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’ll never forget the issue from 1998, where Autoweek introduced us to this British 13 year-old and proclaimed that he would be the greatest driver ever.
He currently holds the record for F1 wins.
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a34680637/lewis-hamilton-age-13/
My older brother was in Vietnam patrolling the rivers in a PBR. He couldn’t make it home that Christmas and got me a subscription to AutoWeek. I was about 13 at the time. I devoured every article resulting in my lifelong affinity to cars and racing.
AutoWeek was my gateway drug. My parents first got me a subscription sometime in the mid 1980’s. Leon Mandel, Denise McCluggage, Roger Barlow…reading Escape Road and But Wait, There’s More…
I was devastated when my mom tossed 10+ years of issues when I went away to college.
RIP Autoweek, you’ve been but a shell of yourself for years but hold a special place in my heart.
I was just reading today about how the Onion, having gone back to subscription print, is knocking it out of the park. It could be the model, it could be the quality of the content, it could be both.
I personally couldn’t care less about auto racing other than to be annoyed by the wastefulness, but I have perused Autoweek over the years in it’s many forms. It was obvious the online era was decaying into a clickbait farm. They are not unique in that, but it’s just not conducive to reader loyalty.
The Onion might be the perfect use case for AI. Just state that it will be 50/50 split in articles and let the readers decide. Real writers, naw we’re just messin’ with you. AI articles, naw we’re just messin’ with you.
Humour is one human trait that AI will never master. That’s probably why people are willing to subscribe to the Onion.
I began reading Autoweek in 1968 when it was a newspaper.It was the only place to get news on every significant race. Particularly NASCAR, which other magazines turned up their noses to. The TransAm coverage was better also. Had an original signed copy of Fast Lane Summer.
Continued subscribing up through the mid-2000s, long after TV and then the internet made their race coverage redundant. The Leon Mandel years were great but no longer able to capitalize on the racing angle, they became an ersatz Motor Trend, and that isn’t a high aspiration.
As all of my enthusiast magazine subscriptions went away, I never made the transition to their websites. Print media had a presence and filled a niche that can’t be duplicated online. I hung with Grassroot Motorsports until I stopped racing.
Now I don’t even look at car magazines. I don’t even read current auto news on the web, they’re mostly barely concealed shills for associate sponsorships.
The ads were better in print pre internet. All the used racing cars. Oh look, another Lola T70 for sale with three engines and a spare body for $8000. Weren’t those $3000 last year?
Yes back in the day you had to wait until Wednesday or Thursday to get race results from Competition Press if it wasn’t on tv. Local newspapers didn’t cover a lot of racing unless it was happening locally. Sometime in the 80s we switched to Speed Sport News. Both greatly missed.
You’re experience matches mine. I started with the glossy magazines even earlier, but when I found Autoweek in 1968 I felt I’d found the most immediate and vital source. None of websites that descended from the legacy magazines had the same attraction.
About 5 years ago, my uncle asked me if I was interested in his remaining subscription to Autoweek. He wasn’t, for whatever reason.
It got added to my rotation of work lunch reading material, along with Grassroots Motorsports, Sportscar (SCCA magazine), and I had one other but forget who. I did let it run out.
Looking for mags at Meijer last weekend, very few left if you aren’t into guns, outdoor survival, or pop entertainment. My GRM is the only subscription I still have. (Those few mags on the shelf were like $15!)
The latest edition of Autoweek was on the kitchen counter throughout my entire childhood.
Long time print subscriber from 1976 on, very sad news. Our son & I used to read it when he was a baby and through his growing up years. Lots of bonding over Autoweek. But wait there’s more!
They had an Haiku contest & I wrote this (not really a Haiku but anyway).
Why do I sit
to take a leak?
So I can read
my Autoweek.
RIP
Brilliant poem, haha. I enjoy resting in the reading ‘room, haha.
I used to subscribe to AutoWeek but really cut back on print subscriptions. Online is just so much more convenient. I do have a good AutoWeek memory, they offered subscribers passes to Lime Rock, I emailed in and won a pair. They rented a chalet there, for vintage BMW racing. It was a great time, my only visit to Lime Rock so far.
