Change of Heart – the story of Dr. Nazih Zuhdi
I hope you didn’t miss our latest installment of our nDepth series this week.
We featured Dr. Nazih Zuhdi, who is a world-renowned heart surgeon famous for his 1985 procedure — the first heart transplant in Oklahoma.
Reporter Susan Simpson told the story from many different angles. My favorite line in the piece came from Dr. Zuhdi himself:
“Heart transplantation was so strange to Oklahoma,” Zuhdi said. “They thought I was a nut. They thought I needed to be evaluated.”
See the entire presentation at ndepth.newsok.com/zuhdi. And while you take the time to do that, check out all the nDepth pieces we have. They are all timeless tales.
Stepping inside (virtually) the round barn for the first time
Photo by Steve Gooch - The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com
I’ve driven past the round barn in Arcadia a few times.
I’ve heard people talk about it as a landmark.
I know seemingly everybody who has spent a decent amount of time in Oklahoma knows about it.
But I’ve never been inside the round barn.
Until now.
In the latest installment of NewsOK’s Places series, Ken Raymond does what we are setting out to do with the project: He put the reader in a unique Oklahoma location by describing the place with text, images and audio.
I’ve never been physically been inside the round barn. But I feel like I have. Ken described the location with his writing, then he described in with his audio recording. All the while, I scanned the area with our panoramic image – I looked up. I looked down. I zoomed in. I zoomed out. I even tried to see what was in the trash can.
Now I can say I’ve been there.
Berry Tramel offers wise advice for multitasking with laptop
I’m going to use another blog post to quote sports writer Berry Tramel. This question from a reader came from Berry’s mailbag blog post from Saturday.
Don: “This is the FIRST TIME I have ever read a blog. The term itself is annoying. Can you tell I may be a senior citizen? I enjoy your stories and comments. I would prefer to read them in the paper. It is difficult holding this computer screen in my lap and reading it while I have my morning coffee.”
Berry’s response:
I have a suggestion. Use a table.
The funny thing about the question and the response is that I read it on Saturday morning while sitting on my couch with a computer on my lap and fresh coffee on the table next to me. I was reading the newspaper, The Digital Oklahoman, browsing NewsOK and checking my Facebook account (which is how I became aware of Berry’s post, by the way — through his Facebook fan page post).
I’ve grown accustomed to consuming news and information with a laptop, even while curled up on the couch with my morning coffee. It’s a habit for me now.
I’ll agree with Don’s sentiment. It’s not the same.
But it’s a way of life for me now. The only hard thing to get used to is folding the computer neatly so I can finish the crossword puzzle.
Take a tour of the state capitol building
I blogged about the new page for Political coverage earlier this week. It’s called NewsOK Politics: Your News for Your Governement.
But I failed to mentioned the most fun piece of the project – An interactive map of the Oklahoma State Capitol.
It was produced by Todd Pendleton and Brian Mays with the support of the political coverage team in gathering photos and panoramic images.
Check it out below:
Signing Day 2010 – NewsOK covers the stars of tomorrow
From the in-case-you-missed-it department, I present the NewsOK coverage of Signing Day 2010.
The funny thing is, I realized the impact of our signing day coverage when I looked back at the coverage we put together in 2009.
As I looked at our 2009 coverage, I saw the page and the video interview with had with OU linebacker Ronnell Lewis, who made quite an impact on Sooner fans (and the Stanford offense) with his big hits in the Sun Bowl.
And then Berry Tramel pointed out a similar thought in his weekly chat …. and I quote:
But you know what we ought to do on signing day? We ought to talk about and evaluate the guys who signed ONE YEARS AGO. Those are the guys that will determine what kind of seasons teams have in 2010.
True statement. But it makes it even more fun to see the profiles we already have for these players. Go ahead, predict who we’ll be talking about next year. Go through the individual pages we have on every single signed recruit for OU and OSU this year.
Get a head start on me. After all, true fans probably knew about Ronnell Lewis before he put a big hit on a Stanford ball-carrier.
NewsOK Politics: Your news for your government
We launched a new enhanced section front this week.
What’s an ‘enhanced section front,’ you ask?
Basically, it’s our way of telling our audience that we’re focusing on certain areas of coverage. It’s our way of guaranteeing the best coverage of certain topic.
Let’s just take a look at the enhanced section fronts we’ve put together in the past six moths.
- NewsOK Varsity: The best high school coverage anywhere.
- Watchdog: A dedicated group of journalists here to expose corruption in Oklahoma.
- Oklahoma City Thunder: The nation’s No. 1 source for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
- OU Sports: The nation’s No. 1 source for OU sports.
- OSU Sports: The nation’s No. 1 source for OSU sports.
Granted, it’s a little heavy on sports. So we balanced out the enhancements this week.
We launched NewsOK Politics: Your News for Your Government. It has separate pages for the state government, the federal government, Oklahoma City government and other local municipalities (like Edmond, Norman and other metro areas).
NewsOK Politics is led with a new blog, shared by our entire coverage team. The reporting team includes experts from Washington (Chris Casteel), the state Capitol (Michael McNutt and Julie Bisbee), Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County (Bryan Dean), Edmond (Diana Baldwin and John Williams), Norman (Jane Glenn Cannon and James Tyree) and other metro areas (Tim Henley).
It also includes multimedia reporter John Estus, database editor Paul Monies, assistant local editor Nick Trougakos and local editor Michael Baker.
It’s a large team and a huge commitment. They are committed to covering the government and the political process in Oklahoma better than anyone else.
It’s a guarantee. After all, it’s an enhanced section front, remember?
