OU-Florida on your iPhone
If you’re making the trip to Miami next week for the OU-Florida national championship game, you will need NewsOK by your side.
We built a special coverage page on our iPhone site to help you stay informed while you’re away from your desktop. You can keep up with Berry Tramel’s blog and the OU Sports blog, as well as seeing every story we publish while you’re running around in south Florida.
Our reporters will be posting their adventures and thoughts on Twitter, as well. Follow the NewsOK Sports group on Twitter, and post your own information to the #Sooners for everyone to see.
That’s right — Twitter.
We’re just trying to make it easy for you to take us with you to Miami. And you’ll be armed with the latest news as the Florida fans engage you in pleasant and productive conversation about the upcoming game.
NewsOK in 2008 – What you clicked on
We take this moment of silence – known as the week between Christmas and New Year’s – to take a look back at the year that was 2008.
From tornadoes to dog sex tapes to Thunder basketball to Sean Sutton’s firing to Nerdage made cool, it was a heck of a year.
And there’s no better way to review the year than to simply take a look at what the most popular articles, videos and blogs were throughout the year. Take a look for yourself.
CrimeWatch page reappears on NewsOK.com
Question from a NewsOK visitor:
I’m sure you hear this over and over again. I was wondering what happened to crime tracker. It was the best tool available to use when purchasing a house. Is there another site that is comparable to Crime Tracker?
Answer from me:
We’ve heard it. We’ve heard other complaints, too. Usually what we hear about our CrimeWatch page is that it’s not updated quickly enough or that we don’t have enough local cities with enough data.
The CrimeWatch page hasn’t been operational since we launched our newest redesign a couple months ago — until today. Coincidentally, our programmers were able to address that page during the slow period here on Christmas week. We were finally able to get this page back up.
Unfortunately, we still need to get more updated information. We have some decent data for Midwest City and Oklahoma City, but we lack the data from other area municipalities. We will start making phone calls again soon to the individual police departments.
The fact is, there’s no central place to gather this information. And not all the local police departments jump at the chance to send us the information. I know because in the past I’ve called all of them about this very data. They aren’t rude about it – but delivering the data to us in a timely and efficient manner doesn’t rank high on their priority list.
But now that the page is back, we can put it back on our priority list.
Commenting functionality gives visitors more control
We silently launched additional functionality on Thursday afternoon that some of our regular visitors noticed almost immediately.
It has to do with our commenting functionality.
Comments on our articles have been very successful for us for a few years now.
We get thousands of comments every day. Most are great. A few aren’t so great. But we don’t want the few to spoil it for the many.
From what I hear from others in the industry, NewsOK.com has been pretty liberal in our allowances on comments on our articles. We want the discussions to be as open as possible. But we are also a mature, grown-up site, so we have to have some laws.
Our Web editors look at every objection made by the masses. They look at them and weigh the issues. If the comment is making an unfair personal attack, uses foul language or is completely off topic, we likely will decide to take the comment off the site. And perhaps just as important as the rules above or in our policy, we ask our editors to use good old-fashioned common sense.
We also make it clear that on some articles, we don’t intend to allow comments. That includes articles on criminal issues or those of a sensitive nature.
For the most part, our visitors who choose to participate in commenting have been outstanding additions to the site. But we’ve seen the ugly side to commenting, as well – those who are participating only to childishly threaten, bully, annoy (or worse).
We’ve addressed issues as we’ve gone forward, and we’re committed to keeping the future of Oklahoma’s No. 1 news and information Web site a place to publicly discuss important issues that affect our community.
So, to make a long story short: Our additional functionality ….
A NewsOK visitor can now choose to ignore comments from specific individuals. In some cases, it might help filter out the noise on some articles. You will always see if comments have been made by visitors you’ve chosen to ignore (and you can read them if you wish), but you will be able to make that choice, now.
This won’t solve everything in the world of message boards, but we hope it helps.
I noticed that some of our regularly comments were rejoicing in the new “Ignore” links they saw on stories, so I know it didn’t go unnoticed.
Celebrity (Mickey Rourke and Mickey Rooney) news on NewsOK
The NewsO
We’ve started this daily focus because we’ve enhanced this page’s content with articles from Entertainment Tonight and Parade Magazine, as well as The Oklahoman’s articles and our own Gossip blogger – who I also read daily because he can tell me who shares a birthday with my 8-year-old son.
As a result, I’ve been checking out the page more often, and it’s become a favorite stop of mine.
Today, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article about Mickey Rourke on the page. I was so excited that I sent the link in an e-mail to my wife with the subject line, “Mickey Rourke is back!” …. to which she responded, “Is he still alive?”
