I PUT MY FOOT IN MY MOUTH

I'm man enough to speak my piece when something upsets me and I'm man enough to admit when I made a mistake.

There are times when all of us hear something second hand and react to it without checking our facts thoroughly. This past weekend I heard that Richard Lentinello of HEMMING's CLASSIC CARS had written an editorial about several other car magazines going out of business and contrasted that with his magazine's success. I don't get HEMMING's CLASSIC CARS so I had not read the piece and I reacted to what I had been told about it.

After reading the piece today, after asking Richard to send it to me, I found that he--like myself--was sad to see some long-standing publications bite the dust and was sympathetic to the folks (friends of both of us) who worked for those magazines. His editorial was "kinder and gentler" than I understood it to be and I truly apologize for characterizing his intent in writing it as "self-serving."

I did tell Richard that there are magazines other than his that are also doing well. Years ago, when I was publisher of Old Cars Weekly, I tried very hard to increase readership and rarely did. Therefore, I was a bit jealous when I read OCW's official circulation figures back in October and saw that editor Angelo Van Bogart has the nose pointing up. That's an impressive feat in today's challenging economic environment and it says a lot about the package Angelo is putting together for readers each week. It also means that the publication is serving its adverisers well.

As a free-lance writer these days, I still travel extensively in the hobby and I recently ran into to several well-known hobby personalities who thought Old Cars Weekly was not doing well. I told them the same thing I told Richard . . . they have the wrong impression. Everyone at OCW is working harder than we ever did in the old days, but they are also doing the best job ever in putting together a top-notch magazine. OCW is not as colorful and glossy as some other publications, but it has a better bottom line than many do, plus a lot of satisfied readers and customers.

And these days I have no reason to say that, except for the fact that it's true.