Breaking down OU and OSU games with postgame blog posts
I was browsing the site today and came across a blog post from Travis Haney breaking down the OU football game on Saturday against Missouri. Apparently, Travis had been making similar posts after each game this season.
I point it out today only to share what the readers of his blog were saying in the comments section:
Thanks again for taking the time…this is a great feature for ou fans
and this…
Now this is reporting! Taking the time to break down video of the game! Awesome! Keep it up Travis.
Travis and Gina Mizell, our star OSU beat reporter have their own pages now, officially joining many others on our staff with pages that house all of their content in one place.
And if you like Travis’ postgame breakdown, check out Gina’s post this week breaking down her experience in covering the OSU-A&M game in real time. That was a fun read, as well. Here’s an excerpt:
2:39 Ah, the swaying press box. I had been warned about this before I arrived. But because I went through an earthquake in the PETCO Park press box during a Padres game last year, the feeling wasn’t quite as jarring as it could have been. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit freaky.
See all of our ‘personality pages’ on our main Blogs page on NewsOK.
A recap of the OPUBCO stories from the last week
Christy Everest, Chairman and CEO of OPUBCO with Philip Anschutz, a Denver businessman, after they announced that The Anschutz Corporation will be purchasing all assets of OPUBCO, Thursday, September 15, 2011 . Photo by Doug Hoke, The Oklahoman.
Last week, I posted an article of great significance on NewsOK — OPUBCO to be sold.
That was an interesting day for all of us employees of OPUBCO. My boss’ tweet (editor and vice president of news Kelly Dyer Fry) summed it up well:
“I met Mr. Anschutz and I really like him. Will miss Christy, but this is a good day”
And in a bit more old-fashioned version of a tweet, check out this editorial from The Oklahoman about our future.
Gaylord is a household name in Oklahoma. It has been for more than a century. Anschutz will be unfamiliar to most readers. This will soon change and the newspaper will evolve. But it will not reverse the course that E.K. Gaylord set for it so many years ago.
If you want to know a bit more about Philip Anschutz, you must read all the stuff we put together for The Oklahoman on Sunday. We posted it all to NewsOK on Saturday night, but we really gave it a strong push on the NewsOK home page for our heavy Monday morning audience.
Among the weekend content:
- More about Mr. Anschutz.
- More about the history of OPUBCO and the Gaylord family
- A timeline of our company
- An interesting story about what Anschutz did years ago when his small oil and gas company was faced with a well blowout
Kelly Dyer Fry
We also had a personal note from our editor, Kelly Dyer Fry — this time, it wasn’t on Twitter:
As the ownership of The Oklahoman changes, Publisher Chris Reen and I want to tell you we will still bring you the news. As a third-generation Oklahoma journalist, this is my home. My colleagues at 9000 N Broadway number more than 650. We are Oklahomans and we are dedicated to continuing the Gaylord legacy.
Late-night football fun
I still can’t believe they played that football game Sunday morning.
Lightning streaks across the sky during a weather delay before a college football game between the Oklahoma State University Cowboys and the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane at H.A. Chapman Stadium in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman
From my vantage point in my living room on Saturday night, I could see the story of the early-morning OSU-Tulsa football game unfold.
- I saw weather-blogging star Bryan Painter begin live-blogging as the thunderstorms spawned two tornadoes in northern Oklahoma. He posted how this storm would likely affect the fans that were gathering for the game in Tulsa.
- I saw tweets from reporters Gina Mizell, John Helsley and Jason Kersey as the game was delayed. Following those three reporters on Twitter was the best way to find out the up-to-the-minute information about when the game would start.
- I was on NewsOK.com’s mobile Gameday coverage, where I could see the post-game stats from the OU-Florida State game, which ended after 10 p.m. On the OSU’s mobile gameday page, I saw the story of the storm, the Twitter stream and a blog update from the OSU blog about the only man that stayed in the stands during the storms.
I’m no stranger to midnight. I’ll watch a ball game into the wee hours, so I’m not afraid of late starts. But after 11 p.m., when I learned that it would take more than 45 minutes to be prepared for kick-off, I was certain that decision-makers would not be starting this game.
I was wrong.
After midnight, I lost interest in the game — and it hadn’t even started yet.
The cheerleaders weren’t interested. OSU coach Mike Gundy wasn’t interested. And I bet half the players weren’t even interested.
And I’m pretty sure our reporters, photographers and videographers weren’t interested in staying in Tulsa until after 4 a.m.
But they did. They didn’t even complain. And neither did the sports editors who stayed up even later (or woke up from a short nap) to edit stories as the sun rose and post information on our website so all the fans who lost interest because of exhaustion (like me) could be completely informed.
It was easy to appreciate the fans who stayed through the game.
And it was easy to feel for the players who were forced to wait all day, and then all night, to finally play when they should be resting.
But I won’t forget the journalists who worked tirelessly to make sure you knew what happened when the rest of us had the good sense to get some rest. After all, those reporters didn’t lounge around during the delay — they were working on stories about the delay that we could post online and in the newspaper. Then, after those stories were finished, they had to cover a football game.
And they still looked sharp at 4:30 a.m. for the video camera.
Then again, I’m never surprised at our team. Every breaking news effort or wild sports story proves the same conclusion — journalists are wired to want to tell the story, even if they don’t want to be awake.
But I still can’t believe they kicked off at 12:15 a.m.
This week’s most-viewed NewsOK article
This week’s list of our most-viewed article was bound to be interesting.
We had conference realignment driving the sports talk in our state.
We also had the OU-Florida State game ramping up the excitement around the watercooler.
Then came the news the planned sale of the company I work for.
What would lead the way?
Well, football is still king in Oklahoma.
Of the top 15 articles that led the web traffic on NewsOK, 14 of them were related to OU football — either realignment coverage or OU-FSU coverage. The top article of the week was Berry Tramel’s Sunday piece blaming Texas for the conference mess. He even did a video:
They loved that one in Texas.
Of course, you are probably wondering about the one news article that cracked the Top 15 this week. And you guessed it … coming in at No. 4, “OPUBCO to be sold.” It might not have been No. 1 on the top-viewed article list, but it was the article most people I know were chatting about.
Thanks to some viral news stories, breaking news coverage and football season, September is shaping up to be a very strong month for NewsOK traffic. Thanks for reading, watching, clicking and sharing our content.
We promise to keep delivering.
NewsOK honored as finalist in national award
Sure, this news is about a 10 days old, but it’s worth sharing on my extremely condensed weekly notes about NewsOK.com.
NewsOK is a finalist in the 2011 Online Journalism Awards, the annual awards from the Online News Association.
We’ve been honored for our overall site in the General Excellence in Online Journalism category. The other finalists are CBC News (Canadian radio), the Las Vegas Sun (as in, Las Vegas, Nevada) and The Globe and Mail (Toronto).
I don’t know if we will win. We’ve been a finalist with the ONA before — just check out our awards page. It’s always an honor and validation of our efforts to be nominated.
We’ll start working on the speech this weekend.
NewsOK week in review: Mobile gameday coverage, Mr. Know It and early morning mowing
Follow the OU and OSU games on your mobile device
This is the one thing I’m most excited about this week. We’re making one huge improvement to our live college football game day coverage this year. We’re launching special game coverage pages for OU and OSU so users can easily see all our live content from their mobile device. Go ahead … log on with your iPhone while you’re sitting on the couch …. or while you’re sitting at the tailgate or inside the stadium …. or while you’re shopping with your girlfriend. This page will serve every need. We’ll have our live chat, a live photo gallery, a live boxscore, updated blog posts, update articles, a complete scoreboard and more — and it will be formatted specifically for your mobile device. It will truly be everything you need on your mobile device.
Full Access — Print + Digital
I could write a book about the great offerings we have for Full Access to all our products on multiple devices. But nothing says it better than this video commercial, so I’ll just stop typing ….
Ed Godfrey — the music man
Trace Adkins (not Ed Godfrey)
Outdoors editor Ed Godfrey had an excellent blog post late last week. After listening to Trace Adkins’ new song, “Just Fishin’,” Ed decided to rank the top 10 fishing songs of all time. Ed didn’t think Adkins’ latest would reach the top 10 of all time fishing songs. I disagree.
2011 Football preview — Digital Part 1
You still have time to read all the content in The Oklahoman’s 2011 Football Preview. NewsOK built a special page for the “Dynamic Duos’ coverage, including pages for OU, OSU, High School and Big 12/Nation. There really no better way to get fully prepared for the football season.
2011 football preview — Digital Part 2
The site mentioned above is great for NewsOK users, but what about our iPad users? Well, we also created special PDF editions for OU, OSU and high school football previews. The editions are built specifically to look great on your iPad. It’s high design and in-depth preview coverage built for you to store on iBooks on your device. You don’t have to have an iPad to download these special editions. Go ahead, read it on your laptop or even your iPhone. But if you have an iPad, you really have to give this a try. 1) OU edition. 2) OSU edition. 3) High school edition.
Stop-motion football fun
Speaking of getting ready for the football season, a couple of our video animation experts and one of our artists were busy making outstanding intro animations for our videos. Check out the “Making of NewsOK 2011 Stop Motion Intros” video, starring Kyle Roberts, Billy Davis, Steve Boaldin and Berry Tramel. (Berry did no work on this project, but we think it’s important that he appear in all videos this Fall). This video is really cool, because it shows the amazing talent we have working in our building every day. I’m impressed.
Steve Lackmeyer and the MidTown controversy
Steve Lackmeyer was in MidTown a week ago for an inaugural outdoor food market celebration. He previewed the event with a story. He was at the event as a reporter. He was there when the event was shut down by a number of local agencies. He blogged about it. He Tweeted about it. He wrote a couple of follow-up stories about it. He was so on top of this story that you might wonder if Steve orchestrated the entire thing just so he can report on it. Well, Steve’s a well-respected voice in our community, but he’s not that powerful. He is, however, a quality reporter that stays after stories once he starts to report on them. For that, all of our readers appreciate him.
I dare you not to read this story
We had a well-read story for our Oklahoma readers on Tuesday. It became a well-read story on an international level on Thursday when the Drudge Report linked to the story. The headline says it all: “4:30 a.m. mowing leads to Oklahoma City man’s arrest.” There’s really nothing more I can say to make you click on that story.
Alan Herzberger — star photographer
When we saw the first evidence of smoke to the southeast of our building on Tuesday afternoon, the breaking news reporters sprang into action. As our photographers and reporters raced to the scene and our editors raced to put the information we already had on the top of NewsOK, I took my iPhone a walked to our parking garage to snap a photo of the smoke from a distance. As I walked back to the building entry, I emailed the photo to pics@newsok.com. Before I reached the elevator, I saw the alert that my photo was live on our August User-Submitted Photos gallery. On the elevator, I emailed that to Robb Hibbard, our Digital News Editor. And when I returned to my desk, the photo I took moments earlier was at the top of NewsOK.com — 620 pixels wide. I was very proud.
Mr. Know It debuts
Look closely at that photo on the right. Is that Mr. Know It? Or is it a cardboard Mr. Know It? The debate in our newsroom rages on, but the important thing is that Mr. Know It is available to visit all areas of central Oklahoma. We just can’t know for sure if it’s a real-life Mr. Know It or a cardboard Mr. Know It. It doesn’t really matter, as Communities Editor Don Gammill (the real-life one) says: “He’s generally available to travel, and he’s easy to work with. You’ll never hear him complain, and he’s always smiling.”
A new web editor will join us
I hired a new web editor that serve a multitude of purposes for NewsOK. Her name is Lindsay Houts, and if you are in the social media circles in Oklahoma City, you are already know her. She’ll start soon, and you will see her involved quite heavily with our sports coverage in the digital space. I hope you connect with Lindsay and welcome her to our team.
Most-viewed article
Remember that story about the man who was arrested after he was mowing his lawn at 4:30 a.m.? It was our most-viewed article of the week. We even followed up the story to get more information for our readers. After all, the first story was so popular, we felt there was a little more to tell, so check out Friday’s story, as well.
Most-viewed blog post
Travis Haney was the author of our most-viewed blog post last week. Well, this makes two straight weeks for Travis. His post, “Here we go: A&M gone, now what for OU?,” was the most-viewed post in the NewsOK blogging network. He was breaking down all the options for OU in the conference realignment mess facing the Big 12 Conference.
Most-viewed photo gallery
The wildfires in Oklahoma were our top news item this week. The stories, videos and photos dominated the NewsOK home page, and rightfully so. The gallery was highly trafficked. These photos were from the journalistic professionals that consistently serve up the best images about and around Oklahoma. (In other words, they aren’t the phone snapshots I take from the parking garage).
Most-viewed video
This week’s Press Row video with Jenni Carlson and Berry Tramel also covered conference realignment and the Big 12 Conference. It led all videos this week:
and this …