We’ve organized this coverage as part of our nDepth – Stories of the Ages presentations, where we tell a story in a long-form and high-design format. We’ve completed dozens of nDepth stories over the past few years, but this is perhaps our most ambitious project, because we’re linking six of them together over the course of a few weeks.

We’ve already released Part 1: The Overview, Part 2: Langston and Part 3: Boley. There are still three more to come.

Graphic artist Chris Schoelen is producing the designs, reporter Ken Raymond is writing the stories, video producer Paige Dillard is producing the videos  and web editor  Nick Tankersley is putting it all together on the web pages.

They all deserve high praise for the extra effort that benefits our readers, but the work goes far beyond them — videographers, photographers, editors and researchers have come together to make this a successful  story-telling effort.

It easy to navigate. The stories are detailed and descriptive. The videos  add more context to the words that surround them. And the photos — well I’m a sucker for historic photos.

But here’s my favorite part: We went with Facebook comments to keep the conversation going in this series, and it’s proved to be an interesting way for users to share the series with others and offer their own commentary and insight.

Take a look. But don’t worry, there’s no rush. We’re going to keep this package active on the site for years to come.

ScissorTales is back.

The blog is featured on our Opinion page and showcases additional opinions and insights from the team of Editorial writers at The Oklahoman.

Recent posts include:

• Too Many Debates: “Nineteen, count them 19, debates have been staged so far, not including informal candidate forums. How many more of these Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney verbal showdowns can viewers stand?”
• No More Middle Man: “When managing a tight budget, cutting unnecessary expenses is a good place to start. House Bill 3111, filed by state Rep. Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, would end the state government’s role in collecting dues for labor unions.”
• More Cheese Please: “Wendy’s ‘Old Fashioned Hamburgers’ might want to consider a motto change, seeing as how the fast-food chain no longer has plain hamburgers on its menu.”
• Dancing with the Snows: “When is the exercise of religion on public property not an invitation to an injunction? When Indian culture is involved. The latest example among many is a Utah tribe’s snow dance to benefit ski resorts in Colorado. “

ScissorTales is created to get more content delivered to readers who want it. It’s a quick read, and it’s easy to interact with.

It’s just one more way to our talented writers to get more information to their audience.

If you are one of those people who are really interested in football recruiting and mapping the future of the OU and OSU football programs, you already knew about this page. You probably even participated in our live chat surrounding the coverage, and you probably had been following the coverage leading up to the big day on Wednesday. So you read all the all the stories and watched all the videos before you went to sleep on Wednesday night.

But if you prefer not to follow each potential recruit through the non-binding commitments in the Fall and Winter, and you just want to know who signed on the dotted line and what positions they play, this page is for you right now. You should take the time this week and review our Signing Day 2012 coverage.

It’s put together nicely by web editor Lindsay Houts, sports editor Mike Sherman and Assistant Sports Editor Ryan Sharp.

• You can visit the OU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Sooners signed.
• You can visit the OSU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Cowboys signed.
• You can go through all the stories and see all the updated signing lists.
• You can watch all the videos we produced last week during the heavy coverage our sports staff produced.

I know that it captured the interest if an intense group of NewsOK users. Last Wednesday marked our second-highest day of traffic in terms of page views in 2012.

Here’s the background …

The NewsOK developers spent some time in the second half of 2011 looking at improving our photo galleries.

They did a lot of work to the infrastructure of our photos. A lot of that work isn’t apparent to the naked eye:

• Making each image more easily findable through search engines
• Providing a true landing page for each photo
• Allowing images to be a part multiple galleries
• Offering commenting on individual images
• Improving sharing functions across social media
• Bringing a wider variety of photos into gallery presentation from our vast supply of Associated Press images from around the world

The designers also gave the web presentation a nice face lift, making the photos larger and improving the user interface. We also added Facebook commenting to each image so make it easy to post to your Facebook wall.

It’s just the beginning, though. One of the reasons we didn’t make a big deal about the change late in 2011 is the fact that we expect so many more improvements in how we display images to the user. This launch of our photo galleries appeared merely cosmetic to the everyday NewsOK user, but we did a lot of work that will make our future improvements to NewsOK’s overall product easier to implement.

