Jim Chastain series reaches Chapter Two status
Chapter Two of the Jim Chastain series published in The Oklahoman on Sunday.
In case you missed it, check out the Jim Chastain page on NewsOK. It has a great design (creative director Scott Horton), great videos (photographer John Clanton), great writing (reporter Ken Raymond), great blog and — most of all — an outstanding person of focus.
Projects like these are interesting, because they highlight the talent for rich, deep coverage on a topic or subject.
Sure, we know that breaking news, political shenanigans, weather, crime and sports drive a lot of interest and traffic on NewsOK.com. But even in our changing industry, projects like “Life is Real” can give us a sense of duty and make a long-term difference in the lives readers around the world.
But the purpose of this post is really just to ask you to read Chapter Two because it’s really, really good.
Oscar night showcases entertainment depth on NewsOK
Sunday night was a big night for NewsOK.
It was the Super Bowl for the motion picture industry — The Oscars.
I watched it. I also read the live chat with George Lang and Matt Price during the show.
Sure, I was curious if “Milk” or “Slumdog Millionaire” would win the Best Picture. But I really wanted to know if Mickey Rourke (aka – the John Daly of the movie industry) would win an award.
NewsOK covered this show as thoroughly as we’ve ever covered it. Frankly, our visitors have made it very clear that they want more entertainment content online. Our most-views blogs reports every day/week/month are dominated by our entertainment blogs, so we’re making a very public effort to focus on entertainment content online in every way possible.
You will see more text, blogs, chats, videos and more throughout 2009.
This Sunday was just one example.
- Fashion Editor Linda Miller was Twittering her thoughts about the Oscars fashion show.
- Brandy McDonnell was blogging live as the show unfolded. She leads the world (OK … she leads the NewsOK world) in live blogging for an event.
- George and Matt were communicating with our visitors on NewsOK with a live chat. We had more than 100 people on the chat.
- We had a photo gallery from the Red Carpet.
- We had a photo gallery from the show.
- We had a photo gallery on the fashion, plus Linda Miller’s thoughts on the choices.
- We even had Kayne Gillaspie in studio to talk about the fashion (note his take on Mickey Rourke).
I could link to more items all afternoon, but I’ll stop there.
Just be warned. There is more entertainment coverage on the way.
Unusual Thursday on NewsOK.com
NewsOK.com gets really good traffic on a daily basis.
But we got an extra boost on Thursday.
It started when we posted our article about Chip Harrison and his unfortunate run in with an Oklahoma City police officer.
It was an interesting read, that’s for sure.
And it went viral – first on the Drudge Report, and then on Yahoo! Buzz.
Traffic soared for that article far beyond what is normal for the daily NewsOK audience. We doubled our normal Thursday traffic.
We had more than 1,400 comments on that article, alone
That’s good – and it’s another example of our new world. Our audience isn’t just Oklahomans or people interested in Oklahoma. It’s the entire world – and they can all join in to our conversation.
We will continue to focus on news and information as it relates to Oklahoma and Oklahomans. But we are always prepared to host a story that has world-wide implications, interest and audience.
New videos added to sports pages
NewsOK.com added more beef to its basketball coverage this week.
We partnered with AthletixNation, allowing us to embed their video content – namely Big 12, Pac 10 and SEC basketball and football highlights — on our Web site.
What does that mean for you?
It’s simple math …. you now get a lot more video than you did a week ago.
NewsOK has been producing lots of video highlights and analysis for OU and OSU basketball games for well over a year now. But we haven’t been able to cover every game in the Big 12. And we sure didn’t get the highlights of the Arizona State-USC game from the other day.
But now we have those highlights.
Check out the NewsOK Sports page for these videos every day. We also have the highlights on our OU page and our OSU page.
Tornado coverage goes live on NewsOK
We planned for possible severe weather coverage on Tuesday morning.
We transitioned from possible severe weather coverage to big time severe weather coverage Tuesday afternoon.
We took shelter as the storm approached our building (but we worked to inform you in our makeshift basement offices).
We chased the storm with a video crew live on NewsOK.
We chatted about the storm live on NewsOK.
We blogged breaking news headlines live on NewsOK.
We allowed the public to report about the storm (via Twitter) live on NewsOK.
We were in high demand live on NewsOK, nearly bursting through our bandwidth ceiling (and trust me, we have a LOT of room on our site for a LOT of traffic).
In the end, we had a record-breaking day for on-demand traffic on NewsOK.com on Tuesday.
