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Robert NilesPasadena, California Homepage: http://www.robertniles.com/ A long-time math and computer geek, Robert Niles turned to journalism after graduating from Northwestern University and deciding he couldn't stomach becoming a management consultant. But the lure of marathon coding sessions proved too strong. Robert soon quit his job writing editorials for a red-state newspaper, and he began making websites instead. Robert started with online tutorials showing other journalists how to use math and data, then branched out to niche sites on theme parks and the violin. These sites often involve readers as reporters, inviting them to contribute to the sites' coverage. The Online News Association and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism honored Robert's ThemeParkInsider.com in 2001 with an Online Journalism Award for Service Journalism. The Webby Awards named the same site a finalist for Best Guides/Ratings/Reviews Site in 2005. Robert also has worked as a Web editor, editorial writer and reporter for several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, (Denver) Rocky Mountain News, Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald and the (Bloomington, Ind.) Herald-Times.
Contact:Articles:These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.Add original functionality to original content to build Web trafficNovember 12, 2008OJR long has enjoyed a strong following among newspaper website managers and employees. So don't think that we've forgotten about you when we write about start-ups and independent online news efforts. I think there's much that newspaper-dot-coms can learn from the "little guys," ideas and innovations that they can bring back to their papers in an effort to keep them competitive in their news marketplaces. But let's not forget, either, some of the advantages that newspapers bring to these markets. Over the next couple weeks, we'll be bringing you blog posts from newspaper website editors whom I've asked to share some of their recent successes. If you a newspaper website editor with a story to share, too, please, feel free. You can post to the site directly, or e-mail me and tell me your story so that I can post it to the site. Before we get to those stories though... a challenge, if you will. Newspapers often focus on their newsrooms, and even, sometimes, their sales staffs when looking for strengths that they bring to their local markets. But what about their IT departments? Great content build traffic for a day. If you want to keep that traffic, you must continue to add new great content. But great functionality builds traffic, too. And keeps it for far longer than content does before it needs to be refreshed.
 No comments |  Archive LinkOnline publishers need new heroes in the battle for community relevanceNovember 7, 2008Picking up from my piece on Wednesday.... The Obama campaign did not build its social network in isolation. In many communities, it built upon an existing "netroots" of progressives that had developed over the past several years. That network, in turn, developed in frustration with both the Bush administration, as well as the new media coverage (or lack thereof) of that administration and its Congressional allies. Markos Moulitsas, a j-school graduate with a law degree and an Army stint behind him, bootstrapped what might be the most influential of all progressive netroots websites, DailyKos. His new book, "Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era" offers a blueprint for political activists, one that well complements the Obama strategies I wrote about on Wednesday. But Moulitsas' book teaches important lessons to would-be journalist entrepreneurs as well. I e-mailed Kos about his book, and point out some of its many lessons, after the jump. More...
3 Comments | Archive LinkWhat can news publishers learn from the Obama campaign?November 5, 2008Congratulations to everyone who worked late into the night Such as, oh, say, building readership for a news website. What can news publishers learn from the Obama campaign? Lots. Republicans mocked Obama's experience as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. But Obama's community organizing skills defined his campaign. I think that the single best piece of political journalism this fall came from Zack Exley at the Huffington Post, with this examination of Barack Obama's volunteer-driven ground campaign. You can sell a lot more than a presidential campaign this way, too. Even newspapers and websites. More...
2 Comments | Archive LinkOJR launches week-long look at the state of local online news start-upsOctober 24, 2008Next week OJR will present a special week-long series examining the state of online local news start-ups. We've looked at this "grassroots" or "hyperlocal" media in the past, but as each year passes more journalists are thinking about, and starting, these local news sites. The absence of a replicable, sustainable business model over the past few years isn't stopping journalists and non-journalists alike from launching websites to cover their communities. From San Diego to St. Louis to Chappaqua, N.Y., budding nonprofits are seeking footholds in their local markets. A few for-profit ventures are in the mix as well, betting that further declines at traditional media businesses will create new openings for their startups. They come in all sizes and shapes, from mom-and-pop shops focused on a single community concern, to seven-figure operations that attempt to reflect wide civic interests. While nearly all of the sites struggle to find advertising dollars, the number of communities served by online-only news operations continues to grow. David Westphal of the USC Annenberg School for Communication begins his six-part review on Monday, with an Q&A with Scott Lewis and Andrew Donohue of Voice of San Diego, a site OJR first looked at three years ago. More...
