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One of the guilty pleasures of motoring in Minnesota is the ability to crank the tunes in a car while watching other butts freeze. What, after all, is more aesthetically pleasing that the sight of female ski racers in Spandex?

I am afraid to admit it's what I do during the winter months while my kids ski race. I sit in my mid-sized, pimping SUV, burn fossil fuel and tune out to a fairly hefty road tune collection I've acquired over the years.

Kill me now. Go ahead.

At least it gives me time to think.

That I feel the need to make such salacious comments about my social life to get my traffic up on this car blog could say something about the future of serious journalism. While I am somewhat limited in my abitly to create "reportage," I've learned quite a bit about how to marshall T&A to the Molloch of online media. To wit: my highest grossing post (which has made my online stock go up apparently) was about convertibles for old guys. I was thinking cars, they were thinking Lolita.

Last night, as I rocked out to Crime in the City from Crazy Horse, I thought about what it takes to get people's attention in th online space and how the bills actually get paid. While I know even less about publishing than journalism I do know that there is always a way to make money with a free publication in any age.

Sell sex.

The more purient, the better.

In fact, I had a friend who once told me that the busiest time at a local free daily used to be Fridays when the hoookers got paid and lined up with their pimps to place their ads for the weekend editions. The traffic has increased ten-fold since the publication went online (I know that for a fact.) Which all leads me to believe that online journalism is headed towards a bright future in babes and boobs and not much else. Save, perhaps, the ample profits in pedophilia.

I mean as long as you not a real pervert what's the difference between peddling your craft online and shifting gears as a policeman on the streets? Neil Young put it this way (from the aforementioned song) "...I get paid by a ten-year-old (this is a former cop talking), he says he looks up to me, there's still crime in the city, but its good to be free.." 

So what am I driving at?

Only that sometime in the near future If I really want to go for the brass ring of online automotive journalism its likely that my editor (who I will never see) could be some precocious person (of indeterminate age) with advanced programming skills (my ten-year-old programs my phone, home page and pre-sets) with a passion for nothing more than bucks, babes and big rides. A passion he will share in complete anonymity with people decades older than him. Which, in my opinion just ain't right.

Such, alas, is freedom.

And it leaves me cold. 

Even inside my truck.