And that was all for a live storm in the middle of the day.
Then the day took a turn for the worse on Tuesday night when another tornado killed eight in Lone Grove.
And when news turns tragic and the public demands information as it becomes available, they turn to NewsOK.
Which is why we broke another record on Wednesday. NewsOK.com became the place to visit to find out everything about the tragic events of the night before.
Bottom line: We covered it live, then we covered the devastation.
We hope we kept you informed when you needed to be informed, that’s all.
Grammys are gone; Oscars coverage on alert
The Grammys were last night.
I didn’t see a second of the show. I missed the whole thing. Didn’t matter, though. I got the full recap on NewsOK.com, thanks to George Lang’s StaticBlog. Good stuff there — great images, great commentary and lots of comments from our visitors.
Now that the Grammy’s are over, it’s time to focus on the Oscars in13 days. You can get focused right here on NewsOK. We have all the coverage, and it’s going to start getting serious in the next few days.
If you really want to see what you know about the world of movies, join our Oscars contest. Make your picks on all the big awards that will be given out on Feb. 22.
But the coolest thing about our Oscars coverage will be the night of the event. We will have a live chat during the show – our experts will be giving their thoughts about the awards as they are handed out. And Brandy McDonnell (BAM) will be blogging live, as well.
I won’t miss the live show on Feb. 22. With NewsOK, it will be more than a mere televised event.
Missing links on Signing Day coverage
We covered college football signing day yesterday. It’s always a sizable traffic driver for NewsOK.com during what is traditionally one of our slower months of the year (we would prefer giving February another couple of days every year).
We’re proud of all the live coverage – the live chat, the press conferences from Norman and Stillwater. We did lots of video analysis from inside our studio, as well. Plus, we had text bios on all the players that signed with OU and OSU. It was good stuff, and the traffic showed that users liked it (check out all the videos, chats, articles and blogs here).
However, we had two questions from our users – both via e-mail to my colleagues.
Is the paper going to publish (online) a list of where all the Oklahoma students have chosen to sign a letter of intent? I believe this was the practice when I lived in Oklahoma and since I’m a Dallas resident I was hoping to see where the players in my home state chose to attend.
Yes. Here is the full list of Oklahoma high schoolers who signed on Wednesday.
Is there anywhere on newsok.com that I can find a list of high school football players who signed at any other universities besides OU and OSU?
Yes. It wasn’t listed in a prominent place on the Signing Day page, but it is now. Here’s the direct link to football players who signed with other state colleges.
YOU! page on NewsOK provides break from busy news
I’m taking a moment in this slow February news day (slow, that is, if you’re not Tom Daschle or any other Obama nominee) to show off the page we recently revamped in our Life section.
The YOU! tabloid is a popular section produced 
by The Oklahoman’s Features department every Thursday. It began a few years back after some brainstorming, some prototyping and some persistence from features editor – Sonya Colberg.
And I know exactly how popular the tabloid section is. You see, I recently spent about one year serving as our director of custom publishing, which among other things, supervised YOU! and other features and special publications. During that year, we received many complaints after we had a moment of brilliance and decided to print the Sports Monday tab section and the YOU! tab section back-to-back on Mondays.
Brilliant idea … unless, it seemed, you were a YOU! reader whose husband always tore through and monopolized the Sports section. Yes – we had some angry wives who disagreed with our brilliance (and yes – I was firmly planted and on board the Brilliance Express).So when we redesigned the newspaper last year, we moved the section to Thursdays and released it from the Sports monopoly. Chalk one up for angry wives.
And a few weeks ago, we took another step. Sonya didn’t think the YOU! page online properly represented the focus of the content. She’s persistent, you know, and now – with the help of one of our web editors, Marcy Williams, the YOU! page is more organized for our users.
Granted, it’s not a high-traffic page. But it can be. There’s some great stuff there. I ran into Jackie Papandrew’s column from last week (who doesn’t click on the headline, “Men confused by bikini babes, golden tickets“?). She’s funny.
David Zizzo’s columns are always funny, too (but be warned — he rarely writes about bikini-clad singers). OK – I’m not giving that enough credit. Zizzo is a major league writer – one of the best on our staff. His weekly columns are a real treat.
And Charlotte Lankard’s columns always provide a great perspective to our busy lives.
I make the YOU! page a destination every few days. I’m always pleased with something entertaining and enlightening to read. I’m sure you will be, too.
