History has been cruel to the original promise of online publications.
At the dawn of the personal computer era, it seemed that anything was possible: Online connection, community, infinite databases and the erasure of geographic boundaries pointed to a freer, frictionless, better-informed world. Stu Rohrer’s hands-on pursuit of these ideals over four decades, annotated here, provides a store of lessons learned and a veteran producer’s catalog of what works — and what doesn’t — in the online world.
Crowd-sourcing the Academy Awards. 22nd anniversary edition, 2026. Assemble an online mob of movie lovers and turn them loose to predict the Oscar winners, individually and as a group, and you’ll discover the power of the hive mind. Inspired by the 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
An oral history of 1,000 members of Yale alumni community told through personal profiles, survey results, archival photos, video and recordings. Sourced via 12 custom online surveys, and managed via Zoom staff meetings, this private and renewable resource has a life-affirming resonance among its participants.
The News Project, launched July 2019, assembled a world-class suite of technology and tailored services to empower journalists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and investors to launch high-impact news properties rapidly and operate them successfully. (Editorial director)
Guide for arts-curious consumers in an on-demand world, featuring movie and podcast recommendations. Launched November 2014.
Mag Rack & sportskool
As Vice President for New Media at Cablevision’s Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks) from 2001-2005, Stu was instrumental in development and launch of Mag Rack, one of cable TV’s first video-on-demand (VOD) channels. The channel delivered 250 short-form videos each month to passionate fans of motorcyles, photography, guitars and yoga, among other subjects, and reached more than 10 million TV households. Mag Rack was a national Emmy Award finalist in 2004 for “Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Television.”
ExpressNet from American Express
In 1994 for Ogilvy & Mather Interactive and American Express, Stu was a managing producer of the ExpressNet travel library on America Online–more than 50,000 searchable articles from Fodor’s and Frommer’s guidebooks and Travel & Leisure magazine. ExpressNet was named to “Best Online Destinations” by Home Office Computing magazine and a “4-Star Site” by NetGuide.
At Prodigy Services Company, a joint venture of CBS, Sears and IBM, Stu produced Baseball Manager, a fantasy baseball game (now operated by GameLine Sports) that collects and reformats real-life baseball statistics overnight to create imaginary game results for thousands of players. The New York Times review called it “so addictive … that thousands of otherwise normal people are willing to risk friendships, jobs and even marriages to pursue it.”
To syndicate custom healthcare information to employee desktops, Stu helped Martin Schneider develop a web publishing network that ultimately reached 40 corporate employee intranets, including WebMD, General Motors, Chevron and Lucent Technologies. (Acquired by ProAct Technologies Corp.)
News Corp/Delphi/MCI Internet Ventures
Stu served for a year as Vice President for Service Design at Rupert Murdoch’s would-be AOL-killer on the web
Stu helped to establish an umbrella brand for a federation of women’s web sites headquartered in New York City’s Silicon Alley. (Consulting producer)
TradingNews/M4Logic.com
Real-time alerts for 8,200 NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX stocks, delivered to smartphones (Executive producer)
The New York Times Company
Stu managed the online collection of NYT travel, movie and restaurant stories as features editor at Pulse, the newspaper publisher’s first foray into online services.
The Washington Post
Stu produced one of the newspaper industry’s first online editions from the Post’s newsroom.