Trouble in Turn2

This week it’s time to learn more about blogger Mike Pratt [update: Mike Nelson was Ryan Newman’s former crew chief, apologies to Mike Pratt]. You might recognize him as RyanNewmanFan, where he works hard to aggregate anything relating to Ryan Newman and Team Penske.

How long have you blogged?I have only been blogging for about 1 year. I think I started the first Ryan Newman News and Information page at the end of March last year.

Why do you blog? Or what made you start blogging? I decided to start a Ryan Newman Fan blog because I was tired of scouring the internet looking for any news that I could about Ryan Newman and Penske Racing. I could find the info, but I really wished that it was all laid out in one location. I decided there had to be other Ryan Newman fans that wanted the same thing. I knew nothing (and probably still don’t) about blogging or running a website. But I try to have as much information about Ryan Newman on my site as possible. In fact it could be said that it has become obsessive.

Where do you blog from? I live in Mason, Michigan (about 40 minutes north of MIS). I do a lot from home. I may do some from work.

How long have you been a NASCAR fan?I have always liked NASCAR as a very casual fan. That was limited to watching part of races and news highlights. I have become a die hard NASCAR fan in the last 5 years or so.

What made you become a fan? Alltel actually bought the company that I worked for. Once I was an Alltel employee I started watching the Alltel car/Ryan Newman. Before I knew it I was completely hooked on NASCAR….hook, line and sinker. And I stayed a Ryan Newman fan because he just seems like a genuinely good guy.

Do you attend races, and which ones? Actually, I have yet to attend a race. It seems like every race that comes here, I have something else going on. This year I am getting married the weekend after June MIS and my fiancée informs me we will be to busy (I agree by the way). But, she promises we will go for the August race.

What do you enjoy about your blog and the NASCAR blogging community? I like the fact that if someone wants some information about Ryan Newman, they only need to come to my page. And I have hopefully been making it easier for them to stay on my page longer. I have added a NASCAR News section with NASCAR headlines from various sources. I figure if people are coming to my page, they might as well stay there.

Another thing that I really like, is that it seems like every time I get frustrated or “down” with the site, that is when I get an email out of the clear blue thanking me for having such a great Ryan Newman fan site.

The NASCAR community is great. For the most part all the bloggers are nice. It is a community where you don’t see a lot of people yelling at one another. I am sure it happens, but overall a very nice community.

Is there anything you don’t enjoy about blogging, or the NASCAR online community?I can’t say there is anything I don’t enjoy about blogging. It is very time consuming for me. Not with writing posts or anything, but I have done a lot of work teaching myself code to have the stats and stuff on my page update automatically in case I can’t get to it right away. And FYI, it may be working, but it is not the most efficient….so I will be working on that!

I have tried numerous times to contact people at different organizations with questions that I have about Ryan Newman or Penske Racing. But I think being an unofficial site, they don’t bother to respond.

Recently I tried contacting the Ryan Newman Foundation about them helping me to “sponsor” a fund raiser for their organization. The only help I really needed/wanted was to make sure that they collected the money (Not me) and if they could keep track of how much came via my site. They never responded. I am going to try again but I am not holding my breath. But that is just an example of some frustration of being an unofficial site or “blog”. Nobody is in a hurry to get back to you.

How much time per day do you spend blogging? My laptop is usually up and running after the kids go to bed around 8 pm. I shut it off at midnight when I go to bed. I am usually busy “fiddling” with the site, browsing the news, browsing the blogs and then back to fiddling with the site.

Then of course that is not including the time I MAY spend on it while at work.

You obviously focus primarily on one driver, does that make it harder or easier to write content? I only recently started writing my own content. When I first started it was pretty much a cut and paste operation of Ryan Newman news. That was my goal. Get all the Ryan Newman news in one location. But recently I have been reading those articles and then doing my own write up. I like doing that a lot better. To answer the question, over all I think it is harder. Being a Ryan Newman based website, I try to stick to just that. If there is no news coming out about Newman, then really there is not a whole lot for me to write about. At those times I will can/will write about his stats or something interesting that I may have heard.

Recently you also started a photo site for NASCAR fans. How has that experience been? NASCAR Pics is what I have named it. Wish I would have named it a little different because I would like people to go there and upload ANY racing pictures that they might want to share. It has been slow. I don’t know what I really expect from that site. But my hopes are that people will treat it like a Photo Bucket for racing pictures. Any kind of racing pictures would be great.

Is there one thing that was key to your blog’s success? Well, as soon as I moved my blog to my own domain I opened a message board. I think I had about 5 people sign up rather quickly. I knew about the message boards at ryannewmanonline.com so I headed over there and posted something about my boards being opened.

Dave, who ran those boards, contacted me shortly after. He wanted to know if I wanted to join forces. Use my page as the front page for his boards, and make his boards part of my site. This was a win-win situation. I did not really have time to keep up with the boards as well. Dave’s homepage was seriously behind in the news and stats because he didn’t have time to keep up with that anymore.

So we joined and I am the front page for RNO (Ryan Newman Online). If you go to ryannewmanonline.com or RNO.com you will get directed to my page. That alone made my stats for daily site visitors really go up. There are almost 1700 members registered on those boards.

Name something cool that has come as a result of your blog. There have been a couple of things that I thought were cool. One is when Kodak gave me (and other bloggers) the opportunity to give away tickets to last Septembers race at California. I had fun doing that. And I had only had my site up for about 4 months or so maybe.

One of the coolest things just has to be hearing from Ryan Newman fans that like my site. It is a big motivator.

Do you have any strange or funny stories about your blog (funny or outrageous comments or emails from people, etc.)? I don’t really have any strange or funny stories. I get a lot of emails from people that think I am Ryan Newman. Those email are anywhere from downright sad to extremely funny. I have had old high school buddies of Ryan Newman’s contact me thinking I was Newman. I have charities contacting me to help out with auctions that they are having, wanting me (Ryan Newman) to donate stuff for them. And I have had some heart wrenching emails that I won’t get into. I reply to them all and let them know that this is not Ryan Newman’s site, just a fan site.

If you could change one thing about NASCAR what would it be? Change something about NASCAR? I don’t know if I am knowledgeable enough to comment on that. I know I don’t like the top 35 rule at all. I think it should be a lot smaller than that. Something seems wrong to me that a driver can have an awesome qualifying run, but due to the top 35 rule he does not get into the race.

What is something your readers wouldn’t otherwise know about you or your blog?
The first thing that comes to mind is how much my fiancée helps me out. She does a lot of little things that add up to a whole lot for me. She basically put together the Ryan Newman Bio that is on my page. She proof reads almost everything for me. Even with spell check my spelling is still horrible, not to mention my grammar. She put together the ryannewmaninfo MySpace page which has been a great success. And she puts up with me constantly working on the website.

On the registered user thing, I would like for everyone to stop by and register. I don’t use that information for anything what so ever. I just like displaying the number of registered users. Maybe one day I can refer to that number when it gets large enough. Maybe tell the Ryan Newman Foundation that I have 1,000,000,000 registered users, if are they interested in a fund raising drive.