Deaths, Trades and Oscars — a guaranteed week on NewsOK
It’s been a really busy week. But, really, they’re all busy these days.This week seemed especially long for me because we made a change that irked some of our users. But in the end, I had an opportunity to speak with dozens of customers who use our website every day. That makes for a busy, but very good week.
Women in Prison
Our series on Women in Prison took another big step this past weekend. One story in particular became very popular on the site, thanks to the viral nature of the Internet. It was actually a story by Ginnie Graham of the Tulsa World about “How $31 of pot gave mom a 10-year prison sentence.” You might ask why we published a full story by a Tulsa World reporter on our site (we often publish excerpts of daily articles and link to the World’s website for the full story). Well, the Women in Prison series is a journalistic endeavor from Oklahoma Watch, which is a non-profit, investigative and in-depth reporting team that collaborates with The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World and others. It’s a good series, and it underscores our goals here — to tell stories and share information that makes a difference in our community.
New Death Listings
And now to the fun part of the week. I’ve written in the past about changing the format of our daily death listings. It’s part of a project that has allowed our newsroom to gather statewide death listings in a more efficient manner. It’s all in a database, so we’re now displaying those listings that way on the website. What it means for the users, however, is that the listings don’t look like they’ve looked every day for years. Here was my message to our users. Here are some of their comments: (1) I don’t like your new death listing, IT STINKS!!! (2) Congratulations, the obit listing is now totally unusable! (3) the new method of listing deaths is not progress. It is now impossible to know who has passed on. There was much more, but you get the idea. I responded to everyone. I made a point to show people who don’t like a searchable, sortable listing with a deep archive that we still have a printable listing for today that looks like our old way of presenting the death listings. I received some positive feedback after that: (1) just wanted to tell you, i just tried, the print button, and saw all of the obits, towns, and arrangements. (2) Thank you Alan!!! I’ll give it a try. When you’re older you resist change to anything you’re comfortable with. I appreciation your response. (3) Thank you for your response. I used the print link and yes, it opened it up. I really appreciate your help. Here’s the bottom line. We still have some improvements to make. We need to make these listings more available to users on a mobile device. And we need to change some wording on the “print these listings” to make it more clear. But I’m happy that I was able to speak to some of the users that make our Obits page such a popular destination each day.
50 years ago today
I was sitting in a meeting on Monday morning. We were looking at our Today in History page when a conversation broke out about the main headline in the front page of the newspaper that we presented on Feb. 21, 1961. The headline we were discussing was, “84,000 Get Furlough From Struck Airlines.” We were all guessing what it was truly about. Here’s what I found out later by browsing The Oklahoman’s Archives: “Three of the nation’s biggest, businest airlines ordered a complete shutdown of operations Monday night as a result of a wildcat strike of flight engineers, the worst tieup in American aviation history.” The Archives are a fun resource.
Blake was back
Blake Griffin returned to Oklahoma City this week. Jenni Carlson wrote a great column about how we knew Blake before he was the fastest rising star in sports. And this video we had from a couple years ago with highlights of his collegiate greatness was a fun watch:
iPad pride
This is just a note to say how proud I am of The Oklahoman’s iPad edition. I read The Oklahoman every day on the iPad, and the information and experience we offer daily on that application is remarkable. Plus, we also have a Live Edition on the app that shows the stories we’re featuring on NewsOK at any given time. It’s worth checking out.
Don’t forget … we’re on the Kindle
We haven’t forgotten. We publish every day on the Amazon Kindle. One day this week, some of the characters in the edition were messed up, making some of the stories difficult to read. It was a problem we resolved quickly. But it did give me an opportunity to speak with another reader of our products. This time, it was subcrriber to our Kindle edition. She saw the problem Thursday morning and let me know about the issue. And then on Friday, she said this: “Friday’s edition of The Oklahoman on my kindle was fine. thank you for your prompt response and for notifying me.”
