthy enough to buy pretty much every new product that comes to market, and combined with their flair for self promotion end up in a position where companies give them stuff to ‘test’ based on what seems to be little more than web traffic through their site.

The main issue with this of course, is that what you get is an unedited, unmoderated, one persons highly biased opinion on product they get for free. The companies advertise on their website, give them free product, flatter their egos with ‘involving them’ in the product development process - *shazam* - instant ‘guru’. I’m actually surprised some parent company hasn’t set up their own ‘internet guru’.

One persons’ opinion on something can never be particularly balanced. If said person has a preference for a particular style of riding, or a particular style of product, they’re going to be intrinsically biased against anything that doesn’t fit in that criteria. You could argue that people are smart enough to see that, but if people aren’t smart enough to realise that some ‘news’ services have almost nothing in common with the proper news services of the past - the ‘traditional’ ones where there was no advertorial, where things were fact checked, edited, scrutinised - then it’s hard to see where the current generation of cyclists will be able to make the distinction if they’ve never actually experienced real journalism.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I do really miss the journalism style of the the 80’s and early 90’s Bicycle Guide. Can you imagine in this day and age having articles on frame alignment, or bicycle reviews where they ask the frame maker why they chose one tubing over another, or print things such as when they ask a question “He pauses, and it is clear he is almost rankled….”, or actually measure the angles on a bike rather than reprint them from the catalogue.

You should ask yourself why that’s the case.

Posted by warwick @ 12:25 am

3 Responses to “The bike media sucks.”

1. Jim Says:
   October 31st, 2011 at 6:10 am

   You didn’t mentioned that the website “review” in question is actually selling the bike, so I think most fair minded people would be “savy” enough to realise the “review” is just advertising.

   While your bikes are a bit out of my price range atm … still like to drop by and see what your up to.

2. angel Says:
   October 31st, 2011 at 11:32 pm

   Sometime your blurb sound like its coming from a spoiled baby who lost his milk in a crawling competition… honestly.

   I think got another thing wrong here (yes another) the bikes in the CyclingNews infamous test were Seven’s and not IF.

3. thylacine Says:
   November 1st, 2011 at 12:19 am

   You’re absolutely right, it was Seven. I stand corrected. In the post Fat City world I sometimes get confused because most of the spawn look like characterless imitations to me so I’m not surprised I got them confused. But hey, I’m glad you agree that the test was ‘infamous’.
   The comments I posted above are not a review per se, and that is also correct. However, they’re making statements about the product and how it compares in the current market, and they make the mistake of just being plain wrong in some circumstances and also trying to rewrite history by perpetuating myths and untruths. We all do it to an extent when trying to promote and sell our wares, but this example just happened to stand out this week. Especially in light of the fact of the media hullabaloo going on in this country at the moment, as well as my limited exposure when having dealt with the cycling press being less than impressive. There is real problems with the media at the moment, and especially the online ‘news’ services, and if my commentary on such makes me appear as a “Spoilt baby” then that’s a small price to pay as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather disrupt the status quo and make the odd mistake than be a complicit drone.

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