I’m Rory Carroll, the new editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, my favorite website. I just heard I’m the first Jalopnik EIC to be hired from a not-Jalopnik place—but I’ve been around a while.
If my name sounds familiar, you may know that I used to run Autoweek. Or, if you’ve been reading Jalopnik as long as I have, you may know me as the one-time COTD winner Teargas or Comrade Teargaskov, the guy who ran the Lada in LeMons a decade or so ago. In those days I would read every single post on the site, scrolling back to catch any that I’d missed due to travel or whatever. I’ve been a car-liker since I was a toddler, but it wasn’t until I became “obsessed with the cult of cars” that it became a real problem.
As far as my plan for Jalopnik, I’m still in the early stages of getting to know how the site currently runs, but I do have some vague goals. There are some features that have been kicking around in my head for the last few months, I want to get those rolling. I’d love to bring back some old favorites and I want to hear from car-people who aren’t widely represented in the automotive media landscape. Maybe do a podcast or two?
I also want Jalopnik to be the place where car enthusiasts talk about the future of car culture, specifically with regard to commuting, climate change, urban sprawl, alienation and other fun topics. The tension between my love of internal combustion engines and my desire to limit the role I play in destroying the planet is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I don’t think I’m alone in that. I don’t see that stuff being discussed regularly in automotive media and it’s a discussion that we as a community should be contributing to—in addition to posting about craigslist garbage, naturally.
As far as personal details: ’07 Lexus GX 470 (slated to begin its transformation into a camping/offroad truck this weekend), ’84 Porsche 911 (reassembling),‘02 WRX wagon (sale pending), ’15 GTI manual (wife’s), and a ’48 Willys CJ2-A that is technically co-owned by Autoweek’s editor, Wes. The Lada is currently in the possession of Kamil from Hooniverse.
Jalopnik has always been about the readers who come here every day, write comments, contribute to Oppo, get heated, etc. My biggest priority is maintaining that. I’ll hang around in the comments if you guys have questions or suggestions. Don’t tell me to fire anybody, even as a joke.