Autoweek is effectively dead. The 67-year old magazine-turned-website, which primarily covered racing and car events, laid off or transferred away most of its staff this morning, as ordered by its parent company, Hearst Autos, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation media conglomerate.
The news came without much fanfare, with no announcement or warning from Hearst or Autoweek itself. I first learned of the news through The Autopian contributor Alanis King, who shared a tweet from Deb Williams, a longtime motorsport writer who covered NASCAR for the publication.
From Williams’ tweet:
Just days before the #NASCAR Cup and Truck playoffs start, I receive word that Autoweek.com has shut down, effective immediately. It’s a stunning blow when the website/publication you’re writing for does that without any warning.
Another source at Hearst confirmed Autoweek’s staff cuts to The Autopian. Of the six full-time employees, two have been moved to Motor Trend, another publication owned by Hearst. The other four have simply been laid off.
In a statement given to The Autopian, a Hearst spokesperson said Autoweek will “join the MotorTrend family of brands,” and “continue to publish original content.” They also said “[w]e made this strategic decision to position the brand for future success.” It’s unclear at this time where that content will come from, as the brand now has no staffers.
Founded as a print magazine dedicated to keeping enthusiasts up to date on the latest happenings in the racing world, Autoweek was the go-to for Americans wanting to learn about news and results for stuff like Formula 1 before the internet existed. It was detailed and knowledgeable in a way the competition wasn’t, going deep into coverage on race times, grids, top speeds, tire swaps, and more for every race.
Autoweek didn’t just cover big races. Localized stories from the likes of regional SCCA often graced the publication, allowing writers to corner the market on true, hardcore track addict content while highlighting up-and-coming talent.
Like most print magazines, Autoweek struggled to survive the internet age. In late 2019, the print magazine was discontinued, with the publication moving to an all-digital product centered around Autoweek.com. Since then, it’s existed as a footnote in Hearst Autos’ portfolio, which also owns the similarly enthusiast-focused Road & Track and the leviathan Car and Driver, as well as the recently purchased Motor Trend.
The future of Autoweek remains unclear, but as of this writing, the website and all of the brand’s social channels remain active. My source says the two remaining staffers will still contribute some new stuff under Motor Trend’s direction, but my guess is Hearst will mostly automate the site (or bring in cheap contract labor) and continue to publish SEO-focused “best-of” lists, e-commerce articles, and branded content to keep revenue flowing. That’s the sad reality of this business. Perhaps Autoweek might one day be revived if Hearst sells the rights, but for now, it’s looking pretty bleak.
Update (12:58 PM ET): On background, Hearst has tried to clarify that the two Autoweek employees who weren’t laid off will stay as Autoweek employees. Presumably, the moving of Autoweek under Motor Trend means that these employees will report to Ed Loh. How this all works, or what it means, is not clear.
Top photo: Autoweek
I don’t read print magazines anymore, but it’s a little concerning when one company owns all the big voices in any conversation (even if it’s “just” about cars).
I let my subscription to Autoweek lapse once they went to bi-monthly and became AutoEveryOtherWeek. When Crain owned them they ran a lot of articles from Automotive News and it was a good source of news about racing and the latest industry news. Very sad to see them go away and become part of Motor Trend.
I subscribed to Autoweek for most of 1980s until the format was changed from the newsprint with intoxicating smell to smaller one. The ink stain on my fingers was “badge of honour” for reading everything in the Autoweek every week.
My favourite issue was the 19 August 1985, featuring Andy Granatelli and his mostly stock 1983 Chevrolet Caprice with 900-hp 9.6-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine. He drove Caprice to more than 200 mph at Bonneville, unintentionally breaking the speed record for a four-door car with three passengers.
A 200 mph square Caprice? Looking that one up.
Well, I added it to my subscriptions to C&D, R&T, Motortrend, Automobile, …sometime after it went to magazine format. It slowly replaced the others, as it was weekly. Then bi weekly, then monthly, then 10x a year. I don’t think they tried to get me to re-subscribe! Autopian has replaced it for me..(only better!)
How does the industry not see that the future (scratch that, the present) is video?
All these companies are stuck in the past probably because they are run by clueless boomers. And they typically take one or two extreme paths to failure – they think they need expensive ass video production on par with the old Top Gear (like Motor trend did) or they totally shun technology and video and foolishly stick to paper or what amounts to a magazine, but formatted on a web page.
Newsflash: Some of the most popular content online is like one person on their phone. Almost no overhead, little-to-no editing. Millions of views from as little as one person or a small production team. And people are consuming more and more content every year, so it isn’t that folks aren’t looking for things to entertain them. I am not saying that it is easy, but you can’t have lavish million dollar video production levels and then think you are going to fund it with YouTube views. And you also can’t ignore it and continue to churn out paper magazines or just a website.
Evolve or die.
I imagine it’s because most of them remember that the ‘pivot to video’, that was forced on websites by Facebook in the 2010’s, turned out to be based on erroneous data about how long people actually watched videos on Facebook (which was overestimated by up to 900%).
If they are listening to FB, then they might just deserve it.
Here you are reading text at Autopian. Video has it’s place. Writing has it’s place. There is quality of communication in written word. Video is no substitute.
Devolution, no thank you.
Those of us who enjoy reading and then possibly commenting on an article are clearly not enough to sustain some of these larger productions. Again, I go back to this foolish idea that these companies have that you need a million dollar budget for videos, or in the case of written articles with lots of fancy photos with expensive lighting in far-away locales. You are competing against someone with a $500 iphone, free video editing software and their local twisty road. And that person is getting more clicks.
This is what I say when I have to look up a DIY job on the internet. Give. Me. An. eFfing. Article.
For REAL. I do not want to sit through some guy doing a job that would be explained with a simpler item-by-item walkthrough of text and pictures that would take a fraction of that video’s run-time to read.
I like stories more than video. I am not alone. Its all about cost cutting
I almost never watch videos. They often take longer to watch than an equivalent article would take to read.
Then there are commercials in videos you can’t skip past. That’s the real reason why websites are pushing video so hard.
YouTube Premium is worth every penny. If I ever jump on a computer where I can’t log into my account, I am blown away by how many ad breaks there are.
The weekly print format was awesome and around the time of the Jay Leno article with him on the cover was around the same time the downfall began to happen to all of the automotive print media.
Had the pleasure of meeting David E. David at his office back in the day in Ann Arbor. There really hasnt been a replacement since.
Let me use this moment to encourage anyone reading this to become an Autopian member. I have no affiliation other than reading this site and following this group from other sites.
We are watching so many of the car centric things we loved go away. From magazines, to sites, and even worse with sites moving to AI slop. Shows disappearing, like Roadkill and all of the MotorTrend content. We gotta support who and what we can.
Autoweek was pretty much gone when Dutch Mandell left.
Man, this is depressing. Are the Hearst mags now dabbling in chatbot slop, too? Good grief. First, there’s those sus-looking articles on Jalopnik, now this. ????
Autoweek gave me my first print byline and that mag has a cherished spot on my shelf to this day. The four staffers who got surprise-let-go and not moved to anywhere else, especially in this circling-the-drain environment for work, deserve so much better.
Moving what’s left (if anything?) under Motor Trend, which has its own trail of dead mags behind it, is not a good sign, so RIP.
I remember reading your article!
Man, this is sad news. 🙁
Yeah. 🙁
Autoweek was truly great for decades. Autoweek and Velo News used to be my motivation for opening the mailbox.
Here’s a scoop. I personally heard the current CEO of Crain Communications say he focused on Autoweek when he first took over and he gave several years of effort to turn it around. I don’t know anybody who worked there at the time to verify this statement though.
As I said over in the Discord, I’m a reader, have been since I was a young child. Folks pivoting to video a decade ago was heartbreaking, but the glut of A.I. text (because it isn’t writing) may kill me. I get I’m clearly in a minority, but also know I’m among the like-minded here.
I don’t think any of us benefit from AI text. Half the time it’s wrong and the other half is basically plagiarism. It’s sad that this happened.
