Everything you ever wanted to know about NewsOK.com

Photo galleries on NewsOK are worth another look

It’s actually been more than a month since we unveiled out new photo galleries, but it seems like a fine time to get your feedback on our photo galleries on NewsOK.

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.

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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

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A nice time to look at the top stories in July

NewsOK had an interesting cross-section of articles that topped the list in July. Today, I’ll take a look at the top 5 most-viewed articles from last month.

 

Oklahoma City man who wore diapers sentenced to three years in prison

The most-viewed story of July was a about the sentencing of a 21-year-old man who pretended to be autistic and have the mind of a young child. Yeah … it’s kind of hard to explain, but you probably already read all about it. The article was viewed a lot by our local traffic, but it was also linked from the Drudge Report website, so the page views soared with national interest.

 

Oklahoma City outlet mall set to open on tax-free weekend

The No. 2 story of the month was about the outlet mall that’s soon to open on the west side of the metro. This mall must be really popular to have it rank so high in our article views. It’s not crime-related. It’s not breaking news. It’s not a sports story. It’s just a straight news story with broad appeal. Nice.

 

OSU unveils new football uniforms

This story was a bit of a surprise. I knew it would be a popular story, but I didn’t realize it would give us the traffic spike it did last week. The article and the photo gallery helped lift our monthly traffic. People love uniforms. And if you haven’t visited the interactive element that allows you to outfit your own OSU Cowboy, it’s worth a visit.

 

OU’s Landry Jones, Whitney Hand team up for life

This story has it all for traffic gold. It combines an OU quarterback with Heisman Trophy potential and a three-point specialist on a NCAA Tournament basketball team. It also combines a pretty girl  with an infectious smile and a social media storm that went viral. Yes, we covered the engagement of Landry Jones and Whitney Hand.

 

Oklahoma City parents complain police wrongly rounded up teenagers in Bricktown

And finally, in at No. 5 was this report about teenagers being in the wrong place at the wrong time, even though they were in an acceptable place at an acceptable time. The parents were mad. The police admitted being wrong. The public had its say in our comments — 329 of them, to be exact.

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Facebook commenting enabled on LOOKatOKC articles

We’re trying something different with our comments on the new LOOKatOKC website. Instead of using the traditional NewsOK commenting functionality, we’re going to try Facebook’s commenting.

That means users must log in with a Facebook profile to be able to comments on an article within the LOOKatOKC template.

We’re interested to hear feedback on this move. It’s a experiment, plain and simple.

• Will it increase the functionality for people commenting on LOOKatOKC articles?
• Will it help keep users engaged? Once a user submits a comment, they will receive an Facebook alert when someone replies to that comment.
• Will it increase traffic? Users will be able to post their comment directly to their Facebook feed if they choose to.
• Will it improve the tone of our comments? The theory is that comments will be attached to an online profile rather than a NewsOK profile that is often anonymous. It’s no secret what we’ve learned through the years — anonymity can create irresponsibility in online comments.

We launched this functionality on June 28. We expect to experiment with this for a few weeks and then determine its success. It might become a permanent feature. We might expand its use to other areas of NewsOK. We might just remove it.

Let us know what you think. And in the meantime, read all the other posts in recent years I’ve had about our comments.

 

 

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Marathon blogs, disemboweled cats, Billy Joel reviews and much more this week on NewsOK

Marathon coverage

The annual Oklahoma City Memorial marathon is going to be held in just a couple of weeks. That’s just enough time to see all the content on our Marathon page on NewsOK. The page is home to a really interesting interactive map and video of the race route. The page is also home to a blog by three journalists in our operation that are participating in the race. I’m always intrigued by the stories of people who are training to finish a race like this. You can follow their progress on the blog. There is plenty to take in on this page, so I invite you to check it out well in advance of the May 1 event.

