Categories: OLD Media Moves

Ward’s Automotive Report ends 96-year publication streak

Ward’s Automotive Reports, the 96-year-old weekly newsletter that helped create the craft of automotive journalism, published its last issue Jan. 28.

Mark Phelan of The Detroit Free Press writes, “WAR published data suppliers used to plan their own production. Dealers studied the figures to see what was selling, how the competition was doing and whether the factory was about to shove extra trainloads of a slow-selling car down their throats.

“A year’s subscription to WAR cost $50 when Ward’s hired Smith away from his job as Free Press business and auto editor in 1970. It was about $2,000 when publication ceased this week.

“WAR’s circulation was one of the auto industry’s most closely guarded secrets, but for decades, you could find each week’s edition in the anteroom to every senior executive’s office.

“‘It brings a small tear to my eye,’ Smith said. ‘WAR broke a lot of news because it had data and statistical expertise nobody else had back then.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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