Death to the Media Camp – Opinion

The traditional idea of attending a media camp for product debuts needs to end, and here's why it'd be better for both us and, more importantly, the consumer, if that happened.


Traveling to some far-flung location to ride an exotic, yet to be released bike sounds like a pretty decent way to spend a few days, doesn't it? In fact, it probably describes the sort of getaway that a lot of chained down mountain bikers might dream about or spend a paycheck or three in order to do themselves. And I'm not going to lie and tell you that it's a horrible thing to do—we're not exactly heading to Guantanamo Bay, no matter how early they make us get up for the brain washi...er, presentation. The thing is, though, is that it's a completely outdated way to release a new product these days, and the whole idea of a press camp needs to go away.

Here's how these media junkets usually play out. One of us from Pinkbike, along with media from other websites and magazines, flies somewhere to see the new product, often far enough away to allow the time zones to really f*ck up any chance of not being a zombie on the other end. That's a bit of an issue sometimes as we usually only have two days, or three at most, to ride the new bike or use whatever it is that we're there to see. Not two full days, mind you, but two rides that happen when your brain is telling you that you should be fast asleep instead of trying to ride quickly. That scenario tells you a lot less about a bike than you might expect, to be honest. And then there's the whole embargo thing where, by attending the camp, we're essentially agreeing only to make the information and photos public when the hosting company says it's okay to do so. That's a whole other ball of wax.

So we end up in a foreign country, riding a foreign bike on foreign trails. Blind. Oh, and we're probably all trying to go too fast because that's what dudes do when they get together in packs—we're real idiots like that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so down with all of the above, and I know that I'm lucky to be able to do a lot of exactly that over the last eight or nine years and can't begin to explain how grateful I am to be able to call this whole Pinkbike gig my job. I've had some great times all around the world, made a few friends, lost a few friends, and earned a handful good stories. But over that time I've also learned that we, the media, are probably doing you, the reader, a disservice by attending these media camps. Flying to a hot locale for two days to skid around on some decent trails isn't a shitty thing to be doing, of course, but me using the debut of a new bike and needing to tell you all about it as a reason to do that is, well, kinda shitty.

It's not for the reasons you might suspect, however.

If a multi-million dollar company has an important new bike they're debuting, they'll fly five, ten, maybe even twenty, media types halfway around the world to try it for just two or three days. I'll let you do the math on those plane tickets, and don't forget to factor in other expenses such as a hotel that's way too nice for a bunch of dirty mountain bikers who might otherwise be collecting cans for money if this wasn't their job, a lot of tasty food, and enough booze to knock Andre The Giant flat onto his ass for a few days.

Us cycling media, for lack of a better description, sounds a bit spoiled, don't we? I can't be clear enough with the following point, though: not once during the countless media camps I've attended have I been pressured, or seen any peers of mine be pressured, to write something positive because of how we're looked after. But—yes, there's a but—I can see how someone might be less likely to shit on a company's wares if it were truly deserved. There's a bigger problem, though, because the two rides, or maybe three if we're lucky, don't really give any of us enough time with the product to put much weight behind criticisms that we might have. So yeah, there might be some open-ended concerns that we voice, but they have to be open-ended because a ride or two doesn't justify calling a new bike a piece of junk when it could simply be down to a setup issue, unfamiliar trails that you don't gel with, or that zombie-mode jetlag that I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure about you, but I don't ride well after being awake for thirty hours.

The articles that come from these camps—yes, including the ones you've read here on Pinkbike—are often passed off as comprehensive reviews of sorts, largely because every media outlet wants to be the first one with the most detailed, most authoritative "one-ride review" of the shiny new piece of gear, even if it's usually (and hopefully) clearly titled as a 'First Ride' article.

People are then reading these press camp articles and basing how they're going to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on what the media is saying… just think about that for a minute. So you're studying these first-ride articles that are sometimes passed off as reviews and often based on a mere two or three days of riding, usually on very unfamiliar terrain and sometimes written by a media type who, shall we say, doesn't exactly ride at a level high enough to truly evaluate much of anything. And some people are basing their buying decisions, an event that might only happen once every four or five years, on exactly the above. See the issue?

Yeah, I know media camp coverage of new bikes is about as a first world as a first world problem can get, but it's still always irked me, even while I'm at the very camps that I'm slagging. I know what you're thinking: ''Mike, why don't you just refuse to go?'' Well, I've been doing a lot of that over the last year or two, and I think it's been working out pretty well. Instead, I've been asking a lot of brands just to send me the new bike or component so that I can ride it for longer and on terrain that I'm familiar with, an approach that I believe creates a more sincere, knowledgeable article for you guys.

I'm certainly not alone in thinking this way—other media outlets are doing the same thing—and companies like Cannondale, Trek, Fox, SRAM, and Santa Cruz, among others, are choosing to either ship us their new product or, in some cases, actually spend a few days riding our home trails with us. If that sounds like VIP service, it shouldn't; it's how it should always be done.

So here's hoping that the whole concept of the media camp, press launch, or whatever you want to call it, dies a quick death. In the meantime, you'll still see the odd press camp story here on Pinkbike, but expect fewer and fewer of them to pop up on Pinkbike (and hopefully elsewhere) in the future.