Niche Magazine Aims to Put Black Consumers in Driver’s Seat
When Randi Payton started the magazine African Americans on Wheels in July 1995, he simply wanted to educate and inform black consumers about the automotive industry.
A funny thing happened to Payton’s magazine on its way to an impressive 600,000 circulation: The semi-glossy quarterly has become a conduit for the auto industry, informing Detroit, Europe and Asia about the aspirations of African Americans, who rarely see themselves as the focus of national marketing or sales efforts.
Since that beginning, the magazine has told industry figures about the intense interest among blacks in motor sports, chronicled the historic, largely unknown contributions of blacks to the automotive industry since its infancy and looked at how much auto makers have embraced diversity in the work force.
“There’s another culture,” Payton, the editor in chief, said in a recent interview from his office in Washington, D.C. “And because we are the only magazine targeting it, everybody is coming to us as an authority on this market.”
African Americans on Wheels’ authority extends nationally via a network of 32 black newspapers, mostly in major metropolitan markets--in Los Angeles, the magazine is distributed with the L.A. Watts Times. In addition, zoned editions of the Detroit Free Press and Washington Post targeting ZIP Codes that are 60% to 70% black carry the magazine.
Through these papers, Payton said, African Americans on Wheels reaches a total audited circulation of 600,000.
“It’s a good fit for us,” said Alan Miller of Chrysler Corp.’s diversity public relations office in Detroit. “We do advertise in it. It’s circulated in major urban areas where we have key markets.”
“It is one of the ways we reach out to the black community,” said Lonnie Ross, manager of marketing for special markets for Ford Division public affairs. “It is the only [specialty magazine] that targets the black community.”
When the magazine premiered in print, it also appeared on the Internet and had a “big e-mail response,” Payton said.
It has “a beautiful site with solid content,” says the Car Connection, an Internet magazine that bills itself as the World Wide Web’s automotive authority. African Americans on Wheels can be found online at https://www.automag.com.
What consumers get, whether on the Web or in print, is a magazine that offers a variety of automotive reviews, some quick hits, others long-term looks. There are also in-depth stories focusing on a range of subjects that has included blacks in motor sports, a recreational vehicle association for African Americans and whether auto manufacturers are serious about reaching African Americans.
Other features focus on people and what they do. The summer 1998 issue offered the story of Franck Metellus, an off-roader from Scottsdale, Ariz., who sees few other blacks on the back trails. He has a positive spin on his experience, saying he and his wife have never encountered racism while participating in Jeep Jamborees or other off-road pursuits.
Reviews tend to offer practical information. Her readers want to know whether a car is safe, says Executive Editor Jacqueline Mitchell, who notes: “We’re not as technical as other car magazines.”
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Payton was a reporter for the Washington Post when he conceived of the idea of African Americans on Wheels.
“I wanted to focus on one thing, and this was an area that was most lacking,” he says.
In wanting to educate African Americans about the industry, he hoped to show them how to make better-informed choices about buying or leasing vehicles. He also wanted, he said, to educate blacks about the industry’s corporate culture “so we can sit down . . . and have a proactive partnership.”
He began distributing the magazine in a few black papers, which allowed him entree into the world of test-driving vehicles and enabled him to attend press launches.
“I built a relationship with those companies that has helped me get the magazine off the ground,” he said.
In another effort to help establish the magazine, Payton instituted the annual Golden Wheel Awards, which honor professionals and companies that help African Americans succeed in the automotive business.
For 1998, a panel of automotive journalists chose the Volkswagen Passat as car of the year, citing its “exceptional value, utility and performance for urban motorists.” Ford was named winner of the C.R. Patterson Award for company of the year. Ford President Jacques Nasser accepted the award from Kathleen Patterson of Dayton, Ohio, a member of a pioneering black auto-making family, in a presentation that carried with it some unintended irony.
In a subsequent letter to the magazine, the 89-year-old Patterson acknowledged that presenting the award was a crowning moment in her life. Her family started building cars at the turn of the century. But in 1935, unable to compete with Henry Ford, she said in her letter, the company, Patterson-Greenfield Motor Car Co., quit making cars and turned its attention to buses, delivery trucks and moving vans.
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That business has fallen by the wayside, but its efforts to reach the black community remain alive in the aims of African Americans on Wheels.
Executive Editor Mitchell, who is based in Detroit, says she sees the magazine as a bridge between the industry and the black community.
The magazine also tries to get “the industry to look at what they do and don’t do with minorities.”
Mitchell believes it is important for the industry to look beyond targeting only African Americans. “More attention must be given to Hispanics and to women,” she said. Immigrants are also part of the mix, she notes.
White males, who run the business, often tend not to listen, she says.
“We don’t all watch the same shows or read the same magazines,” said Mitchell, making the point that there is no dominant, monolithic culture.
The car is also a status symbol among members of the African American community, she says, adding that many people will stint on other things to have a decent set of wheels.
“Some [companies] have picked up on that and some haven’t” she said. The magazine believes in promoting diversity and tries to do so in a positive way, she said, noting: “We want to set an example.”
As part of that example, the current fall issue focuses on diversity, its cover asking: “Are Car Makers Serious About Reaching African Americans?” In addition to a story addressing manufacturers’ efforts in that area, the magazine also polled companies about the numbers of blacks and Latinos they employ. The results, showing the responses, or lack of same, are there for all to read.
The survey shows that the Big Three’s employment of blacks and Latinos rose slightly between 1992 and 1997.
At Ford, for example, the percentage of blacks and Latinos stood at 16.9% and 2%, respectively, in 1992. Five years later, those numbers had risen to 17.3% and 2.5%. Chrysler and General Motors Corp. showed similar modest gains during the five-year period surveyed, with Chrysler reporting that 24.5% of its work force was black and GM 17.8% by 1997.
American Honda Motor Co., which had no figures available for 1992, reported total minority employment of 29.4% in 1997 but did not provide a breakdown by race or ethnicity. At Toyota, the manufacturing operation had 31% minority employment, while the sales arm reported 33%. At Nissan, the figure was 28%.
Hyundai, Isuzu, Jaguar, Mazda, Porsche, Subaru, Volkswagon and Volvo did not respond to the survey, the magazine said.
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African Americans on Wheels is looking at those “who are doing things,” Mitchell said, and “not talking about the laggards.”
The result, she said, is the hope that such information will encourage companies to take action.
The magazine “has got to have a broad perspective,” Payton said.
As a result, it targets more than the industry. Reaching readers is important too.
Anna Jackson of Somerville, N.J., accompanied her husband, Joseph Washington, first vice president of the National African American Recreational Vehicles Assn., and 1,000 other black RVers at their third annual rally in Mansfield, Ohio, last week.
“The magazine has helped us a lot” in attracting members, she said.
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Geoff Kelly is an editor on The Times’ national staff.
