O poveste cu masini, pr, jurnalism si semne de intrebare

O poveste despre disputa dintre Tesla, producatorul de masini electrice, si New York Times:

1. Tesla vs. The New York Times: Everyone’s A Media Company Now

Even a few years ago, something like this probably would have required finding a rival newspaper — the Wall Street Journal, perhaps — to collaborate on a takedown. Or maybe an expensive full-page ad campaign in the top five papers, which would have looked defensive and seemed less convincing.

But now that every smart company has a regularly updated blog, Elon Musk has 136,000 Twitter followers, etc., brands can speak for themselves very powerfully. And if the tone is right, they don’t even look lame: Tesla actually looks pretty great right now*. The balance of power has shifted.

2.

Corporate PRs everywhere are reading @elonmusk ‘s NYT take down and thinking ‘hmm’

— emily bell (@emilybell) February 14, 2013

3. Tesla, the New York Times and the levelling of the media playing field

In a very real sense, everyone is a media entity of some kind now. That doesn’t mean someone with a few hundred followers on Twitter is the equivalent of the New York Times, but it does mean that a large corporation like Tesla Motors is on a much more level playing field with the newspaper than it would ever have been before. In the past, if Tesla didn’t like a review, it could a) call and complain, b) put out a press release and try to get a competitor interested in a story c) launch an expensive lawsuit (which Musk has also done in the past).

And what about society, or journalism in general — is it better off when this happens? There are two ways of looking at that question too: if you want to make it easier to figure out who is right and who is wrong, the current state of affairs isn’t going to help. The only thing that becomes obvious from the back-and-forth between Tesla and the New York Times is that it’s very difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to tell who is right on specific points. Some political topics are also arguably getting harder to understand rather than easier.

4. Tesla Owners Hit the Road to Prove Long-Distance Can Be Done

A group of Tesla Model S owners, charged up over a recent New York Times column that challenged the reliability of the electric vehicle, hit the road this weekend to replicate the same drive the Times reporter made.