Around the NewsOK world — the week of Jan. 23
It’s been another great week on NewsOK. It’s been rife with controversy, which is always good for out web traffic numbers. So … thank you controversy. But the real thanks goes to our team of journalists that brings this stuff to you.
Olivia Munn
LOOKatOKC and Olivia Munn
Olivia Munn is kind of a big deal. That’s what I hear anyway. Features Editor Matt Price, who also authors our Nerdage blog, seemed quite surprised when I admitted that I didn’t know who she was prior to our recent coverage of her. In any case, I learned all about her on the front page of NewsOK more than a week ago. She was also on that week’s cover of LOOKatOKC, where LOOKatOKC editor George Lang had an excellent story about her rise to success. But the really cool thing about all of that is the Oliva Munn tweeted our story about her, and all of her fans became instant LOOKatOKC readers. Here’s what she said: “Oh, hello Hometown Paper! Yes, I do love my fans… And The Oklahoman newspaper!” It’s quite a maze, I know, but the bottom line is this: I now know who Olivia Munn is, and — with one more click (there, done) — I’m following her on Twitter. In case you want to follow me on Twitter, just click here.
Remember the 10
On Saturday night, we launched our page that covers the 10th anniversary of the 2001 OSU plane crash that killed 10 members of the OSU basketball program. I remember that night very clearly. I remember where I was when I heard the news. I remember what I was doing. And thanks to this page, it can take me back and I can remember the victims and the impact on the program and the community. The pages, the stories and the archived content is really good, but the video … well — no words can describe how good it really is. You have to watch it.
A teaching tool at Yale
On Wednesday, I received an email from a teacher in the fine town of Yale, Oklahoma. She wanted to show her students the video that we produced, but the Internet connection at the school wasn’t reliable and she wondered if she could have a hard copy. Frankly, we’re in the business of having people use our website. That’s how we can serve our purposes — informing the public and supporting our business with advertising revenue. But when we can educate children, we’ll break our standard operating procedure. David Jones, our top-notch video producer, quickly provided her with a link. Her response: “Thank you! I will try it. … I appreciate your promptness!” Exclamation points on gratitude messages fill my heart with warmth.
Answering your Thunder questions
Oklahoma City Thunder reporter Darnell Mayberry started a new thing on his blog this week. He started a mailbag, answering questions from our readers based on their submissions. It was a good read, but that’s not surprising. After all, our daily coverage of the Thunder — with stories, videos, columns, notes, blogs, chats, twitter posts, etc — outpaces anything you can find anywhere. That’s a guarantee.
Proof of Concept – sell your iPad?
Jay Spear has been a longtime employee at OPUBCO Communications Group. He’s performed in many different jobs — too many to list, really — but he recently started a blog he titled “Proof of Concept.” He had a good post this week that’s worth a read. It’s titled, Time to buy / sell your first iPad. Check it out.
More good reporting … search warrant madness
Sgt. Maurice Martinez
The story about the Oklahoma City police officer who was arrested on Jan. 19 on sex abuse complaints has weaved and twisted all over the place this week. The strangest turn came when a locked room was accessed by someone while the house was under police guard. But the police said that they had already searched the home. All this leads to a lot of questions that begin with “How in the world …” or “Why in the heck …” or “Is it normal for police to …” There is much more detail in the stories that are linked above, but all I can say is my traditional … “you can’t make this stuff up.”
Steve Lackmeyer stirs it up
The OKC Central Blog is back in the middle of reporting on a minor controversy in Oklahoma City. He’s talked to many of the parties involved and helped inform people about what is going on with the mysterious 5320 marketing campaign. He’s received some criticism, as well. Love it … hate it … indifferent — that doesn’t really matter. Entertaining and informative to follow? Yes.
Wanda on the web
Breaking news reporter Robert Medley mentioned to me this week that Wanda Jackson is trending in the national news. He wanted to point out that the piece he wrote about her a couple of years ago would be good to showcase again. Well — Robert works the early shift and he covers a lot of unhappy news in the crime arena, so I forgive him for missing my blog last week — it was a good idea, and we did feature his nDepth:Stories of the Ages piece this week on NewsOK. But then Robert shared this fine nugget (note that Robert has spent a lot of time on stage and in the music industry himself): “What a shock. Someone I wrote a book about in 1992 when the only places that wanter her to play were Southern Baptist churches in south Oklahoma City — and now she is on Conan.”
Board of Education meeting mess
On Thursday, Megan Rolland covered the Oklahoma Board of Education meeting with new state superintendent Janet Barresi. It was anything but a boring meeting. It started with board member Tim Gilpin and Barresi (and others) arguing about her choices for staff member and how they were paid. And as Megan wrote in the fourth paragraph: “From there it only got worse.”
Pregnant women … worthless?
Here’s what was worse: Board member Herb Rozell commented about a pregnant staff member of Berresi, saying, “If she has that child in April and takes off six weeks, she’s worthless to us.” All together now … we absolutely cannot make this stuff up.
Troy Aikman leads the way on NewsOK
The stories about the Board of Education are among our most popular this week. But they came a very close second to a much more important story that took NewsOK by storm: Troy Aikman and his wife separating. What’s ironic about that? It’s not even our story. It’s the Tulsa World’s story. We didn’t run the entire story, but NewsOK and the Tulsa World often link to each other’s articles after running three paragraphs. We did that in this case. What’s even more ironic about that? It wasn’t even Tulsa World’s story. It sourced the Dallas Morning News as the original reporting source.
OSU Remember the 10 video
This was our most popular video. And deservedly so. Congratulations to our sports department and to our video department for producing such a great piece that helps put our lives (and our heightened interest in Troy Aikman’s marriage) in perspective.
That seems like a good note to end on. Enjoy NewsOK for the next week. Look for another post next Friday afternoon.
A week on NewsOK: Charles Barkley, Wanda Jackson, Martin Luther King Day … and more
It was a busy week on NewsOK. We covered a lot of stories that are just bad news, but we also told a lot of uplifting tales, shared some great stuff from the past and talked to some of our best customers.
-
Maisy Root - photo by Jim Beckel
Sonya Colberg has been quite the star reporter this week. She kicked off last weekend with a terrific feature on a 2-year-old adopted girl who has gone through reconstructive facial surgery at The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center. The story brought out the best in our commenters. Said Jimmy of Oklahoma City: “The doctors at Children’s Hospital are awesome!!! Blessings to Maisy, family and caregivers!” Said Robert of Oklahoma City: “Parents, surgeons, enablers, you will be blessed by the Great Physician.” It was a great read. It had great photos. And it had a great video component. It told a great story. That’s the kind of story we like in our News and Information Center.
- But Sonya wasn’t done last week. She also told the story of Scott Badgett, an associate pastor at Chisholm Heights Baptist Church in Mustang, who saved a woman’s life with CPR at a church luncheon. Again, this story is told very well with her writing, but it we are helped in understanding the significance with a video component as well. And the comments? Well here’s one from Angela in OKC: “AWESOME!!! As a nurse and CPR instructor I feel it is very important for EVERYONE to learn CPR. One day it could be a loved one or your child, you don’t want to look back and say what if I could have done something to help?“
I wrote last week about our new Personality pages. We added another one this week. You can now follow Carla Hinton, who covers the religion community in Oklahoma better than anyone else. Follow her on Facebook, on Twitter, on her blog — or just follow her new page on NewsOK that has everything. We welcome Carla to the personality list.- Martin Luther King, Jr., Day was Monday. We did a video in 2010 that was so much fun that we brought it back into the spotlight this week. It is fun … just watch it below.
- In the “you can’t make this stuff up” category, I bring you our most popular story on the site this week: Nurse loses license for 20 years over sex with hospice patient. We featured this story on the website for most of the day on Sunday. It received a lot of traffic then, but it continued to grow all week after being featured and shared on Fark.com and then being linked to from the Drudge Report website.
- Our most-viewed video this week has been the police report about Oklahoma City police Sgt. Maurice Anthony Martinez. He was arrested Wednesday on complaints of lewd acts with a child under 16 and forcible sodomy. That was a popular article, as well. You can read more here.
- Charles Barkley spoke directly to Jenni Carlson on Tuesday night. Jenni was openly asking when Charles would make good on his old promise to visit Oklahoma City. Barkley answered her on Wednesdy night, as Darnell Mayberry detailed in his blog post. Said Charles: “Well, you know what? Jenni, you are a hundred percent correct. Now that you’ve got my good friend Scott Brooks there, and the great Maurice Cheeks, who I played with in Philly, I’ve got to come to Oklahoma City?” Jenni blogged about it as well, promising to serve as a tour guide for Barkley. It’s good stuff.
Entertainment writer Brandy McDonnell has the most-trafficked blog on NewsOK. She has for years now. Sunday night was a good example of why her blog is so popular. Brandy blogged the Golden Globe Awards live, providing instant insight and analysis of the big show. But just a day later, Brandy posted some colorful reviews of the concert she covered at Oklahoma City Arena. The posts were full of photos and links, plus her thoughts about George Strait, Reba McEntire and Lee Ann Womack. I’ll admit it. I’m a country music fan. And I appreciate Brandy’s posts and updates and photos on the concerts that come through town.- James Lankford is going to Washington … so based on our Washington Bureau reporter Chris Casteel’s recommendation, we enhanced our James Lankford topics page to showcase all the articles, videos and blogs we’ve produced about Lankford’s rise from relative obscurity to real-life Congressman.
- Wanda Jackson was in the news quite a bit this week, with planned appearances on David Letterman’s and Conan O’Brien’s shows. That made me remember the nDepth: Stories of the Ages piece we produced on her in 2009. That story was significant for me because — and perhaps I shouldn’t admit this — I had no idea who Wanda Jackson was before we produced story. Reporter Robert Medley put together the nDepth piece. I learned a lot, and that’s a good quality about those stories. She is, after all, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
- I spent some quality time at the original O’Connell’s during my time at the University of Oklahoma. I even visited the locale with an old friend in December because we had heard the rumor that it was closing. (It was the oldest rumor in the history of rumors, but we believed it this time.) It turns out … it was true. I learned on NewsOK this week that there will be an auction of all the memorabilia that lines the walls at the establishment. My friend wanted a photo that he’s in (don’t get too worked up; it was the back of his head). All I need are memories. They’re much cheaper.
- I talked to a subscriber of The Oklahoman this week. She wanted to know one simple question about our new TV Weekly magazine that we are offering for those who want it. It’s replacing the TV book we’ve had in the Sunday newspaper for years. Some people aren’t happy about this change, but they usually understand the results of supply and demand. The caller’s question … will we have a TV grid in the newspaper each day (it’s in the Life section)? The answer … Yes. We certainly will.
- I talked to another NewsOK user that wanted to see older listings of our death listings. I pointed the person to our database display of all death listings, but that wasn’t satisfactory. Why? Because it couldn’t be printed out. Interesting point. We didn’t think of that. Well … we still have both options right now. You can browse our death listings in a sortable database (preferable, I hope, for most online users) or you can view the daily articles we produce.
- Weather blogger Bryan Painter was spot on with his predictions of the big weather event this week. He, of course, commends the National Weather Service folks in Norman. Bryan told me on Wednesday (through his blog) to expect a thin sheet of ice on the roads on Thursday morning, but that it would be safe driving by late morning. He was on the job with live weather updates on NewsOK by 5 a.m. Thursday, and he logged off at about 10 a.m. What did we have? A thin sheet of ice on Thursday morning, but it was safe on the roads by late morning. Thanks for the updates, Bryan.
Look for another series of updates on the site next week. But don’t let these blog posts discourage you from browsing NewsOK every day. It’s worth it.
This week: Remembering 2010, wimgo, slideshows and new personalities
Another roundup of NewsOK.com and the happenings on our site this week.
- We’re almost all the way to mid-January (and we might be all the way there, depending on when you read this), so this is my last opportunity to encourage you to visit our 2010 Year in Review page. This page is simple. It’s the top 25 articles that were viewed on NewsOK in 2010 — the good, the bad and the ugly. Don’t look at us. You guys clicked on them. Actually, it’s a a pretty good cross-section of what our readers tend to click on. And the commentary from web editor Nick Tankersley, who put together this page, is quite entertaining at times.
Steve Lackmeyer, author of the much-read OKC Central blog, sent me this post from the OKC Talk message board he frequents. He found it interesting because they were talking about our partner - wimgo.com. The people in the discussion on the post are really just saying what we’ve know for quite some time — wimgo is an awesome resource for making decisions about your life. If you need to decide how to spend your time or your money, wimgo is a comprehensive resource for everything about events, movies, restaurants or businesses.- Bob Przybylo’s blog post on Monday was interesting to me because he featured the progress of the Edmond North boys basketball team under new head coach Jeff Tanner after a tough loss to Norman. Said Tanner: “We have to get tired of having these results. Norman played like a team that was tired of losing. Our energy and our focus has to be there every game.” I took particular interest in this post because coach Tanner is new to my neighborhood in Edmond, and his family is a great addition to our block. We wish him and his team very well. But that’s my personal interest. You should take interest in this post because it highlights the depth of coverage the Bob and the rest of the NewsOK Varsity coverage team offers with its constant blog posts, Twitter streams and article updates on the site. Varsity is the absolute best and most comprehensive coverage of high school sports anywhere. It’s not even close. We’re very proud of our high school coverage.
- Our photography department put together three really interesting slideshows this week. The first was posted to NewsOK after Mary Fallin’s inauguration. The second was a photographic story about the Rocktown ice-climbing wall this winter (I’ll just look at the pictures and leave it to others to experience it firsthand). The third was a nice story about Julie Adams, who is juggling life as a young mother while finishing high school at Emerson High School.
- We have a whole page of slideshows, and we archive them going back to when we first started these. It’s just another example of great story-telling on NewsOK.
- The saga of the Bethany man who was arrested and charged in the stabbing death of his wife topped our article traffic this week. This is my cue to say again … you can’t make this stuff up.
- Oklahoma State football fans got some good news this week, when Justin Blackmon and Brandon Weeden both announced that they would play at OSU next season instead of declaring themselves eligible for the NFL Draft. The video of their announcement was our top video on the site this week:
- We launched a new ongoing coverage page this week to house all the content related to the 2010 U.S. Census. We have all of our stories that analyze the census data, plus a pretty cool map of Oklahoma’s foreign-born residents broken down by county. Another really cool item to digest if you have a free afternoon is the New York Times’ interactive map breaking down every city and every block in the United States. It is one impressive map. So impressive, in fact, that we insist you browse it. That’s why we’re linking to it from our Census page — because we love great journalism.
- Marcy Williams is a web editor on my staff who recently retired. She had been working with us for more than a decade, and her work online pre-dated most web experts you come across on Twitter — and all of those early online efforts came after she retired as an elementary school principal. She is already greatly missed in our newsroom, but her life in retirement can still be followed with her Travel Along blog. See her post this week about trying to go to an OU-Texas game without a ticket — and let that be a lesson to all as they prepare for the 2011 OU-Texas game.
- On Wednesday, I came across this story on our Know It page that covers Unusual Oklahoma. It was about a boy in Woodward who was rescued after his tongue was stuck on a frozen metal pole. It was a story straight out of the famous holiday movie, “A Christmas Story.” This wasn’t a story that inspired great journalism. And it wasn’t a story that became extremely popular on the website. But it does illustrate just the massive amount of content we can offer in a single day. And it’s probably the story that I’ll remember more than anything else this week. Especially the this line: “… the boy told officials he got stuck after his brother dared him to lick the pole.”
You can now see everything produced by Helen Ford Wallace on Helen’s personality page. Helen is an icon at The Oklahoman and NewsOK. She’s has enough energy to fill the newsroom, which I’ve written about before. And now she joins our other prime personalities with a page devoted to all the work she produces — blogs, videos, articles, photo galleries, Twitter posts, etc.- The new personality pages bring up another cool page we have on NewsOK. All the personalities we’ve pulled out to a separate page can be found on our NewsOK Blogs main page, where you can see all the personalities and all the blogs we have available on the site. I love to visit the page once a day, because I always see something I hadn’t seen on the site yet.
- Database editor Paul Monies doesn’t have a personality page, but he has the next best thing. He edits and controls a page completely devoted to one of his passions. His passion is right your right to know. He blogs on his Data Watch blog and posts tons of database information that empowers you as an American citizen with more information. He has city code complaints, pot hole complaints, gifts from stat lobbyists and much, much more. One thing that caught my eye this week was his map of the top neighborhoods in Oklahoma City with home vacancies.
Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
Enjoy another week of NewsOK browsing.
Weather preparation, sports page success and Huey Lewis highlight a week on NewsOK
I haven’t blogged recently. I’ve been saving it up for posts like this. Frankly, I’ve been so inspired by Darnell Mayberry’s thoughts about each Thunder game he covers (or even watches when he’s off duty) that I thought I’d try a similar approach with NewsOK.com.
Enjoy.
- Our sports section received high praise over the holidays. NewsOK’s sports coverage was ranked among the 10 best in the nation. It’s the second straight year for this honor. Want to know how great this honor is? We’re in the same company as The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe. Said sports editor Mike Sherman: “Whether it’s a story in The Oklahoman or a blog or video on NewsOK, we know we’re serving one of the nation’s most energized sports audiences. We’re honored that the APSE judges have liked what we’ve done for two straight years.”
- Bryan Painter has been all over the weather this week. Of course, he’s always all over the weather. His blog — aptly titled the “Oklahoma Weather Blog” — always ranks among our most popular blogs. He was the first to tell me this week that I better get my kids bundled up for the bus stop next week. Or maybe I’ll just drive them to the bus stop? We’ll see how it goes. But I’ll rely on Bryan’s blog to keep me up-to-date. Bryan blogs this stuff all while keeping up with all his other assignments. He’s a busy guy. We’re not sure when Bryan sleeps, but we’re smart enough not to ask.
- I was on the NewsOK Travel page earlier in the week. Yes, we have lots of great stories. But the blogs we keep on that page are really good. That’s why I re-built the page to showcase our two most worldly bloggers and give their content better treatment. Steve Barrymore writes “The Wanderer” blog. Steve used to work as an advertising manager at OPUBCO Communications Group. Now he seems to spend most of his time in various spots in Central and South America. Katya Kruglak writes “The Dusty Globe” blog. Their visits around the world are amazing. I don’t travel a whole lot and don’t really feel a great pull to travel a whole lot. But I’m certainly impressed by those who do.
- Steve Lackmeyer had an entertaining OKC Central blog post about Effie, The Skirvin and ESPN’s Bill Simmons. It’s worth a read, especially since Steve calls out Bill and openly questions his report. Said Steve: “Mr. Simmons, I’m calling you out. You’re dabbling in fiction writing with your latest BS report.”
- The political corruption story of the year got more interesting this week when Randy Terrill and Debbe Leftwich turned themselves in and appeared in court. It was all reported by Nolan Clay, who is great at covering these things — asking the right questions and getting the answers you want to know. The good news is that NewsOK has an ongoing coverage page that details this entire story. It’s a fascinating tale, and it will be even more interesting as it goes to trial. You just can’t make this stuff up.
- We’ve really improved our e-mail newsletters, and we’re adding some new ones very soon. If you organize your life with e-mail, I suggest signing up for our e-mail newsletters. We send out general news e-mails twice every day, but we also send e-mails for sports, business, entertainment and more. We’ll soon be adding daily obituary e-mails and weekly MOOD e-mails. Check out the options on our settings page — but remember you have to be logged in to sign up for these e-mails. And your registration e-mail address is the address these e-mails will go to.
- One hidden gem on NewsOK this week was Carrie Coppernoll’s column about her experience of being scammed in a store parking lot around the holidays. She asks: “How can we be compassionate to those who need help while stopping those who take advantage of kindness?” But she doesn’t just ask. She answers: “By asking the experts.” You might ask why you didn’t see this column on the home page. Well … it’s admittedly one of our biggest challenges with our website. We have so much great content that it’s hard to play everything up at the top of the home page. In our defense however, it’s only been a problem for about 15 years for about every news website that’s ever been invented.
- I read a great blog by Jenni Carlson on Thursday. It was a tale about Nebraska coach Bo Pelini and his recent public relations fiasco. I love the insight of our bloggers. The content on our sports blogs continues to impress me as a digital managing editor. But that’s nothing, really. The thing that’s really awesome is that it informs and entertains me as a sports news consumer.
- On Thursday and early Friday, we were playing up another odd turn in the Pharmacy Shooting ongoing coverage. The latest story from Nolan Clay expands on the claims that the judge on the case has made numerous disparaging and racist remarks about Hispanics. Should he be removed from the case? The defense thinks so. The judge doesn’t think so. Of course, the defense attorney’s wife is one of those who has testified against the judge. That’s an interesting twist. But the judge even admits to having said some things he shouldn’t have said. It’s like I said earlier — you just can’t make this stuff up.
- Our entertainment staff put together their annual top 10 movies of the year this week. They have a wide variety of opinions, so it’s always fun to see how each of them rank the movies. Gene Triplett, Brandy McDonnell, Matt Price, George Lang and Dennis King all pick a top 10 of the year. None of them had “True Grit” as No. 1. I would have. But I pretty much only saw three movies this year (that’s why I didn’t have a top 10 list). I can say this: When I do have a chance to go see a movie, I make sure to read our reviews of the films. I’m not going to waste my rare movie-going opportunities on something the experts don’t like.
- Here is George’s video with NewsOK TV’s Angi Bruss. It’s good stuff:
- Yes — I would, if given the chance, go see “Country Strong,” even though Brandy obviously doesn’t recommend it. It’s a shame. But I’ll give Gwyneth Paltrow the benefit of the doubt. After all, she did a duet with the great Huey Lewis that put him back in the spotlight for a month or so a few years back. That was awesome. (You read that right … I wrote the “great” Huey Lewis.)
Until next week, enjoy browsing NewsOK.com.