2 Comments | Archive LinkWhat Doonesbury's Rick Redfern did wrongOctober 22, 2008Last week I enjoyed reading about one of America's most famous investigative reporters making the transition from print staffer to independent blogger. I am writing, of course, about Rick Redfern, the fictional Washington Post reporter from Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip. [You can find the strips on the Doonesbury website.] For those not now following the strip, Redfern, a long-time WaPo veteran in Trudeau's world, was laid off earlier this autumn and is now launching his own blog, a scenario not uncommon among many "real world" journalists. Fishing for tips, he chooses to launch the blog with an anecdote about Barack Obama playing basketball with U.S. troops in the Middle East. The beauty of fiction is what it can tell us about our real lives. Here are three things Trudeau's Rick Redfern did wrong in launching his blog, keeping him from better immediate success online (or, from losing his gig with the WaPo in the first place): More...
7 Comments | Archive LinkOnline technology can help any website use people, not pundits, to drive public debateOctober 17, 2008My mind spent much of its thoughts this week on the U.S. presidential campaign - specifically, on this week's, final, debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. What inspires me to write this piece, though, is the disconnect between some of the hired pundits who watched, and reacted to, the debate and the "snap" polls conducted of viewers after the event. CNN's John King, for one, called the debate for McCain, only to have his own network's snap poll show that the viewers, resoundingly, thought Obama the winner. That got me thinking about the opinion sections that many newspapers run in print, and on their websites. Many now run Web polls where any reader can click to vote which candidate won a debate or to show which position on an issue they support. These polls of self-selected readers can be useful in eliciting discussion, but are worthless in providing good data about the public's collective opinion on something. But online polls don't have to be garbage. The same technology can be tweaked easily to enable a previously selected, demographically balanced, random sample of individuals to log in and record their votes on an issue, such as a local candidates' debate. So, why not? More...
5 Comments | Archive LinkThe secret to a successful online guerrilla marketing campaign?October 10, 2008So what's the secret to building huge traffic for your news and information website, without having to pay for a huge promotion staff and advertising budget? Obviously, you need a guerrilla marketing campaign, one that encourages people to spread the word about your site, making it a viral sensation. But how can you motivate people to do that promotional work for you? I'll share the secret to successful guerrilla marketing online in a moment. But first, I want to assure you that journalists can make money online by running their own websites. Reporters such as Rafat Ali and Josh Marshall have gotten plenty of notice for their successes, but I've also found many other publishers, through forums such WebmasterWorld, who are making a more modest, but still comfortable, living from their own websites.
8 Comments | Archive LinkNewspapers need to learn that great online communities should not be dictatorshipsOctober 3, 2008I had a conversation yesterday with a former colleague, who, like many online journalists, is trying to steer his newspaper toward a more Web-savvy future. As we were wrapping up, he mentioned that he had to go to a meeting of his paper's "standards and practices" committee. The what? I asked. "Yeah, we have a standards and practices committee," he said. "We're supposed to figure out policies about managing user-generated content, hyperlinking and stuff like that." Why don't you just crowdsource that? I asked. He rolled his eyes, said "I know," then proceeded to detail some of the reasons why the paper's old guard had shot down his proposal to do just that. The reasons boiled down to two: 1) We don't trust outsiders to know what we ought to be doing, so 2) we're not comfortable letting "outsiders" influence decisions about internal operations. What a wasted opportunity. What better way to help readers feel part of a community with the paper than to ask those readers to help craft the community's rules? More...
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