Bombing page

And the reason for the Memorial Marathon — remembering the events of April 19, 1995 — should never be forgotten. That’s why I take this opportunity to again remind our users of this site we built in 2005. As I load the page, the opening video and music still makes me stop whatever I’m doing and watch. The site is full of history, photos and information about the victims. If you do nothing else on NewsOK this weekend, browse through this site.

 

Gas-saving myths

I was browsing through our Know It: Money page this week and came across an excellent story on the myths and urban legends about saving gasoline. The story came from AAA Oklahoma and does a good job of sharing the truth about what we often hear about saving money on gasoline. I learned some good things in this article, but the most interesting? … Myth No. 10: Putting the tailgate down on your pickup saves gas. False: You get better mileage with the tailgate up. Counterintuitive but true.

 

This week’s disemboweled cat story

From the “we-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” department comes this week’s story by Nolan Clay — Oklahoma City woman disemboweled cat, put liver in makeup box. It’s really impossible to read that headline without clicking through and reading the story. Go ahead. try it.

 

Elephant

Yes … that photo on the right — it’s an elephant. It’s from a screen catpure of the Elephant Cam on NewsOK this week. The live video is always embedded on our Elephant Nation page that was the inspiration of reporter Carrie Coppernoll. The video was also embedded in Carrie’s story on Tuesday about the baby elephant that’s about to arrive. Trust me when I tell you that we will cover the elephants at the Oklahoma City Zoo as they add another to their group.

 

Another conversation about comments

I had a pleasant conversation on Thursday with a NewsOK customer that uses our site frequently and likes to comment frequently. He was comparing our commenting functionality and philosophy to the comments on other news websites he has used in the past. He was in the process of changing his news home to NewsOK.com and still beginning to understand our commenting. Some thoughts he shared … (1) He loves being able to respond to someone’s comments, (2) He loves being able to sort comments by oldest or newest and (3) He likes being able to LIKE and FLAG comments. He does wish, however, that we would allow commenting on Letters to the Editor, but he understood our reasoning (essentially, that people who are forced to share their first and last name should be attacked in the comments by anonymous posters). He also asked that we expand our list of banned words. He gave some recommendations, and they were good recommendations (I won’t repeat them here), so I expanded the list of derogatory terms that aren’t allowed in our comments. In the end, it was another pleasant conversation with a NewsOK customer.

 

Get the Thunder in your inbox

Just in time for the NBA Playoffs, we launched a daily Oklahoma City Thunder e-mail newsletter on Thursday. The email is packed full of Thunder articles, videos, blogs and more. It goes out at noon every day, and you can sign up by selecting the option on your NewsOK Settings page and choosing to receive sports newsletters.

 

History on NewsOK

Joe Hight, one of the key leaders in The Oklahoman/NewsOK newsroom was at a conference last week where many of his conversations centered around our unique approach to a History Page on NewsOK. It’s a page that’s worth a visit on a slow afternoon. It isn’t full of breaking news or sports opinions, which drive a lot of our traffic. But it is full of outstanding content that can be read at any time.  Check out Mary Phillips’ blog posts on “The Archivist” blog or flip through our list of historical photo galleries. If you want to learn something you didn’t know before about Oklahoma History, this is your place.

 

TSA official makes news

I was fortunate enough to attend the PLN (Peer Learning Network) Spring Partner luncheon on Thursday. PLN is run by the Zig Ziglar Center for Ethical Leadership at Southern Nazaren University, and OPUBCO is a member. As a result, I get to attend some of the events throughout the year. On Thursday, John Pistole was speaking. Pistole, who is the top official in the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA), had much to talk about this week after the YouTube video of the pat-down on a 6-year-old girl went viral on the web. Pistole answered questions from the large audience, including some good ones from our own reporter, Jennifer Palmer. Palmer turned his reactions into a NewsOK.com exclusive Thursday afternoon, and it became one of the most popular stories on our site that day. Good question, good reporting and a quick turn-around for our readers. That’s what our reporters do on a daily basis.

