Celebrity Watch page grows in content and popularity
I was in a meeting the other day with an OPUBCO Communications Group executive and a couple of others. We were discussing a few items about the way we treat and present content on a variety of our pages.
The Celebrity Watch page on NewsOK came up as an example.
Katherine Heigl is seen in this image taken from a daily photo gallery on NewsOK.com's Celebrity Watch page.
‘That’s my favorite page on NewsOK,” said the executive. He was referring to the layout of the page and the content within.
I can’t disagree much, either. The truth is, for a sub-section page deep inside NewsOK.com, The Celebrity watch page is loaded with great content.
We have articles from NewsOK and from content partners at the Associated Press, Entertainment Tonight and Parade. We have many new stories every day from those providers.
We also have our our Celebrity blogger, focusing on bringing new information every day to our local audience. That blog consistently ranks among the top 5 is daily traffic among those in the NewsOK blog network.
We’ve just recently added a daily slideshow through our partnership with Parade. It’s a new photo gallery every day full of celebrity fashion or sightings.
New photos, new articles, new slideshows, new blogs and new videos every day …. it’s no wonder it’s a favorite destination for many NewsOK users.
Plus, no where else can you see headlines like this:
Quentin Tarantino: Brad Pitt Is My Robert Redford
or this:
Rachel McAdams: Nudity Shouldn’t Be A Big Deal
You just can’t get these headlines on the Technology page in the Business section.
NewsOK launches new mobile site
We launched a new mobile site this weekend for all mobile platforms.
Now, NewsOK on your mobile device (including an iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre or any other device) is enhanced to make the experience better.
I carry a Blackberry Curve, and I love the new site, especially in comparison to the way we delivered articles to that device in the past. I can quickly see what the top stories are, plus scroll to see an entire list of articles in many different channels of content.
The site is still in Beta. We are still planning some improvements to the site, but here is the initial feedback (via twitter) we received on the day we launched – Friday, Sept. 21.
lovin it – much improved!
Thanks!
Awesome, I like it!
We like it, too.
Works great on Google phone. Needs a political or capitol tab
Good idea. I don’t see why we can’t add that.
colors are hard to read. headlines take up too much room. go back to the old one.
Talk about a buzz kill.
Looks good to me. I like the photos displayed with story menu. And it loaded fast on my iPhone.
That’s my favorite feature, as well.
great new site!
Glad you like it.
The new @NewsOK mobile website is usable! Good job guys!
Usable. Generally the nicest thing you can say about a mobile site.
Well done. I like it.
Thanks!
looks good to me!
We very much appreciate the exclamation points.
Thank you so much! I hated the way the old site truncated article titles. BTW you have a problem w/ image resizing on new site.
Hopefully, the image problem is a result of your browser caching.
looks good on my blackberry bold
Yeah for other Blackberry users.
High school fall sports day summed up in about one minute
This is a pretty cool video. It’s a quick (a very quick) look at all the high school athletes that were in our building here at OPUBCO on Thursday as we prepare to cover the fall high school sports.
Pay close attention to the names and faces. There will be a quiz after it’s finished. I memorized every name and face after watching it twice.
Today’s Paper page is improved and ready for more
We’ve had a link to “Today’s Paper” on our home page since we redesigned last October.
I thought today would be a good day to bring more attention to that page because we’ve recently focused on improving the experience once you are there and the experience of actually getting there.
If you are a daily newspaper reader, you’ve likely seen more notes in the newspaper driving our readers to the Today’s Paper page. Those notes have begun appearing more frequently because we’ve done some development work behind the scenes to make sure the experience on the Today’s Paper page is a good one.
Basically, the Today’s Paper page is designed to showcase articles from that day’s newspaper in a simple way. It’s also designed to showcase the multimedia elements (related links, videos, podcasts, slideshows, documents, etc) related to the articles in that day’s newspaper.
We want this page to be a destination for users wanting a simple experience to see what was in the newspaper. And we also know that many people look for articles on NewsOK.com after getting word that it was in yesterday’s newspaper. Those stories can sometimes be hard to locate on NewsOK, but they are pretty easy to find on the Today’s Paper page. The headlines all appear just as they did in the newspaper, and the stories are organized based on the sections and in order of the pages where they appeared.
If you know there is a document or a video that went with an article in the newspaper, we can now confidently guarantee that you can find it on Today’s Paper, a link that it always found in the sub-navigation of our home page.
An afternoon break with Helen Ford Wallace, the trendsetter
I just had a nice afternoon break to discuss blogging with NewsOK’s first staff blogger - Helen Ford Wallace. Helen often stops by on Wednesday afternoon before her 3 p.m. video shoot at OPUBCO Studios on the seventh floor of the OPUBCO tower.
Helen is a trendsetter here at OPUBCO Communications Group. And that’s no exaggeration. After getting to know her about five years ago, I gave her the “trendsetter” title much to her amusement.
I wasn’t amused. It’s the truth.
- It started with the blog.
- Then came the podcasts; she was the first to regularly bring in Oklahoma City’s heavy hitters to our podcast studios.
- Then came the niche publications; she was quick to participate and share her ideas for the OKC N Style magazine that we’ve produce over the past few years.
- Then came the videos. You can set your watch by her Parties Extra! video series. Every week, she delivers. Here’s the one from last week:
She’s made a career of being a hard worker and the ultimate ambassador for The Oklahoman (and now NewsOK.com and wimgo.com). And just to prove her trendsetter status, she was unafraid to shoot her own video and post to her blog. I have a hunch we’ll see more of these posts in the future.
And I have a hunch they will get better and better.
