Comments now available on pharmacy shooting story
Our policy on comments on our articles is very clear.
It is not our intent to offer comments on crime or fatality stories.
It’s so clear that our users who regularly comment remind us of the policy if an article slips through the cracks. They know the policy as well as we do.
But sometimes, stories become bigger than a policy. Sometimes, the need to have a conversation exceeds the well-intentioned rule.
The Pharmacy Shooting story is the perfect example.
We were discussing the option of opening up the comments on this story yesterday. In the end, we launched a poll to allow users to weigh in on the subject.
Today, after seeing the interest continue to grow and the debate turning into a discussion about issues deeper than this one case, we knew we had to open a forum to let the voices of our audience be heard on this issue.
So we opened comments on this story on a separate page and embedded those comments on our ongoing coverage page of the story.
We want you to share your thoughts on this story. We know you have an opinion. It’s impossible not to have a unique viewpoint on this story.
But keep in mind the words of our Digital News Editor, Robb Hibbard, who wrote the intro to our commenting page for the pharmacy shooting:
Please note that commenters are expected to stay on topic and forward the conversation.
Simply put, we want this to be a place of intelligent discussion – not a place of threats and name-calling.
Get to know OPUBCO Communications Group
This description of this blog is “everything you ever wanted to know about NewsK.com.”
So it seems like I should push people here to our nDepth profile on our company – OPUBCO Communications Group.
We released it more than a month ago, but it’s not something that we would put at the top of the Web site as a lead story. But I can certainly tell you about it on my blog.
I wrote the text. Creative Director Scott Horton did the design. The video was produced by Dave Morris’ video team.
The nDepth site is pretty cool, showcasing what we do here — multimedia storytelling for consumers of news and information.
Coffee Break for a Tuesday recovery
Below are some highlights of all the videos you might have missed over the long weekend on NewsOK.com.
Dave Morris and Angi Bruss take us through the best videos with today’s Coffee Break:
Are Readers’ Choice nominations available on the iPhone?
Chuck posted a question as a comment on a blog I had a couple of days ago about our Readers’ Choice nomination page on NewsOK.com.
Why can’t I vote using my iphone? Can you help?
Actually, I think I can help. Sorry it took me a day or so, but I had to thoroughly investigate the problem (OK … I had to ask someone smarter than me).
The page actually does work on an iPhone, but if you clicked to it from my blog or from an e-mail or another location, it likely redirected you to our iPhone site – http://iphone.newsok.com/readerschoice – because we recognize the device and try to take you to the proper location.
That failed. The page doesn’t work, but you already knew that.
I recommend going to our page on the iPhone and selecting the link on the bottom to “View Classic NewsOK.com.” From there, you can easily visit http://www.newsok.com/readerschoice and use the forms.
That’s not the best solution for iPhone users — we know that. We actually hope to improve special pages like this on our iPhone site in the coming months as a renewed focus is placed on our mobile products.
Thank you for pointing out the need for improved interaction on the mobile products on pages like that. I hope you can get on there and nominate your favorites.
Coupon Queen series begins on NewsOK and in The Oklahoman
Jill Cataldo is The Coupon Queen.
And she’s starting her reign on NewsOK’s Life page. It’s a weekly column that is appearing every Wednesday in The Oklahoman’s Life section and simultaneously online at NewsOK.com.
We’re packaging it all together nicely on a page so readers can always go back and get the queen’s advice.
We also have links to other coupon royalty, including wimgo deals, the coupon princess and the Consumer Queen. We will continue to add to those links as we find them, pulling in as much information as we can find about saving money the old-fashioned way.
On the Line blog heating up from Afghanistan
I’ve written about the “On the Line” project before – where Mike Boettcher and Carlos Boettcher are risking their lives on the front lines in Afghanistan to tell the real stories of our soldiers serving our country.
But things are heating up now. I know because those are the exact words from Mike, the longtime war correspondent, in the email I received. He told me that he and his son are not on the front lines, and they saw something that needed fixed on the blog that we are hosting for them.
Things heating up here. I just fed a video of artillery firing at insurgent positions.
