Promotional consideration
by Bob Collins

(January 26, 2007) -- It's gotten busy in my neck of the woods over the last few weeks. In addition to the Hotline, the Minnesota Legislature is back in session, so that's taking up a lot of work. My idea for the Minnesota Fantasy Legislature, novel as it apparently is, got the attention of the media for a few weeks so I've been doing interviews; last Sunday I was on Fox & Friends (Video here) and they had no idea what they -- or I was talking about. Then I had an open house at MPR/APM's big new world headquarters and got to sign the first two autographs I've ever been asked to sign. This weekend I'm at the SportAir workshop in Oshkosh (I'll probably write something for next week), next week I have to run up to the Berkshires for a week, and then I'm doing a presentation at the Integrated Media Association Conference in Boston a couple of weeks after that, and, oh yeah, there's still this plane sitting in my garage, and a wing in the basement and somehow, I've got to resolve the issue of how to drill a hole through existing bolt holes in the fuselage fork, through a new rear spar doubler.

In other words: I don't have time to do much plane building. Fortunately it's winter, sort of, in Minnesota and I usually don't do much plane building in the winter, especially now that #2 has brought his motorcycle over to Ma and Pa's garage for winter storage....right next to the RV.

So this week, I've also been doodling on some future articles and stuff to appear in the Hotline, and figure out what this thing is and what it should be and, again, how much time is it going to take.

Like you, I stop by Doug Reeves' Van's Air Force every day (almost) and last week I noticed a new slogan on his site, "promoting the greatest hobby slightly above the earth since '07." Cool. And accurate. Doug, as I'm sure you're aware, does a fantastic job promoting RVs. Good for Van's. Good for us.

I don't. And therein lies the problem in this project.

I've been in the "news" business since I was a kid putting out an occasional newsletter telling the rest of the family that birds were seen at the feeder, and all I really know how to do, is tell other people what other people are doing or saying, and despite what you may have been told about the media, most of us in the business work hard at staying focused on reflecting what other people are doing or saying, and not molding it to what we want them to say. Heck, I've done it so long, it's second nature.

This week, we passed 1,200 "subscribers," to the Hotline, which is pretty cool since Van's refused to add the Hotline to their links pages, and very little content is actually contributed; I spend the time looking for most of it. It started as a result of a meeting of the Minnesota Wing of Van's Air Force, when I was listening to Dick Martin talk about getting more mph out of his RV. I thought, "this is great stuff, other people should hear about this." And so began the process of gathering stuff from somewhere else and editing it down into a bite-sized newsletter.

It's not meant to compete with anybody else. As a matter of fact, it's meant to complement and draw attention to those places. But it's not meant to promote anything either. It's just meant to inform. It's a fine -- but important -- distinction. I'm thinking about this this week because of a very thoughtful letter I received from Mike Seager, who took issue with my decision to print all of the responses -- or more specifically, one of them -- to the questionnaire I sent out regarding RVers transition training. While, understandably, most of them were highly complimentary of Mike, one was not, and the person who submitted, I thought, expressed it honestly and directly, and I think within the general bounds of taste.Mike wrote:

"I have been giving transition training for the last 14 years and helping maybe 4,000 satisfied fellow rv builders I would say that maybe out of all the people i have helped train that i have maybe had three or four people that i just could not help... My only goal is to help fellow RV builders learn to fly there plane safely... I guess you can report as you see fit however i have a long long list of very satisfied customers and would be more than willing to share this info with you. By allowing (the contributor) to vent his frustrations and short comings on your web site I am not sure you are helping the RV community become better and safer pilots."

I acknowledge that everything I ever heard about Mike Seager, whom I've never met, was positive and all of the reports were glowing. The gentlemen who was asked his transition training experiences, provided the exception. But it's very important to make clear that the existence of a negative does not make it a fact; it merely means that one person had a different opinion.

I don't feel, as the collector of these anecdotes, that I have a duty to shield you from that with which you might disagree. I don't feel that it's in the interest of the larger community when a dissenting voice is dismissed because the majority of the community doesn't agree with it, especially when it's a collection of people's experiences in the building and flying of RVs. Whom am I to say that someone's experiences aren't valid? I didn't, after all, say to people when soliciting the experiences via the RV List, "good comments only please." Maybe I should have, but then isn't that what we hate about the media? But what has gotten me thinking about the Hotline's role is Mike's observation that by organizing and presenting those who chose to share the information, and by including a negative, I may not have been properly promoting being a better and safer pilot.

