Robert Niles
Pasadena, 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.
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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.
November 20, 2009
I've attended many journalism conferences over the years, but our industry offers nothing like the event I attended this week. As many of you might know, my primary job these days is running a theme park news website that I founded nearly a decade ago. So this week I drove up to Las Vegas for the theme park industry's largest annual event, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions' Expo.
What does this have to do with journalism, you ask? Nothing.
Which is everything. (Hang with me, okay?)
Wednesday afternoon, a source I've had a good relationship with introduced me to several former Walt Disney Co. employees who are now legends within the theme park industry. Each worked with Walt Disney himself, and had gathered for a panel discussion about Walt's management style. The question they were to answer was... what could Walt Disney's approach toward management teach today's industry leaders?
Plenty. And not just in the amusement business. Walt Disney's management philosophy contrasts sharply with contemporary management practices in the news industry, especially within "legacy" media companies. Might I suggest that difference in long-standing management tradition helps explain the sharp contrast between the recent financial performance of the Walt Disney Company and the newspaper industry? Disney today enjoys a market capitalization of nearly $55 billion, and its share price is up 13% over the past five years.
How many newspaper companies can report that?
So let's look at how Walt did things, and compare that with how things are done in the news business. More...
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November 13, 2009
Thank you to everyone who sent along comments about my last piece,
Starting your news website: A checklist for students and mid-career beginners. In response to a few comments, today I'm going more in-depth on how to most effectively use a promotional channel for a news website - specifically, how to get the most from Twitter.
A Twitter feed provides one more forum for you to show the best of your site's work to an audience. Ideally, the Twitter feed should encourage people to click to your website, as well as to use their Twitter feeds to spread the word about your feed (and your website and brand), to other readers you haven't attracted yet.
Again, these tips are designed for beginners to social media - journalism students or mid-career legacy media journalists who are making the switch to online publishing. If you are an online news veteran, well... click the comment button and share your best advice, too! More...
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October 29, 2009
My post today is intended for students, mid-career journalists or anyone else thinking about starting an online news site, but without the faintest idea of how to start.
Here is your guide and checklist.
Now, I'm assuming that you already know how to report and how to write. I'm not covering that. Nor will I be getting into more advanced issues surrounding how to manage a business that includes contractors, freelancers and employees. Those are topics for other days. Today's post simply provides a check-list of technical tools that you'll need to get a basic, one-person news site on the Web, to lay a foundation for future expansion and success. More...
7 Comments | Archive Link
October 28, 2009
With print newspaper circulations crashing faster than the reality-TV hopes of
Balloon Boy's family, you could forgive newsroom managers for chasing every available source of new readers. For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the
Google News index.
Get in Google News, and links to your stories will be e-mailed to millions of Google's news alert subscribers, whenever your stories hit the right keywords. Post a hot story quickly, and you could end up on Google News' highly clicked front page.
But is inclusion in that index or other search engines' news indices really worthwhile for the majority of online news publishers? I'm going to argue... no. (Well, at least it's not worth making a fuss over.) More...
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October 16, 2009
Can you do journalism and not be a "journalist"?
Do people declared "journalists" get special speech and press rights that other American citizens do not enjoy?
Can anyone enjoy the right to free speech and free publication, even if that individual is not a full-time professional reporter?
These are some of the important legal questions that American politicians and bureaucrats must confront now that the Internet has made possible for people other than employees of major media companies to reach large and widespread audiences.
In recent weeks, federal officials seems to be favoring a view that certain individuals enjoy more speech and publication rights than others. New regulations from the Federal Trade Commission and a proposed federal shield law create legal double standards for individuals creating information for the public - one for employees and contractors of media companies and another for everyone else, including self-employed publishers.
This split calls into question what the First Amendment means, and whom it was intended to protect. Henry Mencken famously said that "freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." But with the Internet making a "press" available to anyone for free, does that "press" have to be of a certain type, or reach a certain number of people, to qualify for First Amendment protection? More...
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October 2, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - If there's a theme to this year's Online Journalism Association conference, it'd be: "No More Whining."
Several of us have commented on the lack of the whining from newspaper-dot-com employees, which weighed down past ONA gatherings. Perhaps now, at long last, a tipping point of online news managers from traditional news companies have moved beyond the old print-driven model of trying to protect crumbling monopolies, and instead are now embracing competition, so that they may engage it.
Or, maybe, most of those folks got laid off and now they have no choice but to compete.
Either way, the focus has moved beyond protecting the past and on to finding one's way through the future. As Paul Bass of NewHavenIndependent.org said during a session yesterday, "The only people who think journalism are dying are working at dying news organizations." More...
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September 25, 2009
There are two types of advertisers in the world (in my experience, at least):
Those who track every placement, counting the clicks and conversions, to determine how much new revenue each placement generated, minus the cost of creating and running the ads.Those who buy an ad because they like the publication, and want to support what it does for the community.As a publisher, I thank all my advertisers and appreciate their support. But, man, oh man, I do love the second type.
For them, the decision to support a publication isn't simply an economic transaction - it's an act of passion. And passion is contagious. Someone likes what I'm doing so much that she's putting money down to support it, with no thought to whether she gets it back? Hey, if someone believes in me like that, I want to work even harder to justify that faith.
Those are the advertisers who buy banners on Little League and schoolyard fences. You'll find them in the back of community theater programs. For them, buying an ad is not simply like buying raw materials or supplies - an initial investment that enables greater return down the road. Sure, they're hoping for that, but for them, buying an ad also makes a statement - that they are a proud member of the community and spending their money to support other community institutions, as a result.
Now, to attract these community-minded advertisers, you can't think like the first type of advertisers yourself. If you're not contributing to the community, why should they contribute to you? If you see your relationships with advertisers as strictly dollars-and-cents, why shouldn't they feel the same way about you? More...
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September 18, 2009
The new semester is well underway at almost all the nation's journalism schools. Students have received their syllabi, explaining exactly what the school expects from its students during their courses.But what should students expect from their schools? Sure, they're getting classes and instruction, but those alone won't be enough for most journalism students. Their educations must extend beyond the classroom syllabus if they are to have the best chance to compete in what has become a brutally competitive information marketplace.
Unfortunately, that experience can "fall through the cracks" of a college education, if students do not seize the initiative to demand it. So here is my list of eight things I believe every journalism student must demand from his or her journalism school: More...
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