Video initiatives bring ‘innovator’ results for NewsOK
At NewsOK.com, we know that we do a lot of things well. We produce a lot of news and information content that a lot of people use as a part of their daily lives, whether it’s breaking news, features, investigative pieces or sports columns.
Yes, we do a lot of things well, and we do most of them at a pretty high level.
But there’s one thing that we do more intensely than just about any other media company that has its tradition based in newspapers …
Here’s proof: The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com have been selected as one of three finalists for the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Innovator of the Year award for its “total approach” in video. It’s an award that is considered the most prestigious of the APME awards, and the ultimate winner will be announced Oct. 30.
From the APME annoucement:
Three finalists were selected for APME’s third annual Innovator of the Year Award: The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, for a staffwide commitment to video; The News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla., for audience engagement efforts including packages that brought experts and readers together with in-depth reporting, photo and video to tackle issues; and The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., for environmental coverage called AllGreenToMe that brings print and online together and provides an international look at environmental challenges facing Delaware.
In its entry, it was noted that The Oklahoman’s commitment to video ranged from breaking news coverage to social networking to training to live feeds to Video Department productions to interaction with our special Web pages and “know it” communities to nDepth’s “Stories of the Ages.”
It’s one of many honors NewsOK and The Oklahoman have received in the last two years . You can see many of our recent honors on our Awards Page that lists the achievements.
We consider these honors validation that we are moving in the right direction journalistically.
And we consider our steady growth in traffic and visits validation that we are moving in the right direction for our audience.
NewsOK launches new high school sports coverage page — Varsity
High school football practices started last week.
It was Tuesday, to be exact. That was also the same day we launched our new initiative in covering high school sports better than anyone else.
It’s called Varsity, and the main idea is this – we are putting sports reporters on specific coverage areas and blogging about those schools every day. We aren’t structuring our high school sports coverage around events and sports anymore. Instead, we are focusing our coverage in the same ways the fans focus their interests – the schools.
The new coverage solution comes directly from the mind of sports editor Mike Sherman, who hatched his plan early this summer. From there, NewsOK web editors Nick Tankersley and Dane Beavers thought about how to leverage our existing blogs to best accomplish our goals. Add some designers, some marketing professionals and some strong developers, and poof — Varsity is born.
You’ll see that Sherman has thought a lot about how to organize his team of reporters. There are specific pages and specific blogs for all the largest areas of interest around Oklahoma City, plus pages that coverage private schools, Oklahoma City schools (including Douglass, Star Spencer and Millwood) and all the rest (including powerhouse programs like Guthrie to the north, Washington to the south, Clinton to the west and Jenks and Union to the east).
And we’re not done. We will be adding more functionality in the coming weeks. You’ll see the ability to upload your photos, the ability to post to eh page using Twitter and the most updated team and player stats in the state.
In the meantime, become a fan of Varsity on Facebook or follow our blogging network on Twitter.
New Viva Oklahoma! releases this week
The latest edition of Viva Oklahoma! was released on Sunday.
You can see the Web site at all times from the link on the NewsOK sub-navigation under Home. Or you can simply bookmark http://www.vivaoklahoma.com.
I used to work on this publication each month, while I was the Director of Custom Publishing here at OPUBCO Communications Groups. I understand how hard the passionate people who write, organize and design the product work to make it happen.
And I’ve seen it steadily improve since I changed roles in October of 2008. I know the team that focuses on Viva Oklahoma! works diligently to build partnerships in the Latino community in Oklahoma City so that it can make a positive impact and offer important information and advertising that is useful to people within the community.
The Guide to a Strong and Healthy Oklahoma book is a fine example of that. The book has been printed in Spanish and is currently available at newsstands where you can find Viva Oklahoma! The book full of health information for Oklahomans is featured on this month’s cover of Viva Oklahoma!
You can see the entire publication in PDF form on the Viva Oklahoma! home page, or you can simply browse our articles, photos and videos.
‘Life is Real – Writing the Final Chapters’ series continues with blogs from Jim Chastain and Charlotte Lankard
A couple of weeks ago, The Oklahoman ran its final chapters of the “Jim Chastain: Life is Real” series.
The good news is that the series ends with Jim continuing the fight and living with cancer. And our page on NewsOK, complete with Jim’s blog will continue on.
Reporter Ken Raymond shared his thoughts with a story that ran in The Oklahoman and on NewsOK:
After the last chapter that I wrote, the Chastains decided they didn’t want to subject themselves to that scrutiny anymore. The last story talked about displaced anger. When people are upset about something they can’t control, such as a dying spouse or father, they tend to direct their anger and helplessness at other targets, ones that are easier to hit. It happened in my family twice: first when my Dad died of pancreatic cancer and second when my Mom died, years later, of breast and lung cancer. It didn’t do any good to yell at the cancer, so we yelled at each other.
It’s true stuff. It’s real. But it’s not very pretty.
Our columnist Charlotte Lankard, who is also a close friend of Jim’s, shared her thoughts in our final chapter as well:
None of us should be surprised then that Jim’s family has found living in a fish bowl for the entire world to see uncomfortable, unsettling and invasive. They have made a significant contribution to this dialogue, but now they have asked to pull back a bit from the spotlight – and we will honor that.
Charlotte will also continue blogging as the series goes on.
You can read the blogs and share your thoughts with each of them. Ken’s blog will continue to be archived on the page, as will the previous chapters and the videos from videographer/photgrapher John Clanton.
High school huddle warms up the NewsOK high school coverage
It’s almost high school football season. And our sports staff is gearing up for the most in-depth and consistent coverage of high school football that we’ve ever seen online.
Watch below, and stay tuned next week for our new high school coverage page. Just remember this – NewsOK.com is where you can see the inside information from a staff of full-tme reporters delivering daily information about high school football in Oklahoma.
