If you’ve been reading the news about Harley-Davidson in the last two weeks, you may have come across the sensationalist headlines of how the Motor Co. is closing all of its US dealerships for 24 hours. And Harley will do this twice! Oh no!
So given Harley’s misfortunes of late, you may have thought that these two closures had something to do with its revenue shortcomings or change in leadership. But you’d be dead wrong, as these headlines are nothing more than fake news. Literally.
You want to know why Harley-Davidson is closing its US dealerships? Easy, it’s the same reason that nearly all businesses were closing. Harley closed for the holidays, i.e., Christmas and New Year’s. That’s it, that’s the story, that’s why Harley is closing and why you can’t get service. Even for today’s race toward the bottom of news media, AI-generated slop, and clickbait content farms, this is especially stupid.
Hi, The US Sun! You suck!
The headline that caused my own article debunking this horseshit is “Final Days Until Harley-Davidson Shuts All US Dealerships in 24-Hour Blackout for Second Time in One Week,” and you can immediately see how that spun me into pure, unadulterated rage. This isn’t just bad journalism, but even bad Buzzfeed clickbait. It’s a headline written to be so misleading that it borders on the spin a politician would say about a law or act or whatever that everyone hates but they have to get it through no matter what.
And while I’m loathe to call out fellow writers, not only is the headline a blatant rage-bait string, but the first two sentences make it worse, saying, “Harley-Davidson is set to close all 629 US dealerships in a 24-hour blackout in a matter of days. It will be the second round of planned mass closures in just a week.”
Mein gott!
You’d think the sky was falling and Harley-Davidson was not long for the world with those sentences and that headline. But that isn’t the case, something the outlet states after a newsletter sign up and two pictures… Yeah, the writer does get to why Harley is closing—you know, the holidays that nearly every single business takes off here in the States—but they have to make you extremely mad first or, and more likely, they’re hoping you don’t read the article at all and immediately take to social media and spread the outlet’s story to get other non-reading Americans fired the heck up, which in turn drives more clicks and revenue.
What a great media landscape we live in.
Anyways, yes, Harley is closing its shops. No it’s not because Harley is going under or out of business. It’s to literally just give their employees and dealerships the holidays off. That’s it. That’s the story. It’s that freakin’ simple. God, I hate this timeline.
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