Information on subscription refunds for Championship Racing Magazine

[indyracer56]

If anyone on here is a subscriber to Championship Racing Magazine, you should know that they have ceased publication.

I found this information posted on another forum in case you need to contact them for a refund.

It's really too bad they went away, they were doing some very nice coverage of both Cart and the IRL.

Contact Info:

Mr. Todd Meissner
G Press Printing
(Parent Company of Championship Racing Magazine)
N25w23050 Paul Rd
Pewaukee, WI 53072

Phone 262-513-3080
Fax 262-513-3089

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: indyracer56 ]

[Mackie]

Didn't they once decide to curtail any IRL coverage, and suffer the loss of some of their subscribers?

[indyracer56]

Yes they did, and I think that was a big mistake.

When the "split" first happened, they covered both equally, but in what I believe was more of a budgetary move, they cut back to only covering Cart.

When they went out of business the first time (!) at the end of 2000, the new owner brought the magazine back with both IRL and Cart coverage, and they did a real nice job.

Just not enough of a market out there to support the magazine I guess.

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: indyracer56 ]

[Racewriter]

Yes. Championship Racing magazine (also called Indy Car, and something else) made the decision in '99 or so to kill all their IRL coverage. My opinion, from speaking to their editor on the telephone, was that it was not necessarily a budget-cutting move, as much as an editorial one. They died soon after. They revived early in 2000 (I think, I never saw a copy of the renewed version), with only CART coverage. Then, they added a little IRL stuff, but died again. RACER magazine's Champ Car mag also died last year, quickly.

RACER itself may be in budget-cutting mode. They closed their Charlotte office at the first of the year, and cut their commentary feature from Speedvision.Com (which they supplied material to). They were bought out last year by Haymarket Publishing, which also owns Classic & Sports Car, Motor Sport, and Vintage Motorsport.

Bottom line - newsstand coverage of open wheel racing is pretty poor right now...

[GlennH]

Originally posted by Racewriter:
<STRONG>
Bottom line - newsstand coverage of open wheel racing is pretty poor right now...</STRONG>

This isn't entirely surprising to me. I would think that it's quite a challenge to produce something on a timely basis that can compete to the majority of "us" here when you have things like TrackForum and TrackSideLive available.

[Parsons W. Newbury]

Originally posted by Racewriter:
<STRONG>...RACER itself may be in budget-cutting mode...They were bought out last year by Haymarket Publishing, which also owns Classic & Sports Car, Motor Sport, and Vintage Motorsport....</STRONG>

One note on Haymarket (which also owns F1 Racing magazine) - they don't own Vintage Motorsport but they do the physical production of it. The cutting of the commentary on the Speevision.com site was due to Fox not wanting to continue the web site in anything like it's previous/current form - look for more changes there soon as the "Speedchannel" changeover continues.

[Racewriter]

Originally posted by GlennH:
<STRONG>

This isn't entirely surprising to me. I would think that it's quite a challenge to produce something on a timely basis that can compete to the majority of "us" here when you have things like TrackForum and TrackSideLive available.</STRONG>

Actually, that's one of the toughest things about the racing magazine business right now, Glenn. Look back about 15 years, in Stock Car Racing, or any number of other mags. Race reports dominated the editorial content. Now, race reports are nearly obsolete 24 hours after the checkered flag.

The thing that separates successful racing magazines from also-rans right now is their personality profiles, tech, and analysis. Pretty good race reports are had for free on the Net nowadays, and opinion columns are a dime a dozen - some of 'em are decent, too.

The difference is in the truly resourceful writers. We're not telling "the story" so much anymore as the "story behind the story" or even "the story behind the story behind the story." One reason On Track failed was that it was too reliant on race reports and commentary, IMO.

There is a market for a truly well-done, insightful magazine devoted to open wheel racing. But, I think we're a year or so away from seeing it...

[Jacoby]

Originally posted by Mackie:
<STRONG>Didn't they once decide to curtail any IRL coverage, and suffer the loss of some of their subscribers?</STRONG>

When all of that was occurring, I was spending a lot of time on 7thgear, reading the CART forum. Seems as if the hardcore cartisans were outraged that the magazine was giving an coverage to the IRL at all, especially if it was positive. I remember a specific thread in which many posters had said they had been writing letters to the magazine telling them so. When the magazine ceased covering the IRL, those guys were ecstatic, in thinking their letter writing campaign had been successful. They were thrilled that apparently the magazine had "listened to their readers."

But at the same time, I think I recall that the editor of the magazine said they were dropping coverage of the IRL because their sponsors wanted them to. Not sure about that, but my memory says so. A result of more negative letters?

Some people just don't get it that ANY negative letter-writing campaign will hurt the sport of open wheel racing. In that respect, there are no boundaries; CART and IRL fall into the same category.