Seeking Truth: nDepth piece shares Dr. R. Murali Krishna’s story
Kelly Dyer Fry wrote another heart-wrenching piece. This time, instead of sharing the gripping story of addiction within her own family, she shared an equally gripping account of an equally challenging affliction from the family of Dr. R. Murali Krishna.
The title is Seeking Truth: Where is my Amma? It shares Krishna’s accounts of his mother’s fight with mental illness while he was a young boy in India.
It’s part of our “nDepth: Fighting Back” series, where we tell inspirational stories of people making a difference in our community. Dr. Krishna definitely qualifies, and the only proof you need is Kelly’s story.
As he enters the backyard trimmed with rose bushes, he sees his mom. She is standing in the yard. Smoke is rising from her yellow sari with black trim. Flames. She is setting herself on fire.
Fry — who, for the record, runs our newsroom – transitions from Krishna’s flashbacks to Krishna’s present-day advice. As the audience, we learn not only what drove and inspired Krishna to become a community leader in the field of mental health.
We also get a bit more insight on how the world can change for a family dealing with mental illness.
A honey badger tattoo for NewsOK’s honey badger reporter
Bryan Dean was a fan of the honey badger before it was cool to be a fan of the honey badger.
Bryan Dean and his honey badger tattoo
Yeah, now we all like the honey badger. It’s easy to be a honey badger fan ever since the funny video went viral months ago. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen it, you should be ashamed that you don’t spend more time on Facebook or Twitter.
In any case, breaking news reporter Bryan Dean has had a passion for the honey badger for many years. Because of that passion, he decided to capitalize on the recent fame of the animal to launch his Facebook campaign to get a honey badger to the Oklahoma City Zoo. This is much like the ‘I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” story, but it’s fast-forwarded 58 years and it doesn’t have a catchy song.
But it does have a nifty video (produced by fellow breaking news reporter Tiffany Gibson). And it has a smart social media presence. You never know, we might be writing about this in six decades.
A look back at all the coverage of the OSU plane crash
It’s been a wild few days on NewsOK, beginning last Friday morning when news of the tragic plane crash in Arkansas that killed four members of the OSU Family.
Women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant coach Miranda Serna were on the plane, something confirmed by our reporters early Friday morning. From there, the reporting was fast and furious. The news team, led by local editor Rick Green and the sports team, led by sports editor Mike Sherman, combined for comprehensive coverage of all the angles of the story — the history, the reaction from university leaders, the effect on the players, the effect on the teams, the facts about those who died, etc.
All of the coverage can be found on NewsOK’s ongoing coverage page of the crash. You can see all the articles, of course, but you can also …
- view photo galleries we’ve built, including the one from the memorial on Monday afternoon.
- share your thoughts on the online Guest Books for Kurt Budke, Miranda Serna, Olin Branstetter and Paula Branstetter.
- read the blogs that came from our staff as they heard about the tragedy. They all share personal thoughts about Kurt and Miranda, since they were the ones we dealt with regularly.
- see some of the archived material we had on Kurt Budke. My favorite is the Collected Wisdom piece from earlier this year.
We hope this page is organized enough for our readers to dig through everything we have documented about the facts surrounding the crash. And we hope the galleries, Guest Books and retrospective blog posts effectively paint a picture of the victims’ lives for those that didn’t know them.
And we hope we don’t have to build another page like this for OSU ever again.
The Thirsty Beagle blog and the Beer Championship Series finals
Nick Trougakos is the Assistant Local Editor is charge of our Metro section/coverage.
That’s what he does during the day, anyway. After that, he becomes the Thirsty Beagle, offering news and commentary on all aspects of the world of beer.
In the past month or so, Nick — er — the “Thirsty Beagle” has been keeping watch over his annual 64-team Beer Championship Series tournament. It’s been sponsored by Tapwerks in Bricktown.
