Additions to multimedia navigation
We’ve added a few more items to the sub-navigation under the Multimedia page on NewsOK.
The reason is very simple: We have some cool pages we’ve built in past few months, and we needed a place to call home. Since they are all ‘multimedia’ projects, the Multimedia tab seems like a nice place to park them.
The projects in question?
- Places – investigating some of our state’s most intriguing places
- People – exploring the world through someone else’s eyes.
- Story Wall – showing what it was to “be” somewhere through an ever changing kaleidoscope of pictures, videos, audio and text.
We’ve also added a couple of pages to the sub-navigation, but they aren’t so new. I think it’s worth mentioning them anyway.
- nDepth — a deeper look at the stories that shape our world
- ‘know it’ — helping Oklahomans navigate a given topic from beginning to end
- Ongoing coverage — following stories and events that have broken the mold of normal news activity
These pages are added to our already expansive Multimedia offerings.
Please, spend your down time during the holidays enjoying some of our new story-telling experiments. And let me know what you like the best.
‘Air Thunder’ on NewsOK
Periodically, I’ll take a break and post a cool video that was produced on the seventh floor of our fine building here on Britton and Broadway. We call that space OPUBCO Studios.
Today seems like a good day to take that break, because this yesterday we posted the “Air Thunder” weekly show, which is now being produced here.
**UPDATE** – The video doesn’t work anymore on NewsOK because we can only have the show live for a specific number of hours, per NBA regulations. But the info was dated anyway. Check back on Thursday or Friday for new “Air Thunder” shows.
An update from Jim Chastain’s blog
Jim Chastain hasn’t been posting to his blog as much as he did earlier this year. And if you follow his blog regularly, you know why …
I’m still alive, but my health has really been slipping in the last two months.
That came from a post on Sunday.
His previous post before that came on Nov. 17, a funny thought about a fortune cookie he received. He viewed it as an ominous and positive sign.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jim. And if you follow NewsOK you know that we did a series of stories and a special Web site about his life and his battle with cancer. We aren’t writing stories anymore (as I described in a previous post), but we are still very much interested in his “Life is Real” blog — and it’s apparent that our readers are, as well.
So take this post as a reminder to check out his blog on a regular basis. You can always find the latest on our “Life is Real” site. And use Jim’s blog as an opportunity to wish him the best.
An extra positive thought, even from a stranger, never hurt anyone.
A feature about good people doing good things
As I browsed the newspaper this morning, I saw my former boss on the pages of our metro section.
It wasn’t just any former boss. It was my first boss in my journalism career.
I think she was my boss, anyway. It’s a gray area. Are you considered an employee if you don’t get paid anything?
I was simply a moppy-haired 20-year-old college student looking to break in and work for the student newspaper at the University of Oklahoma. Michelle Fielden (now Michelle Sutherlin) was the sports editor of The Oklahoma Daily in the fall of 1994. I was an intern, and I remember Michelle being an advocate for my possible addition to the paid staff in the following semester.
I eventually combed my hair and graduated a few years later and still consider the experience I collected in many different jobs at The Oklahoma Daily the best possible preparation for a real-world life in the news industry.
Michelle was featured in the newspaper today for reasons other than her stint as sports editor in 1994. She has had a excellent career in a variety of places (including time at The Oklahoman).
But she made news today for her volunteer efforts for the United Way.
Michelle Sutherlin is a stay-at-home mom on a tight budget who, a few weeks ago, wasn’t sure what she could do to help the United Way of Norman raise funds.
Lida Clinton, left, gets her order of baked goods from Michelle Sutherlin on Monday at the United Way of Norman. Sutherlin and a group of her friends formed Confections for a Cause, which raised more than $2,000 for the United Way by spending hundreds of hours baking cookies, pies and cakes. PHOTOS BY JAMES S. TYREE, THE OKLAHOMAN
One month and $2,085 later, Sutherlin and her baking buddies seem to be onto something. They formed a group called Confections for a Cause, and its members have becoming baking machines to raise money for the United Way.
“We baked at Norman High School from 11:30 to 5:30 Saturday and 1:30 to 5:30 on Sunday, and some have spent four hours a day or night every day baking,” Sutherlin said. “We have spent hundreds of hours between baking, organizing, getting donations and shopping.”
I can’t confirm this, but I have a pretty good feeling that I spent many of those same hours on recent Saturdays and Sundays watching a lot of football on television.
So, as I read the story today by reporter James S. Tyree, I thought of how lucky we are that some people truly think of others before thinking of themselves.
And I’m glad The Oklahoman and NewsOK finds these people on occasion and gives the rest of us a built-in New Year’s resolution — something about improving our own efforts to make our community a better place.
Oklahoma Places piece brings back memories of a proposal on the rocks
A Bob Doucette photo from the Charon's Garden Wildernes Area outside of Lawton.
Almost 10 years ago, I knelt on a large boulder in the rocky desert of Western Oklahoma and proposed marriage to my girlfriend.
I had planned it all day, but my nervousness postponed the proposal, and we kept hiking along until I finally made the move. By the time we headed back to camp, we realized we had gone further than we had intended and ran out of water. As a result, we became temporarily lost, partially dehydrated and completely exhausted on the walk back to camp.
But we survived and are still married. I still “joke” that I proposed in the middle of nowhere so I could have left her there if she had said no. (But we all know I was the one who would have ended up face down in a cave three weeks later).
I remembered that fine moment in my life as I read, watched and listened to Assistant News Editor Bob Doucette’s piece on the Charon’s Garden Wilderness Area – part of NewsOK.com’s series on Oklahoma Places.
