This Week In Auto "Journalism": Reports Of The Esprit's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
With no less than three outlets reporting on the supposed death of the Lotus Esprit yesterday, one could be forgiven in thinking that Lotus was jettisoning the last of the Danny Bahar era and returning back to its roots as a maker of pure, uncompromising sports cars. It turns out that the reputable news outlets that reported on the matter failed to do any fact checking with Lotus. Also, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
The story was disseminated by Romanian auto site AutoEvolution, with just a blurb of text and no citation. Even the greenest auto “journalist” knows that a story like this is great if all you want to do is get clicks for your site utterly worthless. That didn’t stop multiple outlets from running with the story, until Lotus put a stop to the stupidity by releasing a statement clarifying that this is a baseless rumor.
The best part? The blogs in question get to run another story clarifying the matter, and get even more pageviews and clicks. Ain’t the blogosphere grand? Of course, any of the bloggers could have told you that at this point, the development of the car is past the point of no return, and that the need for economies of scale means that the Esprit is going forward and it will underpin everything else in the Lotus pipeline, but that would require industry knowledge that interferes with important tasks like posting pictures of press cars on Facebook.
More by Derek Kreindler
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I'm not sure the kettle (see "story" about the possibility of selling opel to chrysler a few stories down) can call out the pot here.
I have never forgiven 007 for blowing up so-hot Caroline Munro like that.
Dewey Beats Truman