Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Stern
Hi Randy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My journey began when I started reading the car magazines while in elementary school. It was not about the pictures, although they did help. The words from certain automotive scribes were just too good to pass up.
I always wanted to be a writer. Yet, I felt that my skills were not there. Perhaps because I was distracted with my home situation – a child of divorce, and, subsequently, of a disabled parent felled by two strokes. By the time I started college, I knew I had to forge my own path. The Radio-TV-Film classes in college helped, but I had a handicap to overcome.
As I was finishing college, I was told by a composition professor that my writing was so bad that he would recommend not graduating me. My main problem was self-editing. I learned how to do that and ended up graduating from California State University East Bay.
From there, it took some time to meld my love for the automobile with the want of writing. I was told that you could no get a job an established outlet and the pay wasn’t great. That created another challenge. As the internet opened up the possibilities, I took to writing e-mail newsletters and new portals online to express my skills.
My first break came in 2001, when a friend reached out to me with an idea. He loved my writing and felt it was a fit for his small online website that talked about our small subculture within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Tom Wray asked me to be his Managing Editor on that website. I agreed. There was no pay, so it was more for the experience at that point. It was through his website that I began writing about the automobile.
My move to the Twin Cites prompted another turn in my writing. Through another friend, I had two chapbooks of poetry self-published, starting in 2005. Through there, I connected with the local literary community. My friend and I created a blog to promote the chapbooks. Which was great, but I wanted to write more.
The website soon turned into a blog where I wrote about anything I was interested in – including automobiles, I found that my automotive writing received more traffic and reception from readers. By the winter of 2011, I made the decision to turn that blog into an automotive website. That was when Victory & Reseda was born.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No. It has not been smooth. I could easily blame my Los Angeles Unified School District education, but I won’t. That is all on me.
Truthfully, I did not apply as much as I should. I could break that down into whether I had ADD or not. Or, that my skills were stretched beyond limits. Yet, I knew I could do well in a story-telling format and try to avoid “habits” that would run its course eventually.
Of course, I am paid absolutely nothing for Victory & Reseda. I write elsewhere – Twin Cities-based LGBTQ+ publication Lavender Magazine, included. But, Victory & Reseda remains my soul child. It is where the stories are told with heart, soul, mind, and spirit.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Victory & Reseda is the website I publish. Most of my writing work is on that website. There are folks who help me – video people, mainly. I could never do what they do and have the patience to do so.
In my recent past, I was the Managing Editor at Lavender Magazine for two-and-a-half years. I continue writing for them in every other issue, providing automotive perspectives for the LGBTQ+ demographic/readership. The rest of my workflow is through freelancing opportunities within the automotive world,
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Right now, the larger outlets are laying off writers and other creatives. Some publications and outlets have been shut down.
Victory & Reseda remains because I started it independently from the rest of the automotive media industry. It continues because of the changes in the industry we’re experiencing right now.
The biggest challenge is Artificial Intelligence. We pointed out how many publications and outlets are using it not only to save money and increase revenue. In turn, AI-generated content has been less than stellar. These articles add details that can be fact-checked and disproven.
Also, AI does not know how to drive an automobile. You need humans to do that and tell the story of that vehicle.
there are some qualities of AI we could use. But, the real storytellers will continue to be human – flawed as we are.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.victoryandreseda.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victory.reseda/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VictorynReseda
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VictoryandReseda
