i hope i'm reading this wrong, but halfway down tony dodgins' article on "toughening up safety", the following sentence appears:

"Ferrari believes Massa lost consciousness almost immediately (see MPH column in Thursday's Autosport magazine)..."

excuse me? we're paying for premium access to paywalled content and now you're not even prepared to give the full story? instead you insist:

- we still quietly and wait for four days.
- then find time for a trip to the newsagents to pick up a copy of a magazine we don't want

please tell me i've missed something?

spc

The MPH column usually finds its way on to Autosport.com, albeit a few days after it has appeared in the magazine. Doesn't it?

isn't it about a week late? or if you prefer, about 11 days from the point it was suggested i try and read it.

how ever long it takes, it'll likely be irrelevant information by then. we know from previously advertising with the magazine, that lockdown day for content inclusion is today, so presumably MPH is already written, likely edited and technically "available". it sounds like tony knows what will be in the column at the very least. i see no reason why i can't read the column today?

the autosport.com journal was unbundled from the weekly "thursday" publishing cycle earlier this year, so why still try and hold subscribers to that old schedule?

spc

It's clearly a way of trying to get online subscribers to trundle down to the newsagents and pick up a copy for a change. But that said, do you expect there to be a lot more information than to what has been eluded to at the moment? i.e. ""Ferrari believes Massa lost consciousness almost immediately?"

There's not a lot else they can write about it is there surely? Massa came out of turn three, got twalloped by a spring, went unconscious, hit the tyre wall. There's only one added extra piece in the event, which unless they can string out for a whole page, probably isn't going to form the whole basis for this week's MPH feature?

not really, i just think it shows a huge lack of joined up thinking on the part of autosport. not only is it sending mixed messages (get the news fastest online, but also why not get the other news down the newsagents), but it's kind of insulting to people who pay for the online subscription.

"pay us money and you get all this stuff... erm, except that's not enough money for all the stuff. in fact no amount of money, will get you all the information first."

i don't mind paying more, i just don't want to have to own silly paper things that then need to be put in the correct recycling bin every week. why not just have everything in pdf format? it's searchable, it's instant, it's link-able and we can copy / paste quotes where appropriate.

magazines are just silly.

spc

Just do what I do, pick up a copy on the newstand, read what you need to (doesn't take less than 15 minutes these days) and put it back on the shelf.

that would work, but it's still 4 days late, and not searchable in future.

You are missing something.
It's the bit where Michael Winner says..

"Relax dear...it's only a commercial"

Sorry Christine..I just had to chuck some flippant reference in there to magazine marketing strategy.

I does kind of suck though.
I wish Haymarket would bump up Mark's pay packet to include "real time" articles here.

Jp

May work out fine in the UK, but the Autosport magazine isn't at every newsstand - let alone in the same week - outside the UK.
Not the fisrt time an author on this site seems to forget that he writes for a world audience.