Unfortunate but not unexpected. I hope all those laid off find great jobs soon. Hearst has been a pillar of monopolistic evils for over 100 years.
This.
I began receiving Autoweek in print back in the early 90’s I think? When they closed the print magazine it was a huge disappointment, but I kept getting daily emails from them, which were fine. Last one I have in my inbox is dated August 24th. I didn’t realize the staff was so small at this point.
If Car and Driver ever dies I’m going to have a crisis.
Crap! And I was still waiting for an update from Natalie Neff about her Piaggio MP3 500. 🙁
Guess my Autoweek keychain is a collectible now…….
*sniff* Autoweek has a very special place in my heart.
I spent a year and a half going to school in the Lincoln, NE. One of the other students and I seem to be the only two hard core car enthusiasts on campus. A quick friendship formed. When I left NE to return to CA, and live on my own for the first time in my life, he bought me a subscription to Autoweek so I would have more than the monthly mags. (I would voraciously devour the monthlies in just a couple of hours each month. My idea of a good time on a Saturday night was a bag of M&M’s and a fresh Car & Driver – yeah, I was THAT guy).
Denise McCluggage, William Neely, Leon Mandel, the whole lot. Friends on a weekly basis. Miss them all! I kept my subscription going until life took over (jobs, kids, etc). I feel like the hey-day of automotive journalism was the 1980’s with maybe a few examples into the early 1990’s, then it just died.
That is until The Autopian showed up!
I used to write for them occasionally when they were a print edition and Dutch Mandel was the editor. They just faded away and never developed web presence. Sorry to see them go.
A very young me had a subscription to Autoweek when it was printed on newsprint. I remember the transition to glossy. Sad to see it go.
As a former longtime subscriber (15 years!) to AutoWeek, the hard copy version, I can’t say that I am surprised, but I am sad nonetheless. 🙁
Sad, but unfortunately expected
Also, Hearst seriously bought their number one, direct competitor, Motortrend?! That’s… something…
Yeah. :/ It’s basically a monopoly on the big print auto mags now.
I only really ran into Autoweek when it was in its most recent form, an online only publication with minimal staff and content. It wasn’t much, but it was always nice to see that little yellow helmet logo in my Facebook feed. RIP.
When only 15% of Americans state they read for pleasure, you know it’s bad for magazines. ????
I’m in education–so I think about this a lot. How many people here would respond “Yes, I read for pleasure.”
My gut says a max of 75% of the readers here would say yes. I suspect the number might be much lower. But what is a car blog that tends towards the whimsical except pleasure? I only blame ourselves as schools and educators–we’ve built this idea that the only Real Reading for is Literature. And then a carefully curated idea of what constitutes Literature.
And so the spiral begins. People think “oh, I’m not much of a reader” and then the self-fulfilling prophecy sets in as people then read even less because if you think it you tend to make it so.
I am also an educator and it is so bad that we are pushing ANY reading as reading like audiobooks, graphic novels. We want kids to read and read anything. Over the 25+ years in k-12 education and the 10 years of college teaching before that to now I have seen more of a change in the outside of school forces that keep kids from reading. Teachers are trying hard and trying whatever they can but as long as it is seen as effeminate and nerdy to read for pleasure we are doomed.
There’s maybe some truth to that. I wonder from time to time about what the big deal was with getting kids to read in school. Sure, literacy is very important, and there’s some cultural value in a lot of books, but what really makes it different from any other form of entertainment, such that it’s taught in school when others aren’t?
None of my teachers ever cared about the video games I played, and only a handful would even think about TV, or movies, or music, or magazines as worthy media, yet they have even more cultural significance today.
Maybe I’m biased, as “I’m not much of a reader” either, but it just seems like a backwards practice. I do infinitely more reading on websites than I ever have in books, if you’re concerned about literacy. And I get as much, if not more, emotion and provoked thoughts from music and movies and whatnot than I do from books.
I had a student who protested he hated reading. He was really into JRPGs on the console and tabletop RPGs. He’d always have his nose in a rule or monster book. But “we” told him that didn’t count…. Kid probably consumed more text than any of his peers.
