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Media Tour Serves Up News In Multiple Helpings

Charlotte, NC (January 18th, 2010) – The 2010 NASCAR season will take the green flag this week when nearly 200 print and electronic journalists invade Charlotte for the 28th-Annual NASCAR Media Tour.

Originally started by and still hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Media Tour will provide reporters and broadcasters access to Sprint Cup race shops, team owners, team members and, of course, drivers. Through it all, there will be plenty of probing as the media tries to get the prime quote, quip, or comment that will define the upcoming season.

Here a few of the hot topics of discussion for the media throng in Charlotte this week –

What time is lunch?

Will the economy hurt the kind of swag the teams traditionally hand out to the ‘journalists?’

How long until the bus leaves?

What time did you leave the bar last night?

Did the breakfast give you gas?

How come the hotel rooms are priced so high?

Can’t they come up with any fresh news?

We have to get up when?

They aren’t going to serve this for breakfast again, are they?

Okay, you get the picture.

As a longtime motorsports media member participant of the Media Tour, we can tell you that racing reporters are among the most coddled – and cranky – bunch we’ve ever been associated with. Honestly, they are pretty lazy too. Most don’t like to work real hard and they’ll complain about anything.

In large part, the reason we have the CMS Media Tour is to make it EASY for the reporters to get pre-season stories. There’s nothing like having the elite of NASCAR dumped in your lap for a week. If you work the Media Tour right, you can have extra content for months. If not, it’s at least a week away from the sport’s desk back at the office.

And then there’s the free grub and swag. Few things draw the media like a free meal and this week’s Media Tour is an endless buffet of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. One year, there was so much food that we actually rated it as part of our coverage of the Media Tour awarding four forks for the choice meals all the way down to one fork for the usual cold and rubbery breakfast cuisine.

That same year, we graded the swag, the items traditionally given out by the teams and sponsors as a ‘thank you’ (yeah, right) to the reporters. Jackets, shirts and hats always got top marks while pocket stuffers like sponsor pens, key chains and the like graded low. At one Media Tour back in the middle 1990’s, Buckshot Jones’ Nationwide team gave out a diamond ring to a Media Tour participant – still the top piece of swag ever seen by this reporter.

It was about this time that we lost our taste for the Media Tour. Overcrowded and bloated with non-news items, it seemed like the Tour had grown into little more than a media food/swag bribe to get out the company party line. Every year, the Media Tour also got more scheduled with the stops morphing into sponsorship announcements and not news conferences. Visits to shops became orchestrated cattle calls and individual interviews with drivers and team owners were almost impossible.

Don’t get us wrong – the Media Tour still serves a purpose. That’s why you should keep an eye on the TV, dial up the radio, click on to your favorite web site, or slip a couple of quarters into the newspaper machine throughout the week to get the latest inside ‘scoop’ on what’s happening at the Media Tour this week. Just know the real news starts next month when the cars hit the track at Daytona – and whatever is reported on the Media Tour this week is being served with a full serving of Public Relations and a double scoop of mashed potatoes and gravy on the side.

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