Thunder trade on text
I was having a conversation with some colleagues on another floor of our building on Thursday afternoon at about 2 p.m. I received a text on my phone that said, “OKC Thunder trades Jeff Green, Nenad Kristic to Boston Celtics….” Being a sports fan and Thunder supporter, I was shocked. I knew that we weren’t expecting a trade like this on the NBA trading deadline. But I was also thankful that I can count on NewsOK to let me know that it went down. All of it goes to show that being signed up for NewsOK’s text message alerts can come in handy. You learn things that are important to you when they happen.
Oscars coverage
The Academy Awards are this Sunday. And the NewsOK A&E group has been preparing all week with tons of articles, blogs and videos of our predictions, etc. And on Sunday night, we will be showing the live blogs of George Lang and Brandy McDonnell, just like we did for the Grammys. I can do without The Oscars show. The blogs? Those are entertaining. And it’s set up nicely with this video from Dave Morris and George Lang:
Scene & Hurd
I always like to introduce new blogs that join the NewsOK Blogging network. This week, I bring to you Scene & Hurd, from Elizabeth Hurd. Elizabeth brings you ‘News and reviews from the Oklahoma arts scene.” If you’re into the arts community in Oklahoma, please check out this new blog.
Live video
We don’t do a ton of live video, but when we do … our users like it. On Friday afternoon, we streamed the Oklahoma City Thunder news conference live on our NewsOK Thunder coverage page. It made for quite a page. As I listened to Thunder general manager Sam Presti describe the trades and answer questions about his team’s future, I read our own Darnell Mayberry’s live chat from earlier in the day. Darnell provided some amazing insight from his perspective.
Most-read article
The aforementioned article about “How $31 of pot gave mom a 10-year prison sentence” was the most-viewed article on the site this week. It wasn’t even close, really. But the second most-viewed article? That’s right … the aforementioned trade of Jeff Green and Nenad Kristic to the Boston Celtics for Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson.
Most-read blog post
I missed this blog post entirely this week. Berry Tramel takes the honor again for his post titled, “OU football: Don’t throw stones at Alabama.” Said Berry: “But this is a wink-wink deal. One of college football’s dirty little secrets. Players are expected to totally dedicate themselves in the offseason, when eight hours a week of supervised workouts are permitted, and in the summer, when no coaches are allowed and everything is supposed to be totally voluntary.” I don’t know how I missed this on Thursday, but it was worth my time today.
Most-watched video
Berry’s here again, this time with his and Jenni Carlson’s Press Row video analysis of the Thunder trades. They even had to use Studio C in our OPUBCO Studios, but they got it done — and they provided some great analysis.
A week where NewsOK and Oklahoma returned to normal operations (there was no snow)
This week will forever be known as the week after two straight weeks of snowstorms that shut down our state. Our weather returned to normal. Our site layout returned to normal. And the traffic on NewsOK returned to normal daily numbers.
Apple makes it official
This is big news in our circles, no matter how you feel about it. After much speculation and rumor, Apple made their announcement on Tuesday, and the publishing world took notice. Some leaders in the publishing industry like Apple’s decision. Plenty of others do not. Here’s what our publisher, David Thompson, said: “We were glad to see Apple come to a conclusion on this. Though we still need some clarification, we look forward to working with Apple to mutually benefit our readers.” Thompson added that The Oklahoman’s iPad application continues to gain traction in our market. We are seeing growth in subscription numbers each week. Here’s the bottom line: We believe the iPad is an important device to deliver our content to. We will be working to make the product better and offer a solution for our readers on that device.
Political compliment
An old friend who works at a major metropolitan newspaper said something nice about NewsOK a week or so ago. Her news company was looking to increase the visibility of their politics coverage … “We just had a meeting to talk about our politics page online. I had looked at yours the other day and was impressed, so I pointed to it during the meeting. Everyone really liked it!” That was very kind. Our political coverage team works really hard to bring readers the information that’s important for our community. And I know that other major news companies have the same goals. If one of them like what we’ve done, that’s great. I know we’re borrowed plenty of ideas from other sites, including the one my friend works at.
Capitol tour
Speaking of our politics page, check out the Capitol building tour that we launched last year. It’s a floor-by-floor tour of Oklahoma’s state capitol. We built this last year, and it’s pretty fun to browse around. There are photos from many locations throughout the building, including some panoramic photos of key areas. We have featured that project this week with our multimedia showcase, which is just below our main stories on the NewsOK home page.
