Giving fans a voice …. sounding off on OU and OSU football
If you haven’t had a chance to see what our sports department has started doing recently, check it out.
We are giving you a voice — literally.
We’ve always wanted you to comment. We’ve always encouraged your participation in the news process. But now, we’re experimenting with giving you a real voice that can appear on our site — either as audio or within a packaged video.
We tried it last week after the football games. We encouraged readers of The Oklahoman and users of NewsOK.com to call us and tell Sports Editor Mike Sherman what they think. Here are some of the recordings after the OU-Missouri football game on Saturday.
And here is what people were saying after OSU receiver Justin Blackmon was arrested in Texas on Tuesday.
This is just an example of using available technology to give you a voice. And it’s another example of our sports department continuing to push forward and look for cool new things to do to connect with our audience.
I like it. And I’ll be looking for more posts and videos each week.
You can participate. Just call (405) 586-0704. The line is always open.
Reader offers personal feedback to our iPad edition
After some correspondence with a reader of The Oklahoman’s new iPad edition, he offered this feedback.
I thought I would share with the world.
I do like the app. The structure is organized and easy to use. I think I’ll like having the media links close at hand as I use it more. The only downside I have found so far is that it doesn’t allow me to use the “pinch” feature of the IPad. I realize I can increase the size of the font so it won’t be a deal killer. For instance when I read my subscription to the Journal Record on my IPad I can make the words and pictures as large as I like. It is a little harder to navigate.
Although $5 a month is less than a lunch, I do bristle a little bit about adding $60 a year to the cost of my subscription when I can read the digital edition on my laptop for free. I realize it may be a necessary evil.
I think print and digital media have their place in the consumer’s news gathering experience. I find the digital version a faster and more convenient way to get up to speed on issues I’m interested in. The experience of handling a newspaper is a hard habit to break and I find myself reading articles I might have passed up in the digital version just because of physically coming upon them when thumbing through the pages.
Overall I commend you and the Oklahoman for being out front in the digital news revolution. I thought you’d like to know.
The Oklahoman reaches yet another device — this time it’s the Nook
I wrote at length late last week about our inclusion in the iPad App Store. I talked about how proud we were that daily editions of The Oklahoman were now available on the iPad.
In that piece, I talked about our mission to reach news consumers in any way they want to be reached. And it truly is our mission. To quote our publisher, David Thompson:
“We will continue to provide news and information content for our customers when, where and how they want it.”
That quote came from the story I wrote that appeared in The Oklahoman and on NewsOK last Sunday.
But just to prove the point to be true, I feel compelled to point out that we also recently became available on the Nook for purchase at the Barnes and Noble eNewspaper Store.
Our own Jay Spear blogged about it in his new blog on NewsOK, titled Proof of Concept.
I went to Barnes &Noble off Memorial this week to tell them about The Oklahoman being available and to replace the battery on our nook. They were excited. They said a number of buyers ask when The Oklahoman will be available on the nook.
So, we continue to make strides toward our publisher’s mission. We are in as many spots as we reasonably can be as quickly as we reasonably can be.
Or as Jay put it in the last line of his blog:
After all, we just tell the stories. You get to choose where to read them.
Another list of awards from another strong list of contenders
My boss was at the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association conference in Austin, Texas, last week.
She was presenting to the group of newspaper executives, explaining how we organized ourselves over the past few years in building two fully functional video studios and trained our journalists to be multimedia pioneers in feeding our extensive video operation.
It’s one of the things that makes NewsOK (and our publishing company) truly unique.
Another thing that set us apart? The honors and awards that we often receive.
While she was there, she picked up a handful of awards from the SNPA contest.
- Best Website: First (50,000 and over circulation), NewsOK.com.
- Videos: Second, for “Stories of the Ages: Depression Era Gangsters.” And honorable mention, for the sports special: “OU Football Preview: It’s better to receive.”
- Best Use of Multimedia: honorable mention, for “Stories of the Ages: Depression Era Gangsters.”
- Best Local Story: Third, for the series about Oklahoma politicians who tried to keep secret the birth dates of public employees.
- Feature Photography, honorable mention, for Sarah Phipps’ photo of a prayer service at a correctional center.
- Print Quality, (Over 100,000 circulation category), Second. The Oklahoman.
And here’s something of note: In judging the “Best Website” category, the SNPA made a point to focus on the site organization and the journalism involved.
Judges didn’t consider how many hits a website attracts. Instead, they looked at the overall Internet experience that a reader coming to the page should expect to have. Honors were awarded based on ease of navigation, search capabilities, attractive design, a promotional avenue for the print product, plus any extras offered by the site.
The competition includes a large number of newspapers, ranging from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to The Oregonian to The Tennessean to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
It was another good showing in another prestigious competition.
As I’ve said before, we don’t do our work for the awards and accolades. But it is good to know that we rank highly among our peers in the industry.
Inspiring Couples series on NewsOK a good example of great story-telling
I came across the most recent article in our “Inspiring Couples” series last week.
Jim and Robin Riley
It was a piece about Jim and Robin Riley of Edmond. Jim is a former University of Oklahoma and NFL football player who had lived a hard life during and after his playing career.
But, the morning of July 16, 1985, the Rileys began a new life, in which they would discover true love and their purpose in life. That morning, Jim awoke to find a dozen close friends, along with family, in the living room of the couple’s Edmond home.
I often write about hidden gems found deep within the NewsOK family of pages. The “Inspiring Couples” is one of those gems. The series is linked by the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative’s “Forever. For Real.” project and its calendar featuring the same couples we’re featuring.
It’s all great stuff and a good cause. But here is what I like most about this series:
It’s the great story-telling — the articles and videos. Through our interviews, reporting and writing, I as a news consumer get to know these every-day Oklahomans and understand their stories.
That’s what we do best.
Join the NewsOK Family for a chance to win $500
We started giving money away this month.
It began on Oct. 10. It will end on Dec. 4.
Each week in between, NewsOK.com is giving away $500 to a newly registered NewsOK.com members.
This is our way to encourage news consumers who haven’t yet registered with our site to do just that.
We see our traffic. We know approximately how many people are using our site every day … every week. And we want to connect with each one of them.
Frankly, it’s possible to use our site and get a lot out of it without registering. But there’s a lot more you can do as a registered NewsOK member.
- Access to post comments to our articles
- Have news delivered to you via email or text messages
- Receive coupons and special discounts
- Easy entry into and NewsOK contest
And we’re going to keep adding more benefits for registered users.
So please, take the time to register — even if you think you don’t want to. At the very least, you could use $500.
And once you register and have the $500 in your pocket, then you can find out all the benefits of being a NewsOK member.
The Oklahoman’s iPad app is ready for download
I won the pool.
Last week, a group of developers, designers and project managers were adding levity to their work, taking friendly wagers on how quickly The Oklahoman’s iPad application would be approved by Apple and available to the public via the app store.
The team had just finished a little more than five weeks’ worth of heavy-duty programming to build the home-grown application. They did an outstanding job, especially when you consider the complexity of the product they delivered and the aggressive time frame in which it was requested.
But those brilliant professionals stink at guessing how quickly Apple will act. Some thought it would take weeks. Some thought it might even require some back and forth — as if there would be something in the application that would cause it to be rejected.
Not me. I did no development, but I was confident.
Next Wednesday. No rejections.
Yesterday morning, we received word that the application was officially under review. By the and of the day, it was approved.
I just wish we had real money on this pool.
Kidding aside, we’re extremely proud of this application. The Oklahoman’s iPad edition is a true example how a large initiative can come together quickly. We had it all:
- establishing a vision
- devising a plan
- developing a set of core teams
- planning for sustainability
- testing, testing and more testing
- working out the details
- testing again
And about the time we had many of our work flow, technical and content issues worked out, Apple approved the application. Nice timing, guys.
So yes, we’re proud. But we also know that this application isn’t perfect. We are continuing to add improvements to the app, and we expect you will see upgrades in the near future. We’ll be adding more content features, more technical abilities, more multimedia videos and a few small bug fixes. And after that upgrade, you’ll see another … and then another.
The development team built this application so that we can make many changes to the content display on the fly. Often times, we might not even need to send improvements to the app through Apple’s review process.
Bottom line: We will continue to refine the The Oklahoman’s iPad edition. That’s a guarantee.
So if you own an iPad, download it. It’s free. After you have it on your device, you can see one complimentary edition to give you an idea of the product’s offering. A monthly subscription is required to download future daily editions.
Try it for a month. Users from our test group say it fits their on-the-go, mobile lifestyle perfectly. They’re reading more now, because the great content is in a format that works well for them.
If you are like that, this product is for you.
And if you like it, be sure to let us know. The developers and editors that worked through all the bullet-points above deserve a big pat on the back.
But don’t forget — I’m the one that won the pool.
See the new page for NewsOK Blogs and Personalities
We’ve made some changes to the NewsOK navigation in the past couple weeks.
The most visible change was to our main navigation that is on every NewsOK.com page. We replaced the page we previously referred to as “VOICES” with a new page names “BLOGS.”
This change is an attempt to focus even more attention to the NewsOK blog network, which continues to grow in traffic and attention, even without a link from the main navigation.
The NewsOK Blogs page has a feed of all the recent blog posts, plus links to every blog we have.
In the middle of the page sits our list of personality pages, where you can find pages devoted to our reporters. We currently have 13 personality pages up and running, and we expect to add about a dozen more in the coming months. Right now, you can find Berry Tramel, Jenni Carlson, Steve Lackmeyer, Brandy McDonnell, Dave Cathey and more.
If you scroll down far enough on the page, you’ll see a special block of content devoted to my blog.
I didn’t ask for this special treatment (that’s a lie — I kind of did).
We only did this because The Digital Desk is our site’s most popular blog (that’s another lie — a big one).
Here’s the absolute truth: There’s lots of great content found in what our reporters and editors blog about on a daily basis. And this was the best way we could think of getting this content in front of you quickly.
Caller shares his thoughts on judge’s ruling and The Oklahoman’s responsibility
The phone rang today.
It was a subscriber to The Oklahoman. The fact that he was using the phone to contact me is a good indication that he prefers our print product. Most feedback I get about NewsOK.com comes in the form of email.
But this man was quick to point out that he was a subscriber. He said it with pride.
(And just as an aside — we get these calls quite often, but usually they are received by my colleague, managing editor Mike Shannon. His title resonates with our print subscribers, and he is very good at talking to our readers.)
He wanted to share his opinion about our article on the Metro/State cover this morning about cameras not being allowed in the Jerome Ersland murder trial. I realized quickly that he didn’t really want to discuss this decision as much as he wanted to share his opinion.
But as the caller concluded his passionate monologue about how the public should be allowed to see what’s going on in the courtroom, he said something that really struck me.
There are so doggone many things wrong with the government these days — all because people just don’t care.
If the public doesn’t oversee what’s going on, then we’re bound to have scallywags taking over.
And it’s your job as the fourth estate — isn’t that what they call it? — to stay on top of them and let us know what’s going on.
OK – so I don’t know how this caller defined ‘scallywags’ and whether he meant it as an offensive term (or, better put, I’m unsure the level of offense he intended). I don’t believe he was referring to pirates, though. And he never even told me if he was supporting Ersland’s defense or his prosecution.
But his thoughts on our news operation resonated with me, as did the the fact that he noticed that much of the public is apathetic about important topics that do indeed have an effect on their lives.
I can tell you this, though. We consider it our responsibility to keep people informed about things that matter to the community — whether it’s a football game, a murder trial, a car wreck or a city council meeting.
We take that responsibility seriously.
A search on wimgo sparks memories of a past career at Legend’s restaurant
So I was browsing NewsOK.com the other day. I tend to do that as part of my job description.
On the day in question, the NewsOK editors were featuring some restaurant profiles from wimgo near the top of the NewsOK home page. You’ve probably seen them below our top stories along the left side of the home page.
I hope you’re already familiar with wimgo.com. It’s an outstanding search solution for businesses, restaurants, events, venues … well, just about anything, really. It serves the NewsOK audience very well as a terrific local search solution, but it’s truly a nationwide solution. You can find similar data for business, restaurants, events and more from anywhere in the country.
The restaurant that we were linking to just happened to be a restaurant where I spent about 2 1/2 years working while in college at OU.
It was Legend’s Restaurant, and it was the first place I applied when arriving in Norman in 1993. I stopped and applied after asking a friend, who had already been living in Norman, “What’s the nicest restaurant in town?” I walked in, filled out an application, went home, came back for an interview and had a job — all in one day. My college career was off and running.
I remember my time working as a cook there very fondly (even if some of those memories aren’t so flattering).
- I remember jumping in the pool in the apartments behind the restaurant after a long day in the heat of the kitchen. (‘Trespassing’ is how some people refer to it.)
- I remember running late many Sunday mornings for my brunch shift. (8 a.m. comes awful early for a 20-year-old.)
- I remember making the shift manager very angry one slow Monday night after being caught taking an undocumented break for a tobacco product (a habit I shook long ago). I was lucky he kept that one quiet.
- I remember making plenty of rookie mistakes on the line in the heat of a busy night.
- I remember my bosses being very good and very patient to many college students who worked there.
- I remember making some very good friends through those connections.
- I remember the day Howard Schnellenberger and his wife left the restaurant, unhappy with my food — something Berry Tramel wrote about in a column years later.
But my favorite memory came in late summer of 1994. I had just spent the summer months in my hometown and returned to Norman.
For some reason, I thought I didn’t want to return to work at Legend’s. I wanted to try a different restaurant. I secured a job at the restaurant where Coach’s currently resides on Main Street, but I can’t even remember the name of the restaurant at that time.
Friends who still worked at Legend’s had mentioned that the kitchen manager/chef wondered why I didn’t come back in for a job now that I was back in town. I was moving on to bigger things, I thought. I was sitting pretty — a highly sought-after cook in the Norman restaurant world.
But then I went in for my first shift at the new restaurant. It wasn’t fun. They were short-handed, so I spent the night washing the dishes. I have nothing against washing dishes. I worked with some great dishwashers, but I couldn’t keep up. And I didn’t have much fun. And I didn’t make new friends. And my shift didn’t end until after 1 a.m.
I don’t remember that anyone was necessarily mean to me or that the working environment was a bad one. But I still didn’t like it. It wasn’t a great first day.
So the next morning, before I went to my classes at OU, I drove to Legend’s, said hello to some old friends and requested to see the kitchen manager, Rabecca (seen in the wimgo video below). I told her that I made a mistake by seeking other employment and requested my previous job as a cook. We worked out a work schedule on the spot, and I was back in. The only thing I needed to do was call the other restaurant and tell them that I wasn’t going to return. That was one of my least-favorite phone calls.
I worked at Legend’s until my journalism career became a real thing while still on the campus of OU. I became the sports editor of The Oklahoma Daily, so my cooking career ended in 1996.
But I was there in 1995. I was there for the Schnellenberger “Legend’s incident.”
An aside about the Howard Schnellenberger story … This came from The Oklahoman’s story by Bob Hersom on Dec. 24, 1995. (Note that I had no connection with The Oklahoman at that time.)
The tale has grown into something of a monumental and high-dollar confrontation between the owner of longtime Norman restaurant Legend’s and Schnellenberger and his wife.
Like most rumors, reality turns out less intriguing. In this case, it boiled down to some disagreement over whether cheese should have been added to the coach’s omelet and whether his wife’s toast was toasted properly.
For the record, Bob’s report was spot on.
And this from the man that used to sign my paycheck:
“The food was not prepared the way they wanted it, and they were disgruntled,” Legend’s owner Joe Sparks said. “It was our fault. “
Correction … it was mostly my fault.
But back to my time at Legend’s. I didn’t have a career in the restaurant industry, but I learned plenty. I learned that I like working hard. I learned that having a good employer that will pay for an honest day’s hard work is something to be thankful for.
I learned that nobody will just give you anything, but if you find the right people you might catch a break.
And I learned that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of town.
And all those thoughts were stirred up after I saw the Legend’s page on wimgo, linked from NewsOK.com.
That’s the other life lesson: You can find lots of cool stuff on wimgo.com (but you already knew that).
