Geezer with a Grudge: The End of . . . ?

Feb 21, 2020

The End of . . . ?

With this sudden and unexpected (by the subscribers I know) announcement, Motorcycle Consumer News produced it's last issue in January of 2020. MCN has been around in its reader-sponsored format since 1982, So, 38 years of hard-hitting, unbiased reporting on an industry that has done pretty much everything possible to create a simpering, press-release duplicating news media; from print to YouTube drivel.

I have to believe the industry and rider participation is shriveling toward becoming ancient history. In the US, we're down to two actual motorcycling magazines, Cycle World and Motorcyclist, and one those two has made a hard bet on eBikes over motorcycles with Cycle Volta. The residue of motorcycle "journalism" is a bunch of biker rags that are more about biker broad pictures and chrome crap than motorcycles and motorcycling.

MCN's Facebook page simply says “MCN is no more. Thanks for riding with us for the last 50 years! Visit MCNews.com for more info. Keep the shiny side up.“ All you will find at MCNews.com is the statement at the top of this blog entry. Not only is the magazine dead, but the MCN's publication history is gone. That's pretty brutal.

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The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.