That e-mail woke me up …. just as I was eating my bagle sandwich in my comfy office.
Yes, Mike, I thought, we’ll get that fixed. That’s the least we could do. I’ll get someone to look at that as soon as I set down my sandwich as a group of soldiers fire artillery a half a world away at insurgents who would probably like to kill me and my family.
Thanks for putting things in perspective and keeping everyone informed about what’s happening on the other side of the world.
Here’s the video:
And here is a link to my previous blog post about the project.
Wayman Tisdale topic page shows archived coverage
Wayman Tisdale poses for a photograph before an afternoon practice session in 1982. Photo by David Longstreath.
I was in a meeting Friday morning when I learned of the Wayman Tisdale’s death.
I generally don’t become startled, but after seeing the update on twitter, via @NewsOK, I sat up and interrupted the meeting to look up the story on NewsOK.com on the conference room computer.
Over the next few minutes, the NewsOK Web editors built an extensive photo gallery and an enhanced topics page on Wayman Tisdale, while the sports department worked on videos, columns and more retrospective articles.
It turned into pretty good coverage, which can all be found on the aforementioned topics page.
That topics page came in pretty handy, especially since we just re-launched that feature last week. We saw the great benefits for having the archived coverage at a moment’s notice.
Today is a good day to go back and sift through that information, including stories that date way back into the mid-1980s, when Tisdale was ruling over the court at Lloyd Noble Center.
Readers’ Choice nominations available on NewsOK.com
It’s that time of year again. Readers’ Choice nominations.
I could spend a lot of time explaining it, but frankly, our Reader’s Choice page handles it pretty well.
Today, The Oklahoman announces its 2009 Readers’ Choice Awards. We want you, the reader, to nominate your personal favorites in each of our 180 categories under six major topics: Food, Lifestyles, Shopping, Community, Travel and Local People, Places and Things. As an example: under restaurants, give us your choice for best American food, best Chinese, or best place to have breakfast. Every time you nominate or vote, you enter yourself into the drawings.
We will be taking nominations until May 26. Voting on the finalists will begin on June 11. Results of the voting will be announced July 26.
But it all starts with your nominations, which, for the first time, you can do entirely online on NewsOK.com.
Topics pages launch on NewsOK.com
We launched something new this week. It’s called NewsOK Topics.
Basically, we’ve always had links to topics in many of our articles, but now we’ve packaged thousands of topics on an easily browsable page – from A to Z.
It’s a cool feature. Where else could you run across the latest articles and archived articles from NewsOK and around the world on people like Keith Urban, companies like Philip Morris International, Inc., or industries like the Electronics Sector.
Those are just a few of the thousands of topics pages.
But there will be even more. We will be incorporating more functionality to our Topics pages that we’ve turned into ‘know its’. We currently have 26 ‘know it’ pages on which we’ve enhanced the dynamic topics with focused coverage and resource guides from our News and Information Center. We will soon be showcasing new designs on those ‘know it’ topics and adding message board functionality for our users.
Stay tuned … and in the meantime, study our topics page on Sam Bradford. That should keep you busy for a while.
Going nDepth on NewsOK.com
You might have missed this last week:
Last Wednesday, we launched another installment of our nDepth series. This particular nDepth piece was a type we call a Story of the Ages — we tell a story that relates to Oklahoma’s history with a short documentary video and an explanatory written piece.
We’re particularly proud of this piece. It was designed by Matt Clayton and Todd Pendleton and written by Monica Albert. The voice over for the video was by none other than our editor Ed Kelley and the video editing was executed by Tanner Herriot.
The nDepth series is something everybody in the News and Information Center at OPUBCO Communications Group likes to participate in. It gives everyone a chance to tell a story in a new and interesting way.
Check this one out – it tells the story of “The Grapes of Wrath” author John Steinbeck and the way Oklahomans felt about the classic book 70 years ago and the way some feel about it now.
Then check out all the nDepth pieces we’ve put together. You’ll find yourself reading and watching mroe than you normally do.
That’s what good storytelling will do to you.
