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" It&amp;#039;s the stuff of fiction, right? A gifted entrepreneur makes billions of dollars in his youth, but instead of retiring to a private island he plows it all back into a series of adventurous attempts to build innovative electric cars and, you know, go to outer space. Against all odds, he succeeds! But wait! The Establishment is made of petty little men who will stop at nothing to crush his dreams! Using the ponderous organs of the monolithic old media, they attack him and his products\u2014but he has proof that the allegations against his amazing new car are lies, and he reveals that proof to the public! Not convinced? Try this one: A hardworking, ethical reporter discovers that an overhyped new technology isn&amp;#039;t ready for prime time, only to be attacked in vicious, personal fashion by the mega-wealthy egomaniac who stands to become even wealthier from it. The reporter&amp;#039;s attempts to bring the truth to light are roundly dismissed by a baying group of lapdog tech writers and Star Trek nerds who list their primary residence as &amp;quot;Azeroth&amp;quot; and live vicariously through the exploits of their billionaire hero. Once again, however, the strangeness of truth pulls a solid lead on anything Ayn Rand or John Dos Passos could come up with. When The New York Times&amp;#039; John Broder borrowed a Tesla Model S for a quick trip up the East Coast using the automaker&amp;#039;s Supercharger network to juice it along the way, nobody expected that the Tesla would leave his custody on a flatbed. After Broder&amp;#039;s story about the Tesla&amp;#039;s failure made waves and drove down the company&amp;#039;s share price, Tesla chairman and CEO Elon Musk fired back with a detailed set of vehicle operation logs that, according to him, showed that Broder&amp;#039;s use of the vehicle didn&amp;#039;t mesh with the Times story. The battle lines were then well and truly drawn for a confrontation between the country&amp;#039;s newspaper of record and one of its cherished immigrant success stories. (As all this went down, CNN deftly played the news cycle and drove a Model S from D.C. to Boston, stopping at the Superchargers and finishing with range to spare.)  Very little of the commentary I&amp;#039;ve seen so far has even pretended to be impartial regarding the merits of Mr. Musk and/or The New York Times. Indeed, it&amp;#039;s tempting to cast Tesla&amp;#039;s founder in the role of Hank Rearden, the strapping capitalist hero of Ayn Rand&amp;#039;s most famous novel. It&amp;#039;s equally tempting to accept the way he&amp;#039;s portrayed so often in the media: lucky-ducky tech investor driven insane by success, ego, and Bond-villian-like seclusion from the real world.  The real truth of the matter is less sharply drawn, but it&amp;#039;s no less fascinating. There&amp;#039;s more at stake here than the reputation of one car or one newspaper. Rather, this is about owning the eyeballs. You see, there&amp;#039;s a fear that nobody in the journalism business wants to admit, and it&amp;#039;s this: we might not be part of the conversation for much longer. The nature of the Internet means that the number of avenues for information distribution and consumption has exploded. That now includes robust, manufacturer-controlled channels that allow direct factory-to-consumer communication. Elon Musk wants to sell you a product. His product is the Tesla Model S. He&amp;#039;d prefer that nobody get between him and you when it comes to discussing the Model S. He wants to own the online community for the car and control the dialogue around it. The Times, on the other hand, wants to sell you a product, and that is the Times itself. In order for that product to have any value, in order for you to enter the NYT URL into your browser instead of Tesla&amp;#039;s, it has to offer something you can&amp;#039;t get from Tesla itself. That something is trust.  If you can&amp;#039;t fully trust Tesla, then you&amp;#039;ll continue to be a customer for the Times. Think for a moment about Broder&amp;#039;s article in that context: it&amp;#039;s an advertisement for his product at the expense of Tesla&amp;#039;s.  If, on the other hand, the Times cannot be trusted, then perhaps you&amp;#039;re best off dealing with Tesla directly. In that context, Musk&amp;#039;s datalog response was a direct attempt to shift the credibility from &amp;quot;them&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;us&amp;quot;. It&amp;#039;s a move to own the story\u2014to cut the media out of the picture. You can believe that the major manufacturers are watching this battle of wits very closely. If the Times forces Musk to kiss the ring and apologize, it will be the groundhog&amp;#039;s shadow that condemns everyone from GM to Toyota to another few years of greasing the media&amp;#039;s wheels. But if customers overwhelmingly indicate that they find Tesla more credible than the journalist reporting on Tesla, don&amp;#039;t be surprised if the other manufacturers start trying to cut those pesky third parties out of the conversation they&amp;#039;re having with customers. What&amp;#039;s at stake? It depends on the lens you choose. If you enjoyed The Fountainhead, you&amp;#039;re likely to think of Audi&amp;#039;s futile attempt to convince the American public that its cars didn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;suddenly accelerate,&amp;quot; regardless of what 60 Minutes said. If you found All The King&amp;#039;s Men more to your liking, the story of the Ford Pinto will come to mind. I&amp;#039;d like to believe that there will always be a place for an ethical, independent media that reports honesty on the virtues and faults of automobiles, just like I want to believe that there will always be a place in the American conversation for the automobile itself.  It isn&amp;#039;t up to me, however. There will be a winner and a loser in the battle for the eyeball, and the decision on that battle is largely yours to make. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a3870/the-nyt-tesla-controversy-is-about-more-than-range/>