It goes without saying, or at least it should, that I believe in safety and being a better pilot. I like to think by putting a story on transition training at the top of the page in the first place, some pilot somewhere is going to think, "that's a pretty good idea." But if the method of aggregating that information does a disservice, that's not good for anybody, and I'm not all that interested in being known as "the jerk who puts out that newsletter."

I like to think that people -- especially airplane-building people -- are smart enough to make their own judgments and don't need me to filter out that which might make them form a conclusion different than the one that I would prefer they make.

On the other hand, it can't be a very good feeling to have a negative written about you circulated in a newsletter. And if you do relay people's comments in the negative when they come along, you're sure not going to get much material from people who have negatives written about them. And for something like the Hotline, that pretty much dries up the content.

And then there's you, the reader. If there's a debate about nose gear collapsing, or a jury verdict in a case involving RVs, or even a crash of an RV -- all things that will not appear in the editorial content section of any Web site "promoting" RVs, you need -- it seems to me -- to know that what was provided was all the information that was available; that nothing was withheld in order to keep relations orderly, and nobody massaged anything so that you'd reach a particular conclusion.

In my "day job," I spend a lot of time analyzing how people consume information. Each generation is different. But one constant is the theory that if it appears in print, it must be true on a broader scale. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let's say you go to a restaurant with your spouse and the chef serves up some dish. You like it. Your spouse hated it. Now what can be fairly concluded here. These days, it depends on who tells the story. If you tell your friend, your friend will likely tell someone else, "don't go there, the food not good." If your spouse tells his/her friend about her experience, your friend will likely tell someone else, "go there, I hear the food is great."

In fact, both conclusions by your "friends" are incorrect. Here's the only completely factual statement, "a friend of mine went there and did/didn't like it." What we can conclude about the original comment in the article is that of all the people who had good experiences in RV training, one -- and only one -- did not. That does not mean that RV transition training is bad idea. For the record, it doesn't mean it's a good idea (although I personally feel it is). It means you have more information with which to decide for yourself.

I saw the same thing happen on the RV List last week; a list known for being "rough and tumble." The subject was the $10 million jury award given to the family of an RVator who was killed in a crash in Washington state. The original poster said the family "should be lynched." And he described in negative fashion, the details of the intelligence of the jury and the work of the judge and lawyers.

There's only one problem with it. None of us knew what we were talking about. People pointed to a single article in a newspaper, written by someone who didn't cover the case or know any of the testimony or evidence. I got involved in that discussion by noting that while the conclusions may be right, we could hold our fire until we get the firsthand information. And, indeed, I'm now working on obtaining much of the paperwork in the case.

Two things happened here. First, we brought our preconceived notions to fill in the blanks caused by our lack of information. And then, if you read the thread, people who advocated getting more information were then accused of defending the decision.

This is how many of us consume information these days, and it causes a great deal of trouble for the concept that says "tell them what you know, and let them make a decision."

What we know in the original story in this piece is that one person had a bad experience. How do I translate that in the context of all other evidence? That one person had a bad experience and it happens and not everyone meshes. C'est la vie.

I know what people think of "media people." I'd have to be stupid not to. But there's a lot more that goes into what and how we write than putting someone's best foot forward because that's how we personally feel. I know a lot of people expect me to do it with regards to aviation because I happen to like aviation. But how is that any more honorable than the what aviation people accuse media people of doing -- ignoring some things because they don't like aviation? In short, which way do we want it?

To me there's a difference between being an "informer" and being a "promoter." And what I was trying to "inform" people about was simply this: "there were X number of people who took the time to tell me their experiences, and here they are.. good, bad, and ugly." That, in the future, is going to be a big part of Hotline content because there isn't a community built around it --as with VAF -- to provide a near non-stop flow of pictures and stories, and because it's impractical to expect a "reporter piece" in every issue. Instead, I'll often pick a topic and you provide your personal experience.

It appears the concept didn't work this time.

Don't get me wrong; I don't feel particularly good about editing -- as I did this week -- the archive of the transition training article to withhold one contributor's thoughts. I don't feel particularly good about causing some anguish for someone who's done so much for RV pilots, and I don't feel particularly good about not feeling particularly good.

And I'm not at all sure what I'm supposed to do about it.