‘Do you really know what you are doing?’
Another item we featured in the multimedia showcase this week is our story from last February about about Oklahoma’s first heart transplant in 1985. The nDepth: Stories of the Ages presentation tells the story behind the story of Dr. Nazih Zuhdi’s 1985 medical first. This is one of my absolute favorite nDepth pieces we’ve put together. It serves as a great documentary piece, with archived video, insightful interviews and an historic perspective on the transplant. But I just love the dialogue between the assisting doctor, Dr. Allen Greer, and Dr. Zuhdi. “Do you really know what you are doing?” asked Dr. Allen Greer, his surgical partner. “You are going to be surprised,” Zuhdi responded.
Comments reaction
My last blog post generated some interesting reaction. The reaction came from the note about the comments we were receiving from users in our Archbishop articles. We disabled the comments because none of the comments were contributing to a constructive dialogue. Here’s one e-mail I received: “I appreciate that someone uses common sense in deciding to leave or disable posts. I am shocked at the vulgar, negative posts that are often left on sites. I am disappointed that negative posts were the only ones received regarding the Archbishop’s installation at least early after the article was displayed. I’m an educator who tries to teach tolerance and understanding to children and adults. The fact I’m Catholic doesn’t seem to be too important if I lead by example! Thank you for describing the event in an informational and objective manner.” That made me feel good. I also received a comment on my blog. Here’s an excerpt: “Perhaps the ability for reader’s to flag other reader’s comments for review would be a benefit to implement in the future? It would allow a certain level of self-policing amongst readers while leaving the ability to block comments or ban to the site editors so that it would not be abused.” The good news is that we actually do just that. We allow our users to flag comments as inappropriate, and our online editors address them within a few minutes. Thank you for your interest in this topic. It’s always good to know that users care enough about our website to share their thoughts on our policies and decisions.
Live Grammy’s coverage
Eminem
Sunday night was pretty fun. The Grammy’s were on television, so I got my Eminem fix. (I just want to see him smile … but it didn’t happen. We all lose in that scenario.) But aside from that, I watched two of our best bloggers sharing their thoughts on the show as it happened. George Lang and Brandy McDonnell both spent time live-blogging the event. They did a great job. It’s always so interesting to see the different takes and tones they have on an event like the Grammy’s. They are very different entertainment experts, but they are both very well-informed on all aspects of the entertainment industry. My favorite takes? From George: “Lenny Kravitz, dressed as M’shell Ndegeocello, introduces Muse. How many times can you borrow the beat from “Rock and Roll Part 1″ without being arrested in Thailand?“. And this one from Brandy: “I must say, I don’t get the people who hate Katy Perry anymore than I get those who adore her. Her music is so generic and forgettable I have trouble working up any ire or enthusiasm for it. She’s a perfect example of modern-day pop: All flash, little substance. The only reason I even care about her is she guest-starred on HIMYM, which happens to be one of my fave shows.”
Gundy’s Bieber-fever
We all got a nice laugh on Monday with this blog post from our OSU Sports blog. Seeing Justin Bieber imitate Mike Gundy and his rant is just entertaining stuff. And seeing Mike Gundy talk about how he is now a big Bieber fan is equally entertaining. Sure, Gundy’s phone call is staged, but it’s still entertaining.
Berry is hopping mad
I love our bloggers, in case you couldn’t tell. Berry Tramel’s take on ESPN’s coverage of the OU-Connecticut women’s basketball game was great stuff. And I quote … “But this was an awful idea. It was an awful idea 10 seconds into the game, when any neutral watcher could see this was going nowhere in terms of entertainment value. It was an awful idea at halftime. It remains an awful idea now.” Berry never has a problem telling his readers exactly what he thinks about something. Those same readers are lucky to be able to read him each day on NewsOK.com.
Most popular blog post this week
Oh, by the way, Berry’s post from above stands as the most popular blog post that was on NewsOK this week.
