My interview with Mario Andretti

Mario Andretti's 1969 Champ Car win at Hanford Motor Speedway represented extreme highs and lows: a secret tire setup that left competitors in his dust and a freak pitlane accident that contributed to the death of a mechanic.

In a telephone interview from his Pennsylvania offices on Monday, Andretti recalled his five appearances at the Hanford tri-oval: a 1965 USAC stock car drive and four Champ Car races from 1967-1969 that resulted in one win, two third-place finishes and two DNFs from the third and fourth starting spots. He obviously found the speedway -- the rough 1.4-mile 1965 version and the renovated 1.5-mile late 1960s version -- a good match. 

Read my complete interview with Andretti in my Marchbanks Speedway/Hanford Motor Speedway history section. And if you missed it, check out my interviews with Bobby Unser and other race legends in my section devoted to the "History of Marchbanks Speedway, aka Hanford Motor Speedway."

Prophetic magazine cover

Timing can be everything in the print publishing world. In an age of 24-7 media, printed publications work hard to stay ahead of the news, to present fresh insights a day, a week, a month after publication. 

Sometimes fate can intervene with a good idea, as in this 417 magazine cover whose main headline screams,"What it Feels Like to Ride a Tornado." I picked up a copy of the magazine while visiting Columbia, Mo., earlier this week, and just a day after flying into tornado-ravaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. 

417, for those who don't know, is the area code for southwestern Missouri, not far from St. Louis and other Southern states ravaged by an incredible swarm of twisters that killed hundreds. And Missouri is considered part of "tornado alley," a multi-state region that's a hotspot for tornadoes in spring and summer.

So I suppose this edition of the magazine was right on target on highlighting a relevant angle for a series of stories on "what it feels like" topics like riding a tornado, getting robbed at gunpoint, or surviving a skydiving accident while pregnant.

Sadly, sometimes good ideas interfere with unpredictable news, and leave one feeling just a little bit queasy.

Redlining newspaper subscriptions

Profiling has a negative connotation these days, but it's a tool some publishers use in search of the "right" subscribers to pitch their advertisers. Demographic information such as incomes, education, families with children, likelihood to make major purchases in the coming year, etc., are among the factors that attract advertisers to specific media, whether it's print, online, broadcast or billboards. 

Makes a lot of sense to fine-tune your product, right? Yes and no. Such profiling can be misused, such as when banks or health providers discriminate against people in areas home to higher percentages of minorities. Such discrimination is termed "redlining" (think of using a red marker to draw borders on a map).

Given that sensitivity, it's not often such profiling hits you in the face, as it did me recently. 

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