Bob is a hiking and outdoors expert. By day, he edits stories, deals with reporters and organizes content for our daily news products, especially the stories we report on Oklahoma politics at the state Capitol. But when he takes the editing hat off, he becomes a hiker, backpacker, angler and skier — and he blogs about his adventures in his Out There blog as part of our ‘know it’ topic on Outdoor Recreation.
Bob’s article and slideshow effectively described the area west of Lawton in the Wichita Wildlife Refuge. He puts it best in one sentence:
Welcome to one of the last wild places left in Oklahoma.
I haven’t been there in many years now, but his piece reminded me of the few times we camped there next to the wild Buffalo that probably enjoy walking through a camp site at 3 a.m. just to scare the heck out of guys who grew up in suburban Tulsa.
The Places series is one of my favorite Web initiatives of 2009. To date, we’ve produced 13 unique places in Oklahoma, and we plan many more. It’s a great site to visit to learn more about the unique areas in Oklahoma. Just last week, we launched a piece on the Drum Room at the UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music. You can see a full panorama of the room and get a feel for the area with John Estus’ description.
It’s just one more place that makes Oklahoma special.
911 call captures attention of NewsOK audience
What’s the story of the week on NewsOK?
Is it MAPS 3 — the vote that passed with room to spare?
Or is it something else? Say, a story about a woman defending her home with a 16-gauge shotgun.
If you’re looking for a story that will probably be remembered in 20 years, it’s the MAPS 3 vote.
If you’re looking for the story that people keep stopping me to talk about, it’s the woman with the shotgun.
And it’s all because of the 911 call that we were able to post with the article.
It was a well-reported story by Johnny Johnson and Robert Medley. They effectively told us what happened:
But when he threw a table through her sliding glass patio door, the 56-year-old woman — who was home alone — couldn’t wait for deputies any longer.
There is a loud crash on the 911 tape.
The phone drops, and there’s a single shot from a 16-gauge shotgun.
But nothing resonates like the 30-minute 911 call. Scary stuff. Tragic.
This story has captured our audience’s attention. Since it broke last Friday, the 911 call video has been viewed more than 50,000 times. And it has really jumped again today when the update about the shooting being rulled a “justified act.”
To answer my own question … the story about the woman defending her home is the story of the week on NewsOK.
MAPS 3 will have to wait for the “Story of the Year” nominations.
NewsOK E-mail Headline alerts get a new look
If you are one of the lucky recipients of our daily e-mail headlines, you’ve noticed a big change in the past couple of days.
We drastically changed the look of the e-mails that enter your inbox. Its simpler, more organized and more consistent with the general look and feel of NewsOK on a daily basis.
We hope this catches your eye as you browse your inbox every day. And if we’re not part of your e-mail routine, we hope you will think about it.
Just go to your settings page on NewsOK and select the e-mails you would like to begin receiving.
- Daily headlines (sent twice a day)
- Breaking news (sent when appropriate)
- Business headlines (sent once a week)
- Entertainment headlines (sent once a week)
- Sports headlines (sent twice a week and when news breaks)
- Recipes (sent once a week)
- Parties Extra! (send once a week)
We recommend all of the above.
A defining moment in history
Every Monday, we aim to bring something new and different to our readers. We have set a goal to offer a multimedia presentation for the time each week when our traffic is the heaviest — Monday morning.
Sometimes, it’s an nDepth presentation. Other times, it’s a ‘know it’ topic. Last week, it was a three-part series.
Today, it was Dec. 7.
It’s been 68 years, but it’s still a date that instantly conjures terrible images in our minds. But it’s a date that we must remember, and that’s why we took our multimedia Monday and devoted it to the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
- We have an interactive map of the attack, detailing the attack waves and targets on Dec. 7, 1941.QA screen capture of the presentation is pictured to the right.
- We have a link to the site we produced a couple of years ago on Oklahoma World War II Stories, a site we built in partnership with OETA.
- We have archived photo galleries, articles and videos.
- We have a link to our know it topic on Military, fitting for the day’s topic.
The piece is meant for the NewsOK user that wants a little bit more to NewsOK than the daily breaking news headlines and weather report. We suspect that most of our customers fit into that category, and that’s why we began ‘multimedia Monday.’
Each Monday, you are promised a healthy dose of meat on your NewsOK breakfast plate, providing great sustenance for your news browsing in the week ahead.
NewsOK + wimgo = your holiday connection
This post is very simple …..
NewsOK has Christmas covered with news and information about the holiday. Just go to our Christmas page for articles, videos, photos and more about the Christmas season. And make sure to stop by our ‘know it’ topic on Giving and Volunteering.
Wimgo has your holiday events covered, including all the lights displays and parades in Oklahoma. It also has all the performances, activities and movies for you rplanning purposes. Just visit our wimgo Holiday Events page for more.
Life page looks alive with quick face lift
We updated our outlook on Life this week.
You can check it out on our main Life page – a main navigation item on NewsOK.
What problem were we trying to solve? Actually, we were trying to solve the same basic problem we’re always trying to solve — how can we properly showcase the depth of content that we have in an organized and aesthetically pleasing way.
In our “Life” channel, that problem has become apparent in recent months with the growth of our ‘know it‘ series and the digital direction of our OKC N Style brand.
- The ‘know it’ series is our way of defining an important topic as it relates to Oklahoma. We’ve built more than 30 ‘know it’ topics in the past 18 months, and we have a big 2010 planned.
- The OKC N Style brand has been a slick magazine devoted to stylish living. We’ve been publishing it monthly within OPUBCO Communications Group in the past few years. I spent a year as the managing editor on that magazine, so I’ve long been a big fan. We are now moving that brand into a stronger digital space, and Dillard’s is serving as the presenting sponsor.
These two content brands strengthen our Life channel on NewsOK. We will continually update it and you can expect greater variety each day on that section.
Come and visit often and get a new perspective on NewsOK Life.
