Even a casual reader will note the sneering tone I use when referring to the "motorcycle press", that is, the magazines that cater to motorcycle riders. There are a number of reasons for this, most of which have to do with the difference between my experiences as a rider and the things I read about in magazines.
First and foremost, it is important to remember who the Motorcycle press serves. I'll give you a hint: Unless your name is Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha or Harley Davidson, it's not you. You, the reader, the rider and the buyer of motorcycles and accessories, may be the target audience, but you are not, in any sense, the customer, the person being served.
Motorcycle magazines do not exist for their purported purpose, that is, to inform riders about motorcycles and motorcycling (the exception here may be the American Motorcyclist, the official organ of the AMA, which serves its members.) Motorcycle magazines are advertising, plain and simple. Writers and editors of motorcycle magazines know this, which is why finding a feature story about a bike or an accessory that is no longer in production is more difficult than finding an honest politician at election time. Yes, I know some magazines feature an occasional article on old bikes, but it's usually buried in the back. Editors of motorcycle magazines know better than to bite the hand that feeds them (and in any case, they depend on the good will of the manufacturers and dealers to keep them supplied with bikes to ride and review, as well as advertising dollars to keep them in the black) so you will rarely see a negative article on any production bike or accessory. This factor alone makes any of their recommendations or advice utterly worthless to a consumer.
The editorial makeup of motorcycle magazines also bothers me. Check out any of the current bike rags and you'll see that the writers are overwhelmingly sport-bikers (obviously I'm not counting the Harley magazines, which practice their own tiresome "brand" of chauvinism.) Nowadays, when cruisers have their own magazines, this isn't such an issue, but back in the early 80's, when I began reading motorcycle mags, the anti-cruiser/pro-sportbike bias of every motorcycle magazine writer was glaring, repetitive and tiresome. Time after time, I would read a review of such bikes as the Honda customs, the Yamaha Maxims or the Kawasaki Spectres, only to have the writers complaining over and over again about the stepped seats, buckhorn handlebars and small fuel tanks.
What made this obvious prejudice almost comical was the fact that it was exactly this class of motorcycle, the "customs", that were, at that time, flying out of the dealerships in record numbers. Sometimes the writers would even comment on this, writing disdainfully about the foolish customers and their illogical buying practices and puzzling over the reasons that buyers were ignoring the bikes they endorsed. Meanwhile, the bikes that the writers raved, drooled, practically masturbated over (such as the Yamaha 550 Vision) collected dust on the showroom floors. If this only happened once, it would be excusable, but time and time again the writers and reviewers proved that they had a completely different taste in motorcycles than their readers and (most importantly) the buyers. Bikes that the motorcycle press hated, like the Honda 750 Shadow, sold like hotcakes, and the bikes they lauded to the heavens, like the Honda Sabre, were quietly and unceremoniously dropped from the lineup when they failed to sell. Occasionally the writers would rant and rave at the ignorant buying public in an effort to try and boost the sales of their favorites, but to no avail. And since the "ignorant buying public" in this case was also their readership, the condescending and snobby approach towards the very people they were marketing to was absolutely inexcusable.
Now that sport bikers and cruisers have their own magazines, this isn't quite so much of a problem, but the other one still persists: The almost universal refusal to serve as anything other than a glorified catalog for motorcycle manufacturers and aftermarket suppliers. Even car magazines have occasional articles on "quick fixes" and how to "do it yourself" but motorcycle magazines usually only show the latest accessories on the market.
If motorcycle magazines were actually serving real riders (as opposed to shoppers), they would feature articles on subjects like: how to restore older bikes; how to buy a used bike; how to modify your older bike by yourself (not just a catalog for bolt-on parts); how to get more life and more performance out of older bikes; articles on bikes that have been out of production for years, etc. After all, there are a huge number of older Japanese bikes out there, you would think that the motorcycle press would realize that and write articles that would cater to that market (a market which is not served by any other magazine or periodical, to my knowledge.) This is not the case, though. Instead, motorcycle magazines tend to fall into one of three categories: The Harley mags, the "classic" bike mags (apparently a bike has to be British, German or Italian to be "classic") and the "generic" motorcycle mags, which, as I said, feature only the latest bikes and accessories and resemble catalogs more than they resemble magazines.
Which brings us here, to the internet. Since I'm not selling anything, I have no incentive to market products, and I can turn this page into a "labor of love" on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I have linked to other UJM fanatics and other motorcycle sites because I believe that there really IS a demand for articles and information on older bikes.
You know, the Harley guys love to chide Japanese bike riders about how their bikes are "scrap" or "worthless" because they have such low resale value (although anybody who says that has obviously never shopped for a used V-Max!) but I wonder how much of the respomsibility for the low resale value of Japanese motorcycles can be laid at the foot of the motorcycle press, who act like once bike is out of production, it might as well have never existed for all the attention they pay to it.
I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has a similar problem with the motorcycle press. As I said, this phenomenon is true in other forms of "automotive journalism", but I think it's more pronounced in the Motorcycle world. After all, most of the car/truck mags that I see do have occasional articles on "buying used" or "cheap backyard fixes".
Anyway, that's my rant about the "motorcycle press". You may now continue with your regular reading.