We see our images as an asset that has great potential for growth. That goes for the great work of our photographers at The Oklahoman and the wide variety of photos that we get daily from AP.

We already see great web traffic on our photo galleries, and our changes in recent months and the changes yet to come are designed to improve the reach of our photos.

He was wanting to connect to our multimedia videos and photos that we often refer to from these QR codes. He was willing to learn something new. Strike that … he was wanting to learn something new and enhance his daily newspaper reading experience.

What a nice conversation that was.

It took just a couple of minutes to show him that the best way to scan these QR codes was to download The Oklahoman’s iPhone app. That was easy. It took just about two minutes for him to download the app.

While we waited for him to retrieve the app from the store, we chatted about how this application would allow him to download an edition of the newspaper every day for free. As a subscriber, he gets that service free of charge. That was news to him. And I stressed that he doesn’t have to read the newspaper on his iPhone; we want him to read the newspaper if he prefers. But he does have that platform available to him if/when he needs it or wants it.

But more importantly, that app can make his printed newspaper even better.

Once he had the application, I showed him the SCAN button in the main navigation of the app. That’s available to any iPhone user — subscriber or not. He pushed that button, then we both pointed the camera at a scan code on the front page of that day’s newspaper.That’s when he said it:

“Well, there it is! How ’bout that!”

He was watching a NewsOK video within a handful of minutes of dialing me up. His newspaper content jumped from the printed page onto his digital device and started talking to him.

And he became a more connected, more informed reader of our newspaper. That made him a happy customer.

And it made my day.

Hopefully, you noticed — especially since the feature only makes an appearance when you reach the bottom of an article.

We added a ‘slideout’ feature that appears on the right side of your screen when you scroll to the bottom of an article. Technically, it slides in to your screen, but we’re still calling it a ‘slideout’ for now.

If you look at the photo on the right, you can see a screen shot of what of the slideout feature showing an additional OU sports article at the bottom of the article I was reading about Brent Venables.

The slideout offers a a popular headline in the same category of the story you are reading, so hopefully it’s a useful tool that will give you a suggested headline that you haven’t read before.

We’re not always looking to have stuff move around on the screen, but we’re always open to giving our readers something they might find useful. The early feedback has been positive, and the traffic numbers indicated a strong rate of clicks for those items. So I finally decided to introduce it on The Digital Desk blog.

I think it’s a keeper. Other individual might think otherwise. But ultimately, the way our users interact with the feature will determine its eventual fate.

Most-viewed article

Ryan Aber’s recruiting piece on Tuesday about OU’s focus on wide receiver prospect Dorial Green-Beckham led the way. That surprised me, actually. I know recruiting news is big, but I fully expected one of our OU coaching turnover stories to lead the pack. But the Mike Stoops story was edged by a wide receiver story. It just goes to show that OU football off-season news is sometime more interesting that in-season.

Most-viewed blog post

Breaking news about Mike Stoops did lead the way for our most-viewed blog post this week. Reporter Travis Haney shared the news that was breaking on several outlets on Wednesday. As he reported: “The announcement is coming – and coming soon. Just doesn’t sound as if it’ll be today.” And now … here it is Friday, and we’re still waiting for that announcement (strike that — the announcement just came)

Most-viewed photo

We get a break from OU football with our most-viewed image from the week. What that means is … this was the image our readers clicked on more than any other this week. It was a reader-provided photo of an accident on I-35 and 122nd last Friday.

(click for larger image)

Most-viewed video

Tuesday’s video about the return of OU quarterback Landry Jones was our most-viewed video of the week. Jenni Carlson and Travis Haney discussed OU football way back when the quarterback was the big story (not the defensive coordinator). That makes for a dominant week of OU football on NewsOK in the second week of January.

One of those items didn’t surprise me. The other floored me.

Sportswriter of the year

First, I learned that Berry was named Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. That news did not surprise me. It’s the fourth time Berry has won the honor from the group.