 

Billy Joel … even better than Huey Lewis

I like Fridays. That’s when we publish our latest list of CD Reviews each week on NewsOK. This week’s list of reviews included a review of “Billy Joel: Live at Shae Stadium — The Concert.” I appreciate Brandy McDonnell’s review, because I know that she knows her music.  “Two jam-packed CDs are needed to capture the 2½-hour concert, which mixes familiar hits, album cuts and high-wattage guest stars, including Oklahoma native Garth Brooks, Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney.” Two and half hours? That’s the Billy Joel I know. I just might have to buy a CD for the first time in a few years.

 

Most-viewed article

The runaway winner in our most-viewed article race this week came on Friday, when we picked up a lot of views on “Oklahoma rejects $54.6 million federal grant.” This article was a good story that was featured on our home page, but it was also linked to from the popular Drudge Report website. What was the most-popular article not linked from the Drudge Report this week? It was this gem from reporter Nolan Clay: “Oklahoma City woman disemboweled ca, put liver in makeup box. “(See my previous note about us not being able to make this stuff up!) If you want to know even more about the rejection of the federal grant, check out the article’s author, Michael McNutt in this excellent explanatory video:

 

Most-viewed blog post

It’s OU football again. This time, Jake Trotter’s post on Sunday about freshman wide receiver Justin McCay’s tweet about his injury led the blog traffic charge on NewsOK.

 

Most-viewed video

OU football spring game preview information led the way in our video views this week. It wasn’t close:

 

 

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NewsOK’s spring break highlighted by Jeff Capel and Sunshine

A lot of people take it slow during spring break. Many families are on vacation. Extra-curricular activities are postponed. Plus, we have the St. Patrick’s Day and the NCAA Tournament. In general, the world takes a breather (except for wars and natural disasters). But we didn’t take a break on NewsOK. See below for notes from this week on our website.

 

Email us a photo

While the wildfires raged last Friday, we tried something a little new. We had been working on creating an automated way to collect photos that are emailed to us during breaking news events. The idea is simple, attach a photo in an email and send it to pics@newsok.com. From your mobile device, it’s as simple as snapping a photo and forwarding the image to that address. Those photos then automatically appear in our monthly user-submitted photo gallery. So, as the fires raged and we chased the news of the day, we asked you to send us your photos. We didn’t expect a ton of images, but it was worth a shot. The process worked very well. We received a handful of photos that helped us tell the story for our visitors that day. Thanks for sharing. … And now you know. If you have a good photo and want to share it with NewsOK, just send it pics@newsok.com. We are now accepting all photos.

 

NCAA Tournament has arrived!

Sunday night was a big night for college basketball fans. That’s when the NCAA tournament brackets were announced. Thursday morning was even bigger for college basketball fans. That’s when they all skipped work (or took a veeeerry looooooong lunch) and watched the action at Buffalo Wild Wings (presenting sponsor of our tournament coverage on NewsOK). We have all the coverage you need of the tournament this year. We have the printable brackets for the men’s tournament and the women’s tournament. We have the Hoops Madness picks contest and all the live scores. We even have tons of video analysis from our experts in the OPUBCO Studios.

 

 

Capel coverage

Jeff Capel was fired as the OU men’s basketball coach on Monday. I learned on Twitter. Then, moments later, I received a text message with the news from NewsOK. Then, I received a breaking news e-mail alert from NewsOK. Within about 10 minutes, NewsOK had a full story, a blog post with analysis from Berry Tramel, an online poll to take the pulse of OU fans, a photo gallery of Jeff Capel’s tenure at OU and a question to allow readers to share their opinions on who the next coach should be. The sports staff and the NewsOK editing staff worked fast to get the information you needed. It’s a good thing, too. The Capel news gave us a nice spike in traffic for what might normally be a slow spring break Monday.

 

Images from high school basketball

Web editor Dane Beavers focuses on enhancing a lot of sports content on NewsOK. You see his work every day throughout the site. This week, you can see a fine idea on our Varsity page, where Dane featured the photo galleries from each of the high school basketball tournaments from last weekend. Oklahoma crowned 10 champions from Classes 2A-6A for both boys and girls. That’s a ton of celebration photos and images of disappointment. The high school tournaments are unique — and if you haven’t been, I highly recommend going. It’s raw, passionate competition — and it means the world to the participants.

