The day started out like any other, but it would end with lingering sorrow felt throughout the nation.

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The days of posting anonymous comments on NewsOK are no more. Digital Managing Editor Alan Herzberger announced Tuesday morning that the site will be switching to Facebook commenting.

“We care about the conversation. We care so much about the conversation that we are willing to give up quantity for quality. We expect this change to result in fewer comments on our site. But we also expect this change to encourage more users to participate. And we’re confident that we will see more constructive discourse about issues in Oklahoma.” – Herzberger

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Will buying concert tickets online soon get a little easier for Twitter users?

Mashable reports: Twitter users who own American Express cards can get their hands on concert tickets for rock band Soundgarden by syncing their cards and tweeting “#AmexSoundgardenTix.”

American Express’s handle, @AmexSync, will respond and give users an access code to purchase two pre-sale Soundgarden tickets. The deal is part of American Express’s discounts program that launched earlier this year.

According to the Mashable,

The program works like this: Cardholders go tosync.americanexpress.com/twitter to sync their card with their Twitter account. Then, when they tweet various “special offer” hashtags (like “#amexcoffee” for instance), couponless savings are loaded onto their cards.

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Despite a decline in newspaper and magazine readership, television news has been able to hold onto viewers. But a growing platform is now threatening TV’s audience.

The InterWebs. The World Wide Web. The digital space. The online sector. The…OK, I’m done.

Back to my point.

The Pew Research Center released a news consumption report Thursday, analyzing readership on various platforms. The report found that “the changing demographics in the TV news audience are particularly noticeable in the audiences for local and cable news.”

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Has verifying a reader’s photo ever stopped you from publishing it? If so, you might be in luck.

The website TinEye allows you to search for images, find out where they originated, how they are being used and if a modified version of the photo exists. It’s also a good way to check and make sure your own work hasn’t been altered or reused by another publication without credit.

You can start by uploading a photo or providing a url to the image. Either way, TinEye will crawl the Internet for duplicates.

According to its website, TinEye has already indexed 2, 180,913,080 images from the Web. It also has a Cool Search page that displays some of the interesting photos it has come across online.

Check out the site and let me know what you think. So far, I think it has the potential to be a great resource for journalists and publications, especially as we use more user-generated content.

In June, I wrote about how The Oklahoma Daily was planning to scale back its print edition and continue as a digital-only publication for the summer. The benefit of scaling back would allow the staff to tinker with work flows and kickoff the university’s year-long study to generate reader feedback.

OU officials reversed their decision about going online-only for the summer, but they moved forward with a reader study. The first discussion is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Governors Room in Oklahoma Memorial Union.

According to the study’s wordpress blog,  the goal of the first session is to learn how readers stay informed about what’s happening on campus. Is it through mobile? Blogs? Web? Print? All options need to be explored.

As someone interested in media and news consumption, I urge students to attend the discussion and help these journalists figure out the best platform to present their work and provide information.

Also, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the study. Comment below and let me know if you think it’s a step in the right direction for OU student media.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I just got back from the Associated Press Media Editors conference in Nashville.

I spent three days with editors across the country, learning about how to manage staff, incorporate new media into coverage and the importance of using social media. I have a lot of notes and will be posting a little about each session as the week goes on.

For now, I’m looking for watchdog journalists who use social media to help with investigative stories. Do you use them as source-building tools? For tips? Etc. I’d like to chat about how certain networks can help when reporting on these types of stories that are essential to our communities.

If you know of anyone, shoot me an email at tgibson@opubco.com.

- Thanks

The chief digital officer for The Washington Post and Oklahoma native, Vijay Ravindran, stopped by The Oklahoman newsroom Friday to discuss some of the initiatives his team is working on.

When the multimedia showcase was announced earlier this week, I knew it was something I couldn’t miss. I’ve been following some of the Post’s products for awhile and was eager to hear about new projects the paper is working on.

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The New York Times has given readers a new way to view photos by making them come alive on a web page.

The paper used three moving images Tuesday in a story about the Statue of Liberty. Each one has very subtle movement but allows readers to see the movement of water, trees and a bird flying over the head of Lady Liberty.

Culture Editor Julie Bloom told The Atlantic Wire that the videos are html 5 videos.

“They shot video using a 5dmii and extracted sequences to look like photographs with a bit of motion. They are supposed to feel like moving photographs. They are looped silently and placed in a slide show player.” – The Atlantic Wire

What do you think of using this graphic format on NewsOK? Share your thoughts below.

The New York Times launched a Chinese-language website Thursday to provide readers in China with coverage of business, culture and world affairs.

The site is said to grow in scope and functionality over the course of the next several months and will be edited specifically for readers in China.

The Times reports:

The goal of the new site is to provide China’s growing number of educated, affluent, global citizens with high-quality coverage of world affairs, business and culture.  The site will be edited specifically for readers in China, presenting translations of the best of The Times’s award-winning journalism alongside original work by Chinese writers contributing to The Times. 

The New York Times is committed to serving readers around the world with journalism of the highest quality.