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/674407
VOL. 53 ISSUE 17 MAY 3, 2016 P105 "When we first came out it was six times a year and after we didn't get the advertising support we'd hoped for, we made it an annual," Carruthers recalls. "At the time road racing was at a pretty high point. There wasn't a magazine like that, a glossy, full color magazine devoted to road racing in this country. There were several others around the world and obviously with my background [son of World Champion Kel Carruthers] I was aware of those magazines and I always thought that they were really cool, except they weren't in English. "Our idea was to create a magazine that fo- cused on AMA Superbike racing, but also covered international racing. The whole idea was to have nice, big, glossy, four-color photos and different sort of articles that were more in depth and ana- lytic than a normal race report because it came out a few months after the events." After a couple years when the publication went from bi-monthly to an annual it was a wrap of that season's road racing. It featured not only the stories, but graphs showing the finishes of each rider throughout the season in the various cham- pionships and as a result it became more that something people would want to hold onto as a reference. "Not that many people remember it today, but then I'll mention a feature we did and they'll say, 'Oh yeah I remember that.' And they'll be able to remember photos that were used and things like that." One other legacy MRRI left with the industry was the fact that Carruthers hired Brian Catterson to become associate editor. Catterson went on to have a prolific career in motorcycle journalism that included later becoming an editor at American Roadracing, executive editor at Cycle World and editor in chief at Motorcyclist. "I'd been interviewing with Paul for six months," Catterson remembers. "I'd sort of given up on it and a friend of mine and I were just about to open a business, we literally were about to sign a lease on a building, when Paul called me and asked me when I could start." Carruthers said his experience at MRRI, along with Cycle News, prepared him well for a life in moto-journalism. "I was constantly interviewing, traveling, writ- ing and editing other people's stuff, so it was an intense period of training," Catterson said. "I was proud of the stories we produced at Road Racer Illustrated. We tried to go more in depth than just about anyone else was doing at that point. When the bi-monthly ended and it went to an annual I was worried I was going to lose my job, but fortunately Cycle News was going gang busters and I started doing more race coverage for them." In November 1996 Cycle News Inc. quietly announced in a short item "In the Wind" that it was suspending publication of Motorcycle Road Racer Illustrated. After eight years the company cited cost of producing and distributing the magazine as being "no longer feasible." Ironical- ly the publication went defunct at about the very time that sport bikes sales began a decade-long boom, that would also see interest in the sport of road racing in America at an all-time high. "Cycle News was the cash cow for the adver- tising staff at that time," Carruthers points out. "And it was difficult maybe, to put the kind of time and effort into selling advertising for another title, when the returns weren't as great. Even though it was relatively short-lived, MRRI made an impact on the sport and certainly pre- sented a new way motorcycle road racing could be covered.CN ROAD RACER ILLUSTRATED Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives