GeorgeM

Not much 928 love in the Pano summary article or pics, but I got a mention. The author was walking around the parking garage prep area and we had a brief chat.

Bertrand Daoust

Right George.

Not much on the 928 in this article.

Even though they picked up your car as the "Judges Award", they didn't even put a pic of it.

Also, they choose to make an article on a 968 (from the Parade also).
Even this 968 is quite nice - I had the chance to take a good look at it Sunday evening and Monday (nice owner BTW) - your 928 George is in better shape for sure. Way in front.

Well...

Manny Alban

Remember, Pano has to appeal to all 119K members (117K who did not go to Parade). In my opinion, that is one heck of a challenge with event coverage. Feature stories about an owner and their car is much easier and certainly more interesting. Covering an event that spanned seven days with 25+ events is almost impossible.

Back in the day (I can't believe I'm saying that at 50) before there was the internet, if it didn't appear in Pano or Excellence, you didn't have any other avenue. Now with social media, we get to see lots of photos and read stories about events-sometimes as they happen.

Once a year I walk up to the Preservation Overall award and check on my nameplate. I think my car got a photo in that year's Parade issue. 4 years later, I got a photo of my 964 racecar...but that's because my ABS relay went up and I was locking up the brakes while autocrossing. Smoking tires is much more exciting to photograph than a car on display on a golf course

dr bob

Manny -- I moved to central Oregon from SoCal. In the couple years here, I've seen several 928's locally. Transferred to the local HDR chapter and heard from membership that we now have -two- 928 owners here as members. Limit your coverage of the [pick your orphan models], and you'll actively limit your audience to those 119k non-[pick your orphan models] owners.

We enjoyed interfacing with Pete. He was a pleasure to deal with, and shared our appreciation for the 928 and all the other Porsche models. Keep up the good work!

jcorenman

It's a two-way street. It's true that more coverage draws in more members for that model, on the other hand when a half-dozen cars show up for an event (out of 1000+) it is hard to justify coverage. There's only one side of that equation that we con control directly, the showing up part.

PCA Parade 2017 is in Spokane. It is also the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the 928. (Geneva in March 1977 is as close as I can get, anyone have the date??). And yes, it is west if the Mississippi. Get over it. Be there.

I'll just leave this here... This was PCA / Pacific Northwest Region's recent show at Carillion Point in Kirkland (near Seattle). We're on the radar.

GeorgeM

[QUOTE=Manny Alban;13640497]Remember, Pano has to appeal to all 119K members (117K who did not go to Parade). In my opinion, that is one heck of a challenge with event coverage. Feature stories about an owner and their car is much easier and certainly more interesting. Covering an event that spanned seven days with 25+ events is almost impossible. QUOTE]

Other media sources notwithstanding, I would submit that only 20 of 180+ pages (6 of which were competitive event results) of coverage for the biggest PCA event of the year is on the low side. There's plenty of space and time for other content the rest of the year.

I remember reading all the letters to the editor when Pano's format changed and Pete Stout took the helm. There were definitely 2 sides to the argument. Some folks wanted to see more club related and regional level stuff, others couldn't care less about that. One guy opined that stories of local events were just so region officers could see their names in print and he just wanted the car articles. I thought to myself that he must be one of the non-active members that only joined to get the magazine... not that there's anything wrong with that.

I had a chat with Pete about this at a previous Parade. He said that they'd consider printing region articles, but they had to be professionally written and the photos had to be of equal quality. Whether he meant to imply it or not, I walked away from that conversation with the impression that the bar had been raised so high that most regions would not be able to meet it.

Personally, I like seeing stories about regional events. The "From the Regions" section is just about the only place we see that nowadays and, if I remember correctly, those submissions are limited to 300 words. I already get Excellence (and European Car, Hemmings S&E and Christophorus), I don't need another one of those magazines.

Adk46

The accessibility issue George refers to is interesting. Two of the participants of the recent 928 gathering in Virginia (Frenzy) are writing articles for the local PCA chapter newsletter (me) and for an online magazine (Shawn). The "it's about the people" tagline was manifest in spades at this event; the complexity of the 928 requires it, in fact. That's the story.

Should we try for an article in Pano? I think our non-professional prose might be within reach if turned over to a good editor. We probably have a couple photos that most readers would judge good enough. But the very high quality of Pano remains daunting! An after-the-fact ad hoc attempt seems a long shot.

Perhaps Pano could budget for a 2-page reader-submitted story each month. Very high quality in that context, but within reach of mere mortals. "From our members..."

GeorgeM

Great idea, Curt. I think the 20th anniversary of Frenzy coinciding with the 40th Transaxle piece is worthy of the attempt.

Great pic, Jim.... and only one of them is red... wow!