There are a lot of really talented reporters and writers covering sports in Oklahoma — all around the state for a variety of news sources — but they’re all playing for second place when it comes to this award. It would be pretty easy for him to be named the winner of this award every year.

A playoff proponent

Second, I learned that Berry supports an 11-team college football playoff system that would only include the conference champions. His point is that making only conferece champions eligible would take all the guesswork out of the system. I was very surprised by this opinion, but pleased nonetheless.

I have vivid memories of working in The Oklahoman sports department in 1999, when Berry served as  assistant sports editor, and discussing the college football playoff possibilities. I supported a 16-team playoff, using 11 conference champions and five at-large bids. I remember arguing over a lot of the system with Berry, but my memory was that he believed it was far too bloated. In the end, I worked with Jenni Carlson on a piece she wrote on Dec. 28, 1999 supporting a 16-team playoff. We even designed a full page showcasing the system we came up with.

I confronted Berry about my memory, and he still says 16 is too bloated because it still includes five at large bids. I see his point and will wholly support the 11-team system with the same logic I had in 1999 — the regular season would remain critical and that teams might even schedule better non-conference games, because the conference championship (not an undefeated season) will get them into the playoff.

But my point is this …  in 12 years, Berry moved his opinion from a two-team playoff system all the way to an 11-team system (the way I remember it). And I only moved my opinion from a16-team system to an 11-team system.

After 12-plus years, I claim victory.

It’s the absolute truth that this device has changed my day-to-day life as much as any device or tool I’ve purchased in years (the fancy washer and dryer from about five years ago is a close second). I mean, the washer and dryer didn’t effectively replace my heavy laptop or my large portfolio notebook I always carried around.

So we know I like my iPad. That much is clear.

Azon Meyers presses on the screen to show he understand the letter “D” is for dolphin. Special education teachers at the Children’s Center in Bethany are using iPads in therapy sessions with children. PHOTO BY JIM BECKEL, THE OKLAHOMAN

But then I read Sonya Colberg’s story on Sunday about how iPads are being used to help improve the communication skills of children with disabilities at The Children’s Center in Bethany.

It was a great story that helps us see how people in all aspects of our community are using technological tools to make their lives and other lives around them better.

Scribbling helps children learn to communicate, she explained. But that early step is often lost to children like Abbagale who can’t hold a crayon or tap a keyboard.

Yet with her wrists in slings, Abbagale can draw or “turn” the pages of an alphabet book by lightly sliding a fingertip across the iPad screen.

Her teacher asked if she wanted to draw. The child turned those big eyes upward, meaning yes.

I shared those three paragraphs because it made me stop and shake my head. … And I thought my iPad changed my life.

• The 2011 Year in Review page was released. We take a simple approach to this page. It’s simply the 25 most-viewed articles of the year. In 2011, our readers liked conference realignment articles a lot. It shows in our Top 25.
• If you enjoy reviewing a year by looking a lot of photos, you could do a lot worse the our photographers’ end-of-year galleries for a variety of topics — Sports, News, Features and my personal favorite — Portraits. Seriously, the gallery of portraits is just really good photography.
• Angi Bruss has a new A-List that was released this week. she does a great job as she explores local merchants each month and what they provide to improve the lifestyles of Oklahomans.
• George Lang’s Static unveiled another holiday special in late December. Static X-Mas was shot at Deep Deuce Grill in Oklahoma City. Stay in the holiday spirit — even if it’s January — by letting Static X-Mas play while you work.
• At the end of the year in 2010, we revised and enhanced our Ongoing Coverage page for Oklahoma DHS. If you’ve read The Oklahoman or NewsOK, you know that reporters Nolan Clay and Randy Ellis have shine a bright light on DHS in recent years. The updated page now has a page devoted to Child Welfare, detailing the controversial cases in recent years. The timeline that’s on these pages is very deep and descriptive. Check it out.

We will have plenty more interactive elements in 2012. NewsOK will do its best to inform, entertain and enlighten with whatever tools we can find.