 

More photos on Alternate Crop blog

Photographer Sarah Phipps posted some large images of the high school basketball tournaments on the Photo department’s Alternate Crop blog. I always enjoy visiting this blog because photographers will always have some interesting insight on the images that they like the best. Sarah also linked to the galleries I mentioned above, but she picks some of her favorites to showcase in the blog post. I encourage you to see her choices.

 

Posting other coverage of Japan destruction

I posted an extra blog post this week — a bonus blog. We were in the office looking at the ABC News presentation of the before-and-after images of the Japan destruction. It was jaw-dropping, so we linked it up with my lead in. Shortly after that post, I realized the the New York Times and MSNBC had posted equally impressive presentations. It doesn’t matter what brand you went with. The important thing is that you saw it. It just makes you shake your head. And then there were videos like this …

… again, shaking my head.

 

Blog comments

About the blog I posted in the middle of the week. It sparked a couple of comments from readers who had a difficult time referring to the Japanese people as allies based on the history of our two countries during World War II. Some highlights: “My heart is moved enormously by the suffering of the innocents in this horrible national disaster and i will give generously to help them… but I will not be called an ally of their nation. Period.” and “…they didn’t generously offer to help rebuild Pearl Harbor and all the ships in the harbor on 12-7-1941.” Said the third commenter on that post: “What is wrong with you guys. You embarrass me.”

 

Sunshine Week

But here in the United States, it’s Sunshine Week. You’re probably wondering what Sunshine Week is? Here’s a quick explanation: “An annual nationwide initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.” I know … this stuff isn’t the full of sizzle. It doesn’t have splashy headlines and sure-fire web-winners, like a story about a man who leads police in a chase before getting out of the car with two cats in his arms, but it’s stuff that is important for our community and our future. Heck, just forget for a moment about stories about dates of births or about government bids (just an exercise … you shouldn’t really forget about those). But here’s the point: If open records laws aren’t preserved for our citizens now, then we might never be able to bring you that story about the man, his two cats and the police chase. Now that’s a scary thought, isn’t it?

 

The next big thing

I watched “The Social Network” this weekend. I also saw “The Adjustment Bureau” in the theater. Before seeing the movies, I was more interested in “The Adjustment Bureau,” but I have to say that “The Social Network” was more entertaining. Since watching that story. I’m inspired to invent the next big thing. I’ll unveil this invention on NewsOK. Keep an eye out for it.

 

High praise from reader

We had an out-of-towner visit the city last weekend during the high school state basketball tournaments. He was impressed with the newspaper coverage of the tournaments: “I just want to say thanks for the excellent coverage of the 6A-2A state tournament games. That includes all editors, writers, and photographers. … I really enjoyed the layout, the stories, the photos. Just excellent work. … Yes, I enjoyed the online coverage of the A-B tourneys the previous week.” That’s a customer we’re proud of. He uses NewsOK.com when he’s out of the area and reads the The Oklahoman, as well. And he liked both of them. Congratulations to the sports staff, once again.

 

A real-life ‘stuck-in-the-well’ story

I was browsing the know it: Unusual Oklahoma on Tuesday and came across this article: Firefighters rescue Bartlesville boy, mom from 30-foot well. It’s a well-reported AP story from Bartlesville. The mother apparently slid down to wait with her 7-year-old son as the rescue team was called and assembled. Said fire chief Bob Hasbrook: “It was a general consensus out there that the mother was the general hero.” It’s a good story. I like good stories.

 

Homicide map upgrade

The Oklahoma City Homicides map and database was improved in a major way this week. Our designers and developers did exceptional work in making the data our News and Information Center is gathering more user-friendly to sort, search, filter and browse. You can now sort the data by gender, age, ethnicity and more. You can sort by years, