Bark's Bites: The Blazer Might Be the Meteor That Kills the Journosaurs

“It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.”

— Dr. Suess, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

2019 Chevrolet Blazers are available for purchase at dealership near you. No, really, they are. Like, right this second. You could buy one. Some people already have. This is interesting because it’s pretty much impossible to find a review of one anywhere on the internet. A search for “Chevrolet Blazer Reviews” brings you to some news of the initial auto show reveal, and that’s about it.

To you, the TTAC reader and automotive enthusiast, this news probably doesn’t rock you to your core. But there’s a group of people that are wringing their hands nervously about this product launch.

The journosaurs.

Chevrolet decided that no media launch was required for the Blazer. No farm to table luncheon or five star resort full of journalists eager to copy and paste the press kit into WordPress, perish the thought. They just sent them to dealers. And people bought them! Turns out that for most consumers, just going to Chevrolet.com and reading the specs directly from the source works just fine.

Well, as you might imagine, the journosaurs of the internet aren’t happy about it. They don’t have the ability to create content, you see. They can’t tell stories. They don’t even have it in their budgets to rent said Blazer from the Emerald Aisle. (You can be damned sure that I’m going to look for one at Atlanta Latoya Jackson Airport next week.) All they can do is take the free press trips and write positive reviews of whatever car is shoved in front of them.

The journosaurs in the private Facebook groups really don’t like it when I share their names, but one gentleman, whose Facebook page has 516 followers and whose website doesn’t rank on Alexa, seemed particularly perplexed that GM did not personally invite him to wax poetic about the Blazer before daring to ship it. “It’s like they don’t want us to talk about it!” No kidding, dude.

What would happen if the OEMs decided, en masse, that the journosaur should go extinct? It’s hard to believe that GM just forgot to put together an event for the Blazer — the failure to launch was intentional. While it’s likely not expected to do the volume of the Equinox, the Blazer is slotted in the larger two-row CUV segment, long the domain of the Edge and the Grand Cherokee. In other words, GM needs and expects its reboot to do well.

The Bark prediction is that the lack of journosaur reviews by websites with fewer followers than many celebrity dogs will impact the sales of the Blazer by exactly zero units. When that prediction comes to pass (and it will), then what’s to stop GM from killing off the next journo launch — and the next, and the next? What’s to prevent the other OEMs from following suit?

In a world where the journosaurs provided any intrinsic value at all, this would be a bad thing. More press is typically a good thing, not a bad thing. More opinions, more perspectives, more diversity of thought are valued in the real world. Of course, the journosaurs provide none of these things. They simply regurgitate what they are fed, and then they hop the plane to the next event.

No, this would actually be a good thing. The reviewing would be left to the publications that are financially solvent and free to be independent of the influence of OEM PR reps. The internet would no longer be swamped with vanilla, beige takes of every car on the market. You’d only get high quality reviews written by qualified drivers and talented writers.

So let me say this — good job, Chevrolet. You’re helping the signal-to-noise ratio on the web. You’re putting hacks out of a job. And I applaud you for it. I can only hope that you’ve started a trend that will ultimately end in the extinction of the journosaur.

(Editor’s note: There *is* a Blazer test drive occuring right now, in San Diego — no doubt to Bark’s chagrin. That doesn’t mean OEMs won’t read this column … and perhaps walk away with an idea.)

[Image: General Motors]