Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/409381
VOL. 51 ISSUE 44 NOVEMBER 4, 2014 P91 blow. Besides being my editor for these years, he's long been one of my closest friends. Our friendship goes back 30 years to when he was covering AMA road races for Cycle News and I was doing the same for American Roadracing. More often than not, in those blissful, pre-Internet days Paul and I, both in our 20s and full of energy, would leave the track with friends, including most often Paul's then partner in crime Brian Catterson, and head out for a night of fun. Being around wild and crazy racers it was inevi- table I suppose that some of our nights out turned into epic adventures and will go down in the annals of "I can't believe I survived that!" How we were able to cover the races by day, party until the wee hours of the morning and then somehow make it back to the track early the next morning to do it all again is something I continually look back on with amazement. But soon enough we got older, took on more re- sponsibilities and before you knew it party times at the races became considerably more subdued. It eventually wound down to the point in the later years a long night out for Paul, Henny Ray Abrams and me was staying for dessert at Olive Garden. It makes him sound like an old timer, but Paul worked at Cycle News from the earlier era of typewriters, film and fax machines through to the journalistic hectic age of the World Wide Web. But far from being a Luddite, Carruthers was an early adapter and one helping push the publication to ever more modern ways of getting information to its readers. And now Cycle News, running on a skele- ton staff, finds itself a pioneer once again, trying to bridge that gap from print publication to the brave new digital age. No longer is it the ink on fingers, but the soft glow of a computer screen or tablet that opens the inside world of racing to readers. And then there's the relentless pressures brought on by the web of getting news out first. Paul likes to break a story, just as much as the next guy, but for him, getting it right is always the most important thing. You'd often see some breathless story go out over the Internet, only to be proven not fully developed and sometimes even clearly wrong. Even through Cycle News probably broke more racing stories than all other U.S. motorcy- cling publications combined, Paul always contin- ued to remind us that it was more important to get it right than to be first with a story. If you look back at the back issues of Cycle News, it's easy to see that the weekly, always the place to get your racing news, really came into its own with Paul at the helm. Not just the editorial content, but the look of it greatly improved over the years. At the height of the publication Carruthers stepped back from writing as much in order to edit and coordinate the running of Cycle News. A few years ago he reached out to me to ask what I thought we could do to improve Cycle News and one of my first pieces of advice was for him to write more and fortunately, either out of taking my advice or just plain need because of having a su- per-lean staff, in the last few years we've all been able to enjoy more of Paul's own voice. And while I'm saddened at the thought of Paul not being the editor of the publication he's be- come the face of over the years, the blow is soft- ened by the fact that he's handing Cycle News off to the capable hands of veteran editor Kit Palmer. And even better is the fact that we'll actually get to enjoy Paul's quick wit and twisted sense of humor more now that he'll be heading up communica- tions for MotoAmerica, and attending more road races than ever. Paul and the rest of the MotoAmerica crew have a monumental task before them. Road rac- ing has been on life support in recent years, but if Carruthers is an example of the hires the new or- ganizers are making, racing fans can be assured that the new group is finding the very best people out there for the job of resurrecting the sport. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives