Larry Lawrence | November 7, 2021
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the April 2, 2008 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
The Competition: Motor Cycle Weekly takes on Cycle News
From 1969 to 1975, Motor Cycle Weekly gave the more established Cycle News a run for its money as this country’s weekly journal of motorcycle racing. And during that time, Motor Cycle Weekly changed the way racing was covered.
Where the focus before was almost exclusively domestic racing, Motor Cycle Weekly gave American readers much more detailed international racing coverage—in addition to the U.S. championships. Under-capitalized, the paper hit the wall in 1975 after Trippe/Cox went through a tough spell in its racing promotions business. Even though the paper didn’t survive, it ultimately benefited American readers, with Cycle News dramatically stepping up its product to meet the challenge it faced during the era of the early-to-mid 1970s.
Motor Cycle Weekly was the brainchild of Bruce Cox, who along with fellow Brit Gavin Trippe founded the groundbreaking promotional group Trippe/Cox. Already a publishing veteran after having worked as a newspaper and magazine writer since he was 16, Cox came to America in during a radical time.
“In 1967, I had a bit of money to spare and decided to spend the winter in California,” Cox remembered. “I’d been reading Cycle World from the USA, listening to the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix, heard about free love and mind-expanding substances in Haight Ashbury so it seemed like the place to be. I wanted to get out there in the sunshine, riding across the desert, surfing in the ocean and doing whatever else was on offer.
“I came out with and up-and-coming racer by the name of Rod Gould. He had met Joe Parkhurst of Cycle World at the Isle of Man TT, and, typically, Joe—who was one of the most generous and nicest people I’ve ever met—had told him to stop by the office if we did make the trip. We delivered [rented] a car cross-country from New York and got into Long Beach three days later. Next morning, we were at the Cycle World office…taking care to arrive just before lunchtime. By the end of lunch, I had a job as a Cycle World journalist for the winter and Rod had been fixed up as a mechanic with a local Honda dealer. It was a trip that changed both our lives.”
While on his trip, Cox hatched the idea of trying to start a new weekly motorcycle newspaper in the U.S. In England, he persuaded Gavin Trippe (who was at the time motocross beat writer for the British weekly Motorcycle News) and another young journalist Bob Berry (who later ended up as editor of Motorcycle News and then the owner of Classic Racer and Classic Motorcycle Mechanics magazines) to come back with him and give it a go.
In 1969 the talented trio traveled back to America and launched Motor Cycle Weekly—starting with less than $10,000 from Trippe and Cox’ own savings, as well as investment by Gould and Joe Ward. The paper, with its trademark orange and black masthead, made an immediate impact. With flat track the king of motorcycle racing at the time, Motor Cycle Weekly broke the mold by providing a great deal more focus on the rapidly growing segment of road racing.
“The industry advertising and PR guys were very supportive right from the start,” Cox recalls. “It was as if they had been waiting for us to come along. And I’d met lots of them during the previous winter with Cycle World. So, it all came together amazingly quickly, in fact.
“One reason we got noticed quickly, I think was that we kicked off by giving away thousands of pre-launch sample newspapers at Daytona—and there on track was Rod Gould—running right up front on a pair of Yamahas with, “Team Motorcycle Weekly” on the fairing. The whole industry was there and those who didn’t know about us by the start of Bike Week certainly did by the end of it.”
Either wittingly or unwittingly the new paper made the domestic American championships seem all that more important by association with international coverage.
“I think with Motor Cycle Weekly, Gavin and Bruce knew a lot of the international racers and sort of brought that closer to home,” said Don Emde, who had sponsorship from the paper on his Daytona 200-winning Yamaha in 1972. “Instead of focusing on domestic racing they really mixed in coverage of the international events and made American riders feel like they were a part of a larger global racing scene, if you will.
“And, of course, the behind-the-scenes things they did to truly make American riders part of the whole international racing community, with their involvement with the Match Races, the Hang 10 Motocross Grand Prix and the Wide World of Sports Superbikers. They were really influential in getting Americans to realize that there was a bigger world out there and more opportunity for them outside of our domestic racing series.”
Motor Cycle Weekly also brought together a talented staff.
“We stole some of the best contributors from Cycle News,” Gavin Trippe laughs.
“Ralph Springer, whose father was Wilson Springer, automotive editor of the L.A. Herald Examiner, was the first general news editor. He’d grown up in the world of journalism. Ralph was succeeded by John Weed, one of the few American racers to contest the Isle of Man TT in its genuine World Championship period. Tom Beesley, who succeeded John as editor, had already been with us for some years—first, as our Texas correspondent and then as a photographer/journalist.
“We also commissioned features from freelancers and actually employed full-time two of the finest feature writers in motorcycle and motoring journalism of those days—Joe Scalzo and Sam Moses. They are still well known and respected worldwide as magazine feature writers and book authors.”
The office, while businesslike, also reflected the laid-back atmosphere of 1970s California. It sat on the end of a runway at John Wayne Airport, and one afternoon Evel Knievel unexpectedly showed up to ask Gavin to come to Las Vegas with him.
“I got a new plane,” Knievel bragged to Gavin.
“But you don’t fly,” Gavin said.
“I got a new pilot, too,” Evel came back.
With that, they were off to a crazy 12 hours in Vegas. While editorially Motor Cycle Weekly set new standards, financially it was behind the eight ball, never able to penetrate the market as deeply as Cycle News had from the start—despite the best efforts of Dick Mann’s ex-wife Susie.
“Susie was the advertising manager for most of MCW’s existence,” Cox said. “I could have done with three like her but, still being a journalist at heart, I made what I now realize was the mistake of having far more writers on staff than commercial people. But at least that meant we had an interesting paper! However, it was Susie’s efforts that kept our heads above water.”
In the final period of Motor Cycle Weekly’s run, Trippe began going from print shop to print shop trying to string out credit as much as he could. In the final months, Trippe, a learning pilot, flew edit boards to printers as far away as Bakersfield as progressively more printers in the L.A. area refused to extend credit. In the end, they ran out of options.
“Our decision wasn’t the result of much thought and anguish,” Cox remembered. “I remember sitting in the office one Monday night. The artwork was ready to go and only Gavin and I were left in the office. We were wondering where to find the money to pay the printer the next day and we just kind of looked at one another, said something to the effect of ‘Well, that’s that then,’ left the artwork on the desk, walked out the door and drove down to Newport Beach for a couple of beers.
“Telling the staff the next day was tough but, thankfully, another publisher did a deal with us for the title and carried it on. So, the editorial and advertising staff were only ‘out of work’ for a matter of a few days. Unfortunately, the new publisher went belly up a few months later but ‘our guys’ all moved quickly on to good jobs elsewhere in any case. So, I guess that having MCW on their résumé didn’t do them any harm.”
While Motor Cycle Weekly didn’t survive, its legacy survives in how it shaped the way motorcycle racing is covered in the American motorcycle media today. CN