Inhofe squaring off
This blog post by Washington Bureau reporter Chris Casteel is also extremely entertaining. On Tuesday, Chris posted a video of Jim Inhofe having an impromptu debate about gloabal warming with author/activist Mark Hertsgaard and a few others. Chris spends his days interviewing, reporting and writing stories for The Oklahoman and NewsOK. But he also gives us some hidden gems that help give readers a good feel for life in the Senate hallways. Again … I love our bloggers.
2010 Census
Census coverage became a focal point this week. NewsOK was ready. We have an Ongoing Coverage page for the Census already on NewsOK. It has a lot of archived stories and graphics already in place. This week, we added more to that page and enhanced the content. If you like digging through data, this is a great page for you.
Most viewed article & video
Chad Peery
We had many articles that performed exceptionally well this week, including a story about Prince Harry being selected as the best man at the royal wedding. But the most viewed article this week was the story about Chad Peery. He is the Oklahoma City police officer who was seriously injured in an altercation at a local bar. That story is a pretty good example of how news flows in our newsroom. We first published information about the altercation late Tuesday night when the breaking news reporter received word of a disturbance. By Wednesday morning, we had more information and some booking mug shots of the men who were arrested. Then, we got more details about the severity of Chad Peery’s injuries. It’s a sad tale. And our audience took notice, which is why the update video, which included video of Peery’s mother talking about his injury was also our most viewed video.
Greyson Chance, Bryan Painter, comments on Catholics … and NASCAR — just another week on NewsOK
This week has been a big week for traffic on NewsOK. With the two weeks of snow, we’ve pretty much guaranteed that our traffic on NewsOK in February will top the traffic for Feb. 2010. That said, we always grow our monthly traffic as compared the same month the previous year. It’s happened every month since I’ve kept track of such things. It gets more and more difficult, but so far, we keep moving up the traffic ladder.
Check out the notes below to get my takes on the week of NewsOK. I’ll highlight some unique things on the site and some things I think you should know about.
Today in History
We have some great hidden content tucked away in NewsOK.com. One of those pages is our Today in History page that you can find along the right rail of NewsOK’s home page. With our Today in History page, you can find images of The Oklahoman’s front page 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago and 100 years ago. Those pages are fascinating to me. You can also find highlights about what happened on this specific date throughout history. And perhaps most important, you can find out whose birthday it is. Who doesn’t want to know that Mary Steenburgen’s birthday was on Feb. 8? (I learned that on Tuesday, and I’m the better for it.) The page is sponsored by Devon Energy. Devon also is responsible for providing The Oklahoman’s Archive access to local schools across the state as part of its sponsorship of historical archives.
It’s NASCAR season
To some in my family, the Super Bowl is fun and all, but it really means one important thing … that the NASCAR season is just a couple weeks away. For us, it means that you can begin playing our NewsOK Auto Racing U Pick’em Contest. For NASCAR fans, this is the ultimate game. I’m not sure exactly how many NewsOK users have played this game every single year since we launched it early last decade, but I do know that my father-in-law is one of those users. He’s always enjoyed it (even though I think he picks Jeff Gordon to win every race).
StaticBlog and Greyson Chance
George Lang posted a very popular blog post this past Monday afternoon, giving his readers an opportunity to see Greyson Chance perform live. “He’s taking time out from recording to perform two concerts Feb. 19 at Edmond Santa Fe High School to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network. And now NewsOK.com readers have a chance to win tickets to see Greyson perform live — before he’s playing basketball arenas.” That bit of news got people pretty excited, and we’ve seen a number of good entries. People should be excited, though. Young Mr. Chance can really sing. My favorite take on Greyson Chance came from George Lang himself in October: “I don’t mind being proved wrong, especially when the truth forces me to reconsider my dearly held cynical beliefs. Read this if you’ve always wanted to see me taken down a notch.” And then there was this video, which shows how good Greyson Chance is. It’s also another great example of the high-quality work our video team produces.
Kyle Roberts on video
Speaking of the outstanding video team, our own Kyle Roberts is making national news again with his music video that was shot entirely with the Nokia N8 smart phone. Kyle teamed with local musician Denver Duncan to produce the video on a song titled, “Stalker.” Check out the music video here. You should check that out, but you should also watch Kyle and Denver’s interview with Angi Bruss in our studio. And be sure to watch it until the end to see a performance of the song.