Tapwerks has been kind enough to over look the mixed analogy that the Thirsty Beagle came up with. I mean, “64 teams” sounds like March Madness — and it sounds like it should be in the Spring. But the “BCS” sounds like college football — and it sounds like it should be in the Fall. But I won’t argue with a man who requires all co-workers to address him as “The Beagle” as they encounter him in the OPUBCO hallways. It’s the least we can do in return for all his hard editing work.
Besides, today isn’t the day to quibble about the name. It’s a day to celebrate the two finalists — Redbud Pale Ale vs. COOP Native Amber — and place a vote (or 10 votes) for your favorite.
Voting for the finals continues until 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Gene Triplett enters the Hall of Fame
Gene Triplett and Kristin Chenoweth join hands as two of the newest inductees of the 2011 Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. Photo by Jay Spear
Our own Gene Triplett was honored Thursday night with his induction in to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
Portraits of the 2011 Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductees painted by Roger Davis. Davis is the official portrait artist for the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. Photo by Jay Spear
He joined other Oklahoma greats like Wayman Tisdale, Nokie Edwards, Bob Bogle, Jesse Ed Davis, Ralph Blane, Cheevers Toppah and Kristin Chenoweth.
Yeah, we ran a story that led with the world-famous Chenoweth’s induction at the ceremony. Kristin is great representative of Oklahoma and supremely talented. But in this blog post, I’ll headline with Gene Triplett, because he has devoted his career to journalism — and that’s something worthy of honor in my book.
And anyone who knows Gene understands that it was likely difficult for him to be in the spotlight like he was on Thursday. So we get quite a chuckle from his on-stage appearance holding hands with Chenoweth and singing “Oklahoma.” That means we can collect on our pre-event wager that he would indeed be singing show tunes on stage with the great Kristin Chenoweth.
And we’re also somewhat surprised that he wore the same outfit he wears to the office every day. Gene is always dapper in his black-on-black tuxedo look at the Monday morning entertainment staff meeting.
But in all seriousness, it’s a great honor for Gene. The Digital Desk congratulates him.
To see a full photo gallery of the event, see Jay Spear’s collection of photos.
‘Get well’ page for Ryan Broyles captures attention of community
On Saturday, the OU football team lost to injury the most prolific receiver in the the school’s history.
Ryan Broyles suffered a season-ending injury to his knee. His disappointment was captured on live television as the news was broken to him and his teammates. His chance to play in a final Bedlam game was gone. His chance to play in another big bowl game was gone. His NFL aspirations were put in jeopardy (though a full recovery and an NFL future is still very likely for him).
Early this week, NewsOK launched its Get Well, Ryan Broyles page to allow users to share their positive thoughts to Broyles. We built a simple page, created a photo gallery of Ryan throughout his football career, dating from Norman High School to his final OU game. Than we embedded a Facebook commenting wall and launched the page.
It’s been a nice test of how Facebook commenting can help build a community on our site. Some of the posts are long. Some are short. But they’ve all generally been the type of comments we’ve been hoping for with this page. It’s a wall of positive energy.
And you can thank the sports department here for always thinking of ways to connect with our growing audience.
Let me know what you think of the page.
‘Finding a Forever Family’ — a special NewsOK nDepth story
In the midst of all the earthquake madness this weekend, you might have missed a special nDepth presentation we put together and launched on Saturday night on NewsOK.com.
So take the time to read “Finding a Forever Family” when you have a few spare minutes. It’s a story told by OPUBCO’s own Michelle Kelley as told to our Night News Director Yvette Walker. Michelle tells the her story of working with the system to adopt a child.
This isn’t the story of Michelle Kelley. It’s the story of a little boy and a little girl nicknamed Biggin’ and Darlin’. And it’s also the story of why some children have to wait so long to find families to take them in and love them forever — “forever families.”
We also created a special PDF presentation that is enhanced be flipped through on a user’s iPad. It’s best viewed in iBooks on the iPad, but it’s a good PDF to read in any way you want to.
I highly recommend reading it an whatever way you want. And for a nice preview, here’s a video to get you started.
