By Steven Cole Smith

04-18-2005

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Another classic confrontation between "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" and "Tell the truth and run."

Dan Neil, who for the last year must be referred to as "Pulitzer Prize-winner Dan Neil," is the "automobile critic" for the Los Angeles Times.

On April 6, he wrote a review of the 2005 Pontiac G6.

On April 7, General Motors canceled its advertising in the Los Angeles Times, an account worth, estimates The Wall Street Journal, maybe $10 million a year.

On April 8, a story in the Times reported that a "GM executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the review of the Pontiac G6 written by Times Pulitzer Prize-winning automobile critic Dan Neil was particularly offensive."

Interestingly, Neil's review of the G6 was, for him at least, comparatively mild. First, he suggested that GM dump Bob Lutz, chairman of GM North America: Specifically, Neil said that due to GM's current struggles, "someone's head ought to roll, and the most likely candidate would be the luminous white noggin of Lutz." But then Neil reconsiders, and decides that GM should fire chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, who has a less luminous brown noggin.

Actually, it is only after 16 paragraphs of corporate assessment that Neil actually gets to the Pontiac G6. But wondering aloud why the average newspaper reader, tuning in for a G6 review, would care that much about GM's management team only shows why I have never won a Pulitzer.

Once he finally gets to the G6, Neil says it is "not an awful car. It's entirely adequate. But plainly, adequate is not nearly enough." Not that different from a lot of G6 reviews, really. But evidently enough to cost the paper $10 million, if GM decides to play a whole season's worth of hardball.

Since winning a Pulitzer is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for a journalist, PP-w Dan Neil will be just fine. In a form letter to the "hundreds" of correspondents who congratulated him for the column, he says in part: "To my editors' everlasting credit, there hasn't been even a hint of reproval. As a public relations move, I think it's fair to say GM's ad-pulling did them more harm than good. My estimate is that perhaps 2 million or so people read the article than would have otherwise and the debate on GM's woes has been given another good public chewing. And I have been transformed from cranky columnist to St. George slaying the dragon."

This is a good place to say that Dan Neil and I are friends, and that I used to be his editor at Car and Driver magazine. I'm good, but there are things he has written that I am not talented enough to write, which makes him great. Sometimes. Like a lot of good writers, I am not sure he knows the difference when he is on target, and when he misses.

His salvation is that he works for the editorial side of a rich paper. In the newsrooms of many publications, both newspapers and magazines, the separation of editorial and advertising departments is simply understood, strictly enforced. The Montagues and the Capulets had more interaction. The Hatfields and McCoys were closer. I have never quite understood this, but then I am probably naïve.

You know why? Because I like advertising. Love advertising. For the vast majority of publications — those printed on paper, anyway — the cover price and subscription revenue don't remotely cover the cost of getting the publication into your hands, much less leave room for profit.

Two newspapers and a magazine I have worked for no longer exist. All three, editorially, were good. But they didn't have enough advertising to survive.

So I like advertising, and I like advertising people. When an advertising saleswoman mentioned to me a few days ago that a story I had printed cost her an $800,000 account, I felt terrible. But I had to think: Would I have done anything different had I known that would happen?

No. I felt bad, I said I was sorry, but I did what I thought was right. And would, maybe will, do it again.

This is because I work for the editorial side, not the advertising side. This is not the case with a great many automotive journalists. They are paid by the advertising side, and they test cars and write about them, and they are compelled to like everything: The quality of this week's car is exceeded only by next week's car. Sometimes, they are good writers. Sometimes — well, suffice it to say that the author of car reviews for one major paper refuses to learn to drive a manual transmission. No, I'm serious.

Lots of big newspapers have automotive sections that are staffed by advertising employees. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that. But it can make life difficult for the editorial half of the auto journalism world. "Why didn't you like our car?" asks a corporate executive. "(Insert name here) liked it!"

Yes, well.

Of course, this happens with all kinds of criticism. Got a submediocre movie like Miss Congeniality 2 — Armed and Fabulous? Count on a Jeanne Wolf to write that it is "Side-splittingly funny!" See? If critics can't find the right word, we'll just make one up.

Unfortunately, Dan Neil has sort of painted himself into a corner. His reviews are almost always the lead story for the Times' auto section, "Highway 1," and as a lead story written by a Pulitzer Prize winner, each one must be grand.

Unfortunately, there are just so many cars that are grand successes, or grand failures.

Sometimes, a car is just a car.

Like the Pontiac G6. Or like the 2005 Mercury Montego, about which Neil wrote maybe the funniest, most brutal assessment ever. It is a car "whose lack of charisma is so dense no light can escape its surface." A car that was "built with a swollen prostate." Then he gets mean. Compared to what he said about the G6 — well, there is no comparison.

This sort of vitriol was once reserved for the Yugo, or at least Pauly Shore movies. But there are no Yugos, and Hyundai is suddenly at the top of quality charts, and Pauly Shore hasn't made a really horrible movie since The Princess and the Barrio Boy, which, I think, Jeanne Wolf suggested was "knee-slappingly hilarious!"

But lacking a Yugo, Dan Neil has to kind of invent one. That's too bad. For him, for everybody.