Cyclingtips = Velonews, Pinkbike = Beta

[rice rocket]

Originally Posted by pasadena

Pay a subscription to read advertising... we really are a society of consumers.

In all the articles i've seen on CT, the only actual cycling journalism I read was a really fantastic piece on this Australian anti-cycling troll that made up an elaborate disinformation site.

The rest of it is well-written reactionary op-eds and advertising, just like any other cycling media catering to advertising and product promotion.

It's shopping reinforcement or product curiosity... both of which can be found in plenty of other places. Exactly the same places the media looks at to write articles.
Middlemen are entertaining but not necessary. Any 'cutting edge' news or drama played out on twitter, IG or other platforms before the media wrote their pieces to "lay out what really happened".

I'm all for good advertising and product promotion. I'm just not paying a subscription for it.

Bike consumerism is at least worth writing about, whereas I could read back 40 years on politics and get the same headlines as today.

Even if I average roughly 5-6 years between each bike build/purchase, I do like to stay relatively informed on bike topics.

I do agree though, most cycling journalism outlets seem so afraid to lose their source of products to review that everything becomes a paid advertisement. Auto journalism was somehow able to break away from this, perhaps just due to scale?

[Gwerziou]

I had a VeloNews subscription last year and was somewhat underwhelmed with the content, which was disappointing. I seem to recall a large article on ebikes as leading me to especially question why I was bothering.

I had a hard time shutting down the subscription. There is no way to do so online; you have to call it in and the vibe was distinctly uncomfortable and reluctant. This sort of thing is a major sticking point for me. I’m not interested in a subscription of any kind that I can’t easily control.