> every single little thing that involves this company has to be front page finance news

Tesla actively sought this attention

But musk fans only complain about it when it makes elon and the gang look bad...

please explain. it literally has $0 advertising budget.

let's be real. it is sensational journalism that is at work here. It's NOT masterminded by a corporation spending zero dollars on marketing.

What are you talking about? You can literally just go to Tesla's job posting website [1] and see that they have an entire department dedicated to marketing and spend plenty of money on it.

Just because you don't see banner ads for Tesla on the subway doesn't mean they spend zero dollars on marketing.

1: https://www.tesla.com/careers/search#/?department=8

So what is their marketing spent on? I receive an email from them maybe 1-2 times a year but that's it, and I'm a huge fanatic.

The Tesla website is basically one huge marketing platform/advertisement, so that's one thing. Every time there's an open house at one of their stores where they have talks by some celebrity is a marketing event. They often host events where you can come test drive their cars (they did a lot of these when "ludicrous mode" came out, and you could go test it out on a big empty racetrack) is a marketing event. Every press conference where they announce a new feature/product is a marketing event. This [1] is a marketing event. Another large part of any company's marketing is building relationships with media outlets to feed them information and build up hype. They also have a social media team as part of their marketing department, so there's a decent chance that some of the comments you see on reddit or HN or elsewhere are Tesla employees astroturfing.

Ironically, the entire myth that Tesla has a "$0 marketing budget" is the result of, you guessed it, good work from Tesla's marketing department. Marketing/advertising is much, much more than just commercials and billboards.

1: https://electrek.co/2018/05/15/tesla-model-x-electric-towing...

> it literally has $0 advertising budget.

Well, other than the $75MM it recorded in its last annual report for 2017 for advertising and marketing...

> please explain. it literally has $0 advertising budget.

Advertising budget is what you use to bypass media coverage decisions, not how you drive “free media”.

I agree.

You can't blame the news though. If the news headline was "Toyota Camry rear ends truck" you would not have clicked on it :)

i can't blame the news for me wasting my own time, but i can blame the news for doing a shitty job fulfilling their function in society.

Their function is like any business in a Capitalist Society. Profit over everything. Integrity doesn't pay the bills or buy you a new Ferrari. It's sad to see the things these days being excused as 'journalism'.

People downvoting above - have you not had a boss tell you "that would be great if we could implement like that, but do it this way instead because it's more profitable" ?

I've got journalist friends with stories to tell but are stuck because they've got a quota of 10 more trump stories and 5 more musk stories to write first.

I think he is being downvoted for his definition of journalism in a capitalist society and not for having an opinion.

Since when news reporting practice standards equalize clickbaiting?

You live by the sword you die by the sword. Tesla and Musk, especially are in news all the time - boring company, flamethrowers, candy company etc. So, it goes to reason that even the failures will get highlighted.

a human-driven auto accident that happens every day is a failure of Tesla?

I’m calling shenanigans.

Currently it's not known whether the human was responsible or Autopilot was responsible.

As Autopilot has had prior issues with detecting trucks, resulting in at least 1 fatality, there is significant concern that Autopilot was responsible in this case.

"Even the failures will get highlighted" It seems that SPECIALLY the failures are being highlighted. I fail to understand how covering a celebrity CEO twitting about opening a candy shop and writing a negative piece about a car rear ending a truck would have the same goal as you seem to suggest.

They pay a PR company good money to make that happen.

They should ask for their money back if their PR firm is planting negative stories like the OP and the one mentioned in the comment you're replying to!

Its 2018, it takes lots of money to have a good online PR. It doesnt happen organically...

So your theory is that Tesla has hired a PR firm to launch a negative news campaign against themselves?

Its not negative news, its news.

Plus, if they pay a company to write a negative article, its not 'really' negative.

It might look like a negative article, but the words are to convince you that it really isnt bad.

Do you have any evidence to support that? I would argue that that scenario is way less likely than ICE / oil companies spending resources on a negative campaign givsn the current trend of negative Tesla stories making it to the national news, where as the positive ones do not to the same effect.

The absolute madmen!

Tesla claims to be breaking the mould, in terms of technology and organisation and manufacturing.

Not surprisingly, people are interested in seeing how that mould-breaking is going

>Not surprisingly, people are interested in seeing how that mould-breaking is going

Eh, I cant tell if this is organic, or paid shilling by Tesla Marketing.

They have been caught shilling reddit, so I wouldnt be surprised if they are paying for articles written by major news outlets.

WSJ has been publishing a ridiculous number of Tesla articles lately. Some (most?) have a negative slant. Tesla is not that entertaining to require several articles per week.

> Tesla is not that entertaining to require several articles per week

They have bonds out, a record short interest and will need to raise capital later this year. Tesla is of immense interest to bond holders, equity investors, stock lenders and investment bankers.

Are they interested? Sure.

Does that interest translate to a normal rear end crash? Nope.

You also don't have news articles quoting Akio Toyoda claiming Adaptive Cruise has saved thousands of lives. The cultures of the two companies are very different.

Elon is a high visibility person, anything related to what he’s doing is going to drive readers and media.

It's interesting to watch the spiral down the drain of mainstream media. They're so desperate for eyeballs they sink to these lows.

It won't be long and they'll be gone.

And replaced by what? I don't see any altruistic ventures waiting to supplant them - just even worse examples of a feedback loop gone awry.

I think you'll find nobody under the age of about 25 cares about the mainstream media, so it doesn't need to be replaced by anything. We just wait until everyone older dies, and the media will too.