I don’t understand who it’s for because it fails at journalism’s core purpose: to serve the readers. It does the opposite, with dull text and frequent inaccuracies. People are figuring out that naked SEO-bait slop isn’t giving them good guidance, IMHO, so every herb looking to this trash as tHe FuTuRe is in for a hard reality check.
It’s for the money grubbing turds who are in charge.
Nobody else benefits at all.
Welcome to America, the land of Fake News, Bullshit filled “leaders”, and self centered, half wit people who goal in life is to get theirs.
Screw the rest…
Good luck Steph.
You’re literally asking someone (or in this case, something) to do your homework for you. How anyone expects anything other than fabrications, misinterpretations, and plagiarism from AI (in this context) is beyond me.
Autoweek was a must read in the 80’s, along with Peter Egan at Road & Track. I drifted away from cars through the 90’s, and then by the 2000’s, all the great print writers had dispersed. Everything changes.
Excuse me, but it’s “Competition Press & Autoweek” and it’s been pretty dead for a while now. I think there is some sort of organ harvesting scheme that they were attempting.
When Denise McCluggage ran it as a weekly newspaper, it was at its best.
I seem to remember that it was just Competition Press, then & Autoweek snuck in, in tiny letters at first
Gee, I just noticed reading her bio that she went to college with my mother. Those Mills Girls.
This makes me sad. Not nearly as sad as when they discontinued the print publication. I started a subscription in 1992. I was my weekly indulgence and would read it cover-to-cover. Maybe I’m over-nostalgic as I’ve been in the print industry since 1988. I still get the dead tree version of Car and Driver.
I started writing for Autoweek in 2011. One of my articles was in their very last print issue. I have sadness.
If you all can come to a mutual understanding count me as a vote to have you join the Autopian writing team.
I’ve written a couple of things for this fine publication.
Yeah. 🙁 You kept the good stuff flowin’ over there. I hope your junkyard shenanigans will migrate to another place yet again and continue their ultimate internet domination.
One or your articles legitimately might be the last thing I read at Autoweek, as it pretty much died for me when it went digital-only.
My first instinct was to shout “noooooo!!!” into the void as I processed the thought of Murilee wearing a barrel on a street corner with a leashed monkey grinding an organ. (I’m a sucker for ancient cliches.)
Happily, we can still find him at Autoblog, Hagerty Media, Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, The Truth About Cars and sometimes when the planets are in alignment, here. But I’m still bummed that yet another light has gone out in the automotive world.
I have been missing Autoweek since it stopped arriving in my mailbox every (other) week a few years ago.
I am not sure if Motortrend TV is run by Hearst, but since they have all but killed any new content I have stopped watching anything on the channel. Mark Worman’s Graveyard Carz still seems to be making new shows, but I think Mark owns and does his own production. The corporate herbs are ruining my favorite stuff!
It’s dead now. This is a pretty long expose, but probably the best summary of what happened to it I’ve seen: https://youtu.be/ySUXAAzpJVA?si=QZYZAj4ZHNeQaukn
Motortrend TV is owned by Discovery. You know, the “reality” TV people that threw away most of the educational programming that they were founded on when they figured out that drama made waaaaay more money than science. My understanding (mostly from Freiburger and Finnegan, and what any cynic can see Discovery is) is that Velocity/Motortrend made money, but not on the same order of magnitude as their other content, especially as they kept pushing up production value (and thus, costs). One way or another, the shareholders figured that out, and gave them the axe so they could pump that money into the prole content. It’s also possible that they saw the writing on the wall that cheap Youtube videos are eclipsing traditional TV-based car content, but I’m not sure I can give Discover that much credit. 😉
For some reason I never got into Graveyard Carz, but I do recall hearing that the guy had the foresight not to sign over his IP to anyone. Similarly, Derek Bieri kept Vice Grip Garage as his own, instead making a separate show for Motortrend. There may be a few others that could still move somewhere else, but the entire Roadkill family of shows were company projects from the start, so all of those guys are having to start over on their own.