OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Curt Cavin

Indianapolis, Indiana

Homepage: http://blogs.indystar.com/racingexpert/

Curt Cavin, a staff reporter for the Indianapolis Star, has covered the Indianapolis 500 for more than 20 years.

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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.

Daily posts, perseverance make the difference in building newspaper blogs

October 15, 2008
[Editor's note: Sports fans whose memories extend more than 15 years will recall that Indy Car racing once was North America's most popular form of motor sport. But a split among rival sanctioning organizations robbed the sport of sponsors and fans, clearing the way for NASCAR to become one of the country's most popular sports.

But die-hard Indy fans endured and, for them, Curt Cavin's blog on the Indianapolis Star website has become the place to go to for daily coverage of the newly re-unified IndyCar Series. (Heck, I read it every day.) I asked Curt to share with OJR readers his experience in growing the blog. - Robert]

As a 20-year reporter for the Indianapolis Star, I had been doing a motor sports Q&A online weekly for about five years before I learned my company was tracking viewer traffic on its blogs and basing some coverage decisions on those numbers.

I was discouraged that my contribution never earned a spot in the newspaper's top 10 as the Indianapolis 500 is such a captivating and historical event for our community. Then I learned that my Q&A wasn't being considered a blog because it was written weekly and not in the true spirit of a blog.

To this day, I'm perplexed by what a blog actually is. Oh, sure, I understand the term and I grasp its definition, but at its core the entry is written communication. Regardless of its label, I knew people were reading what I was writing; I just had to prove it.

That day, I vowed to answer questions from readers each morning to see if that made a difference in the blog tracking. I figured if I answered a half-dozen questions after breakfast (and sometimes before), people could get in the habit of reading when they arrived at work.

A month later, the newspaper's next tracking report was distributed to the editors, and I snared a copy. More...

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