0-60 Magazine Ends The (Reader) Suffering

Regular readers of automotive luminary Mike Spinelli’s Twitter account were informed yesterday that his employer, 0-60 Magazine, is ceasing publication. Is this the canary in the print-rag coal mine?

It’s possible that many of you have no idea what “0-60 Magazine” was, so here’s a precis: There’s this dude, Ken Block, who made a zillion dollars having shoes sewn overseas. I’ll spare all of you my usual lecture on the morality of “pad checks”, sweatshops, child labor, brutal suppression of worker dissent, and all of that. If you care at all about the lives of your fellow human beings, even if they are “yellow” and very far away, you can check it out for yourself here.

Back to Block. Ken Block has a super-best friend named Brian Scotto. Maybe he’s a sidekick. They both seem like nice enough people, I guess. Scotto started 0-60 Magazine in August 2007, publishing it monthly for the first two years and then moving to bimonthly issues in 2009. As I recall, 0-60 was supposed to be a “British magazine for the United States” or something like that. I never managed to make it all the way through an entire article without giving up so I do not feel qualified to render an opinion. I do know that there was a lot of Ken Block coverage, probably for the same reason that any car magazine started by yours truly would have a lot of Tiffani-Amber what’s-her-name coverage.

Mike Spinelli, known far and wide as one of the primary forces behind Jalopnik’s stellar early years, was brought in at the beginning of 2010 to polish 0-60‘s content and shine-up its reputation. This was roughly tantamount to letting George Santayana edit Tiger Beat and I am not certain that Spin’s eloquent style was popular with the sideways-Monster-Energy-Drink-cap crowd. Regardless of the reasons, however, it’s all over now.

I’m not particularly eager to hold up 0-60‘s failure as an indictment of automotive print journalism. I would suggest that it tells us something about the demographic direction in which any future entry to the market will have to travel in order to be successful. Young people don’t read print magazines very much, and they also don’t have money to spend at the newsstand. On the other hand, the various Cigar/Guitar/CBT Aficionado magazines seem to be doing quite well. The few people who are buying print rags today seem to be purchasing them for in-flight consumption of stories about luxury travel and conspicuous consumerism.

With any luck, Mr. Spinelli will find employment better-suited to his considerable talent and Ken Block fans will find another outlet devoted to full-time coverage of his wacky exploits.