But I *do* think there’s something important about reading. Other media, like movies, music, games, are good and valuable in their own right. But neurologically reading does different things and is important.
As an example of this is The Lord of the Rings. I read the Hobbit and the trilogy as a youth and had my own vision of what that world looked like. In the70’s I think a movie was made (animated) of the Hobbit and it was meh. I liked my version better, but I had my version.
When Jackson’s version came out I had to admit he had a better vision of the tale than I. I still maintain that my version is pretty good and cost nothing more than the price of the books.
“I liked my version better…and cost nothing more than the price of the books.” Yes.
The wife is a librarian, and I’d say she and 1 of my 3 kids read for pleasure at this point. I read a lot as a kid, but I don’t have the attention span for it, but I try to make up for it by continuous learning and researching things.
We were talking to my son that is huge reader last night. It’s his first week away at college and he was on the phone with us and one of his friends from high school that is attending the same college came by and wanted to show him her room, and we actually heard him say to her, “I’m going to bring my Kindle in case you want me to stay a while and I have some down time.” At least we know he’s not getting himself in trouble.
I expect it will get worse. In an era where parents are actively attacking schools and libraries and demanding they don’t teach their kids things, the culture of knowledge and curiosity is self immolating in front of us.
Welcome to the world of lies, false pride, and self congratulation on one’s overwhelming ignorance.
Off with their heads.
Let them eat cake.
I read a 500 page book about the Nez Perce War over the weekend for pleasure
I read for pleasure! And I still remember which high school teacher rejected my choice for a book report because it had “no literary value.” Some of what I read may be considered garbage by literary snobs, but I enjoy it…it may have no literary value, but it means something to me.
I still subscribe to two print magazines, Scientific American and National Geographic; I like reading them at work during my lunch break. Both have been mistaken for books by my coworkers…not sure what to make of that.
Today there are people who call ANY book a “novel”.
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.
A slower, calmer era when you were pleased to read coverage and results of a race a week to ten days later, rather than being pissed a website doesn’t have up-to-the-second standings in the middle of a race.
God you scared me, for a brief moment I thought Motorweek with Americas loudest and kindest car reviewer JOHN DAVIS was over.
Ok, so I wasn’t the only one that did that.
Well, Trump wants to kill PBS, so maybe……
I didn’t do that here, but I do brace myself any time Motorweek posts a promo with him posing with a car in that field, thinking that’s what the caption will be.
They just announced their new season, so they’re good for at least 1 more year.
Phew.
That poor guy just hasn’t been the same since they got rid of his beloved oil pressure gauge.
He’s right to be mad damnit. One of the most useful gauges you can have for judging engine health.
Oh trust me, I’m with him. I’d rather have all the gauges. I love watching the vintage ones and waiting for his report on the gauge clusters.
Damn, This is so sad. I started reading Autoweek in the fall of 1987, my freshman year of college and subscribed up until sometime after it went to every 2 weeks. Much of what I know about cars and racing came from my weekly Autoweek. Hell, In college it was the most awaited thing in my dorm mailbox. Weekly just ment more than the monthly 4wheeler, JP, and other car magazines. It is sad but times change.
Same here I’d check the mailbox twice a day until it arrived. Getting the address changed twice a year was fun. First subscribed back in ’81 when I was in high school. Can’t remember when I quit the subscription but it’s been years (25+) ago.
To think we read (on paper) weekly about cars from the darkest of the malaise era to the hybrid supercars era is just wild.
A shame. Corporate America needs to realize not everything can keep growing infinitely. Just keep laying off people. It does wonders for the general economy and society as a whole. That last sentence was sarcasm if you missed it.
“Other” sources will say otherwise, but I believe Craigslist is still at maybe 5-6 dozen people at most. Last official count in 2021 put them at 50.
Great example of, “Nah, we’re good.” Just keeps doing its thing.
Last time I checked, Urban Dictionary is just one guy, and has been since it’s inception in 1998.
No shit?! Neat.
They are eating the Cats and Dogs!