She has not been briefed on the difference between Mickey Rooney and Mickey Rourke.
The point? The Celebrity Watch page should be a daily stop for NewsOK visitors who are interested in world affairs and city government, but will still read about the lives of celebrities (but will never admit in public to watching “The Hills.”)
I know … I don’t watch it either.
Really.
I don’t think a wedding in Mexico is legal in the U.S.
But I have no clue what you’re talking about.
Sam-Tastic and other pages from The Oklahoman
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1. Where can I buy a page of Sam Bradford flipping in the air against Oklahoman State?
2. Where can I buy Page 1 of the Sports page after Sam Bradford won the Heisman Tropphy?
3. Where can I buy a copy of the LOOKatOKC cover featuring the Thunder Girls?
All these questions came through from visitors using feedback area of the site (at the bottom of every page on NewsOK.com).
…..uh ……. OK ……. that’s a lie. The third question actually came from me.
But it doesn’t matter where they came from. The answer is the same. You can purchase special page prints and own a piece of history with just one simple click.
It might be too late for Christmas at this point, but it’s not too late for that post-Christmas “I-didn’t-forget-you” gift for that big sports fan (or the big Thunder Girls fan) in your life.
College Bowl game picks contest
Three things are always true during the college football bowl season.
1 – College football fans will comments on message boards and call in to talk radio to demand a college football playoff (I have my own theory, circa 1999).
2 – College football fans will complain about the terrible selection of bowl games.
3 – College football fans will make their picks for every bowl game, then proceed to watch all of them.
You can make your picks and compete with other NewsOK users through our U Pick’Em 2008 College Bowl Game Contest.
It’s OK to enjoy the bowl game and still wish that we had a true playoff system that still wouldn’t de-emphasize the regular season.
Sign up and enjoy. We won’t tell anyone.
Sam Bradford and the NewsOK footprint
It’s no secret that NewsOK visitors look at a lot of sports articles, videos and blogs on our Web site.
Just look at our most-viewed articles every day, and you will find sports stories, especially OU Sooners sports stories at the top of the list almost every day.
So needless to say that when something big happens in the sports world in Oklahoma, NewsOK makes certain it’s ready to cover it as much as possible. Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night …
- We had the breaking news article.
- We sent the breaking news e-mail alert.
- We sent the breaking news text alert.
- We blogged about it.
- We updated the Heisman Trophy coverage page.
- We posted the video of the awards presentation, complete with Billy Sims’ analysis.
- We dissected Sam Bradford’s NFL future.
- The Oklahoman put together some great pages for our print readers (pages that, incidentally, you can purchase online so you can “own a piece of history“).
I write all this just to make it clear that NewsOK can cover sports like no other media outlet. We have a ton of stuff to read, watch or discuss. And this is just one story! Wait till we cover something more complicated than one sophomore quarterback winning one award — something, like say, a three-way tie for the Big 12 South title.
I also write all this because I feel compelled to prove that I covered a Sam Bradford football game on Nov. 6, 2003 for The Oklahoman while I was moonlighting as a high school football sports reporter. The game story I found had no mention of Slingin’ Sam’s name, which is really an indictment of some weak reporting skills. But his Putnam North team lost the very next week, so I’m pretty sure he was the quarterback who handed the ball off to Deji Karim for his five touchdown runs that night.
I’d like to say that I remember that the quarterback that night was a star in the making. But what I really remember was that the game was such a blow out that they used a running clock in the second half – and it was the fastest game I had ever witnessed.
But I was there.
NewsOK’s Christmas Spirit
It’s mid-December.
That means we have to officially begin scrambling for our Christmas planning.
Shopping. Travel. Time off work. Food preparations.
And more shopping.
But we had plan here at NewsOK for quite awhile. That’s why we launched our Christmas coverage page a couple weeks ago.
Photos, videos, slideshows, articles …. you name it. We also have all of our
As the holiday get’s closer, NewsOK can help you get in the Christmas spirit.
Ho.
Ho.
Ho.
He’s the type of guy who likes to roam around
I saw The Wanderer this weekend.
No, not that guy …. This guy.
NewsOK.com’s Wanderer is Steve Barrymore, the former national advertising manager at OPUBCO Communications Group. And for the past few months, he’s been blogging on NewsOK about his travels.
After seeing Steve at the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Christmas Gala last Friday, I decided to look more closely at his blog.
I came to this conclusion: We have a ton of cool things on our site that so many of our users may not even be aware of. The Wanderer blog is a great read – lots of photos and specific details about his travels in Latin America. I like the photos, but I felt like I was there as he told the story of missing the bus at in Villahermosa.
Who knew an advertising guy could be such a good writer?
