Obituary-Bobby Ray Miller-pioneer in web publishing for Reuters

Bobby Ray Miller, a Reuters New Media consultant in the 1990s, died on March 19 in Falls Church, Virginia, after a lengthy illness. He was 84. 

Following a long career in editorial and management roles at UPI, he designed and produced Reuters Target News, a major innovation that allowed Reuters to customise its news feeds to meet the requirements of Web publishing.

In the mid-1990s, on the cusp of the Big Bang -- the birth and explosive growth of the World Wide Web -- Reuters was looking for an edge.  

The Associated Press, handcuffed by newspaper owners nervous about their content feeding the competition, and Dow Jones -- likewise fearful of weakening its grip on financial news distribution, seemed unsure about their respective roles in the new medium.

Following Reuters long tradition of aggressive, risk-taking moves, managers at Reuters New Media in the United States agreed an innovative course of action: selling customized news feeds to the widely diverse - and burgeoning - world of web publishing.

Some 30 years ago, however, there was yet to be developed software that could effectively handle a "fire hose" of Reuters worldwide general news content, then identify, extract and deliver topic-specific stories.

What Reuters needed was a middleman, someone who knew news, understood publishers and had the tech skills to manage the fire hose. Enter Bobby Ray Miller, a former long-time editor at United Press International.

Bobby became the first "agent" of what Reuters would call Target News. The decision to bring him on board as a consultant proved as important and successful as the agreement to create a customized news service itself.

Bobby's previous two decades at UPI included both editorial and management roles. He wrote the U.S. agency’s style guide and his wry sense of humour made it entertaining as well as essential. A former colleague said the guide included this entry: "A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference."

 In the space of just a few years, Target News became a leading service offered by Reuters.  It was sold to scores of online publishers whose content requirements ranged from the earthly to the esoteric. 

And it was Bobby Ray Miller, often working seven days a week, who launched, nurtured and continuously strove to improve the accuracy of Target News. 

Eventually, technology and an online team of deskers were employed to replace the work of one amazing editor.

Bobby is survived by Jill, his wife of 48 years and a former UPI and Reuters editor, daughter Lindsay Doering and her husband Christopher, son Mark and his wife Allison and four granddaughters. ■