Printing a public record
We received an email from a concerned user this week, who upon a web search of her name found that she was listed in a weekly Land Sales listing last year. That’s a violation of her family’s privacy, she said. It’s actually not, as I explained in my response to her. “We treat the publication of those records like any other official document filed in the courthouse and available to any citizen. We publish a number of those documents on a daily basis (marriage licenses, divorces, etc.)” She seemed to understand, but still didn’t like it. “Next thing will be our medical records and bank deposits plastered on the web for all to see.” We are in a rather tricky place sometimes. We have a rich history of being a publishing channel of record (a newspaper, a website, a digital edition, an iPad application). It’s something we feel is important for the community at large. Sometimes, people like to see their name in the paper (or website or iPad application). Sometimes, people wish their name wasn’t so visible.
Dayton Power
Our company lost a great man this week. It’s a big loss for us. I can’t imagine the impact on his family. Dayton Power didn’t often work directly with the newsroom, so my interaction with him was limited. However, I know people who knew him very well. They are devastated. As one editor said this week: “We cover so many accidents and deaths, this puts it into perspective. Every death affects their family and friends so deeply.” Unfortunately, we got a taste of it this week. It doesn’t feel good.
See Bryan Painter in action
I’ve written plently about weather blogger Bryan Painter and his unbelievable effort during weather events. I wondered aloud … when does Bryan sleep? Well, when a storm is brewing, I now know exactly where his is, thanks to this video:
A Catholic commenting controversy
I actually don’t know if it’s a controversy, but our commenting always makes for some interesting blog posts. I’ve written about how we often struggle with the tone of our comments. There is even an entire category about it on my blog. It’s something I care about, that’s certain. The truth is … the commenting debate has raged in our industry for years, but it seemed to really pick up last year. And through the years, we’ve changed some things in our own system to improve the dialogue and give readers a voice. But this morning, an online editor pulled down comments on our story about the archbishop installation. By 7 a.m., she reported, the number of objections that we needed to look at were just out of hand. I, of course, always want to leave comments on an article if we can, so I decided to evaluate our editor’s decision. Of all the comments that had been posted to the article (some of which we had already removed), there were exactly zero that contributed to a constructive and civil dialogue. So … even though the article should have had comments enabled for community discussion, we disabled the comments. That’s disappointing. And don’t get me wrong– I was not trying to protect the Catholic faith. A faith that large doesn’t need me to protect it. I just try to keep hateful words and dialogue (from all points of view) off the website, especially if it’s already out of hand at 7 a.m.
Weather leads our article traffic
Our single most popular article on the site this week was our story advancing the winter storm that hit the state on Wednesday. The build-up is always almost as popular for our site as the aftermath. In this case, the build-up article led all articles on NewsOK.
Weather leads our video traffic
The most popular video this week? Weather, of course. This time, it was Dave Morris‘ morning update to the storm on Wednesday. Watch it here:
Weather leads our blog traffic
This wasn’t hard to guess. Bryan Painter’s weather blog led all blogs this week. He’s always the first to know about the weather. With the blog, you can be the second to know.
NewsOK – the week of the winter storm
This has been a wild week on NewsOK. We braved the weather (many of us from our kitchen table or home offices). We covered another massive blizzard (by Oklahoma standards). And we informed hundreds of thousands interested customers (yes — we had a bunch of page views, too).
Time-lapse video
Web editor Dane Beavers got stuck in the snow outside the OPUBCO building on Britton and Broadway. It was 6:15 a.m. Tuesday. He called me to let me know he might be late in starting the live chat about the blizzard. It was a chat we were counting on him to moderate. “Drats!” I thought. “Now, I’ll have to launch the chat.” In the end, Dane booked it into the building and launched the chat as I fumbled through the admin console. I imagine his quarter-mile run into the building like he was a fugitive running from the law after a high-speed chase — you know, the car spins to a stop and he opens the door and bolts away. In truth, however, he probably didn’t have near that amount of spirit in his get-away. But he should be commended for his effort. He was one of six or seven people that were in our newsroom that morning.
So in honor of that effort, I will post his favorite video from our coverage. A time-lapse video of the snow. As he said: “This is the best!”
Photographers are the stars
The header here says it all. I was commending Dane on his efforts Tuesday morning (mostly because I turned back and went home a couple hours earlier after trying out the roads). But photo editor Doug Hoke was another brave journalist that got stuck outside the building as he tried to come to work. And members his photography staff — Nate Billings, Sarah Phipps and John Clanton — came up with the idea and produced the time-lapse video. Stars, I tell you. They’re all stars. John writes about it on the Alternate Crop blog.
Photos are the star
While professional photographers get the best images — the most striking images — of these events. The community at large paints an amazing picture. Check out the hundreds of photos we received to our email address — pics@newsok.com. You can also look at the hundreds of photos in The Oklahoman’s photo gallery from Tuesday and Wednesday. They take some incredible photos.
Traffic on NewsOK
We had a lot of page views this week. We basically doubled our normal page-view number each day Monday through Friday this week. The most popular pages (even more popular than our home page)? That’s right — the photo galleries that I linked above. People love snow photos.
Photo by David McDaniel, The Oklahoman
Class of 2011
If you follow college football, you probably turned your attention away from the bad weather on Wednesday to follow the national college football signing day. Yeah, we got lots of traffic for our winter weather coverage. But we got another big boost with college football signing day coverage on Wednesday. We had a special coverage page with details on all the players that signed to play at OU and Oklahoma State. We also had live chats with some of the players at scheduled times throughout the day. It was really stellar coverage, and the sports department should once-again be commended for such thorough coverage.
Berry’s post of the week
Berry Tramel had a great post this week, and it happened to be related to our college football signing day package. He asked the same question I’ve often asked out loud: “Who uses a fax machine anymore?” He even offered a link to a story the Wall Street Journal produced about the same topic. But the most interesting part was when he relayed sports editor Mike Sherman’s response to him in an email as they discussed the Wall Street Journal story: “Next time you say something brilliant, let’s do something brilliant with it.” Now that’s great insight on how stories are produced (or unfortunately, not produced, in this case) on a daily basis.
Making mobile work
I had the opportunity Friday to speak at the Oklahoma Press Association Mid-Winter Convention. I was part of a panel discussion about making news mobile. We discussed The Oklahoman’s iPad application, the series of iPhone apps we have and our general strategy and goals with mobile news delivery. But the real honor? We were the warm-up act for Gov. Mary Fallin, who spoke minutes after I left the stage. My colleague, Jay Spear, commented: “Funny how the room looks more full now than it did when we were up there.”
Fallin on the juvenile affairs
One of the things Mary Fallin was asked about after she spoke on Friday was the controversy at the Office of Juvenile Affairs. I don’t sit through many Q&As with the Governor, so I was quite interested in the exchange. Let’s face it, our coverage of the controversy is the kind of journalistic work that make me proud to be affiliated with NewsOK and The Oklahoman. The Governor said she hadn’t had a chance to meet with the agency director, yet, but that she was pleased that the bidding process was going through a thorough review.
Women in Prison
The Oklahoma Watch series on Women in Prison picked up speed this past weekend with three stories. The premise of the series: Oklahoma sends more women to prison than any other state on a per capita basis and has for 14 of the past 15 years. It begs the question “Why?” It should be a very interesting series, which is being led by the Oklahoma Watch non-profit group and worked on in conjunction with many of the state’s top media companies.
The week’s top article
The top article on NewsOK this week was the article from Tuesday about the woman who was killed in the sledding accident following the blizzard. That story contained most of the details regarding the storm that day, so it served as an overall weather story most of the day on Tuesday.
The week’s top video
This is well-deserved … it’s a video of Dave Morris interviewing weather blogger Bryan Painter who spent Monday night through Wednesday afternoon at the Emergency Operations Center. He did an incredible job of keeping Oklahomans up to date on NewsOK.com with his live blogging, his reporting for The Oklahoman and his live chatting on the site. Talk about coverage heroes — Bryan’s one of them:
