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Starting Line: Moving Forward with Lessons Learned in 2020

Its early January as I write this, and the pages of the calendar have finally flipped on 2020. Good riddance, in my opinion. Id imagine a lot of folks reading this feel similarly. 2020 was an unprecedented year for all of us personally, as well as professionally for your humble author and my colleagues at MotorTrend Group. Though its very tempting to leave 2020 in the rearview mirror where it belongs, I believe there are things to learn amid the difficult times. As a staff, we have had to learn to make a lot of online content on very few resources. Cost-saving measures, as well as company restrictions on travel, meant we turned to our archives or hyperfocused on local assets for fodder to write about. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, either. For one, we have a long history of online articles, going back to the mid 90s when we first started publishing print articles online, and much of that, especially the basic tech articles , are timeless. It became efficient to reformat an old print/web article to our current web template that is more friendly to search engines. In addition, we have film archives going back to 1948, the first year HOT ROD was published. The combined film archives of the Petersen Publishing company are an absolute treasure trove of automotive history going back to 1948. Nearly every car ever made since then, and most major (and many local) car shows, drag races, land speed races, and road racing events were covered by the Petersen photo team. Its definitely an underutilized resource. For example, while researching the history of the Daytona 500 prior to 2020s race, I discovered hundreds of scans of black and white film shot by Ray Brock and Wally Parks from the first running of the Daytona 500 in 1959 . Several rolls of film shot by Ray were taken from the Goodyear blimp Enterprise, which was an unexpected treat. (See link below.) Related: Exclusive Pictures of the First Daytona 500 from the Goodyear Blimp Other havoc that 2020 wrought was the cancellation of our staple events, Power Tour and Drag Week . Both are events we look forward to every year, not just because they are a week out of the office, but because they are goldmines for editorial content and, as a result, significant drivers of web traffic. Erring on the side of caution, the decision was made to postpone both events to 2021, and to the best of my knowledge, plans are moving forward to make both happen this year. I can make no promises , however, since many of the factors that go into making those decisions are out of our hands. With vaccines being rolled out across the country, though, Im feeling optimistic. Not everything about 2020 was doom and gloom, however. We have been making great strides online with increased web traffic and continued development of our streaming video service, the MotorTrend App ( sign up for a free trial today, btw ). On a personal note, Ive had a more time to work on my personal projects. I am getting closer to having Truck Norris, my 1967 C10, back up and running and have been continuing work on Project Jake, the 1993 GMC C1500 the former Cal Trans truck. I had a chance to take a very cathartic road trip to the Bay Area back in September, and I bought a motorcycle at the end of August, rekindling a passion Ive had for more than two decades but have been unable to afford until this year . Im not one to make resolutions, and this year would seem to be an especially problematic year to do so , anyway. Instead, I have a few goals. One is to learn a new skill. Im not sure what that will be, but Ill take some time to consider things I wish I could do, pick one, and see how proficient I can become at it. A second goal is to read more. Well, to listen more would be most accurate, because I prefer audiobooks because theyre portable and therefore more accessible. According to my Audible account, I listened to 2,000 hours of audiobooks in 2020. Considering that there are 8,760 hours in a year, that translates to an average of 5.5 hours a day. That activity no doubt helped keep me sane throughout the year! It was mostly fiction books that I listened to, and Im partial to the subject matter of Tom Clancy and Lee Child, but this year, Id like to work in some historical nonfiction. I think we can learn a lot from both the recent and not-so-recent past. Professionally, we will continue to evolve the website and your favorite print magazine to the constantly changing media landscape. In our April issue , youll notice several QR codes dropped in various articles. QR codes arent new technology, but the apps that read them are more accessible now . I ts a way to better link our online work to the print magazine, and we hope to be able to add video, among other things, to the magazine with this technology. To our readers, my best wishes for 2021. Thanks for being along for the journey. Photos by John McGann, editor-in-chief of HOT ROD magazine. The post Starting Line: Moving Forward with Lessons Learned in 2020 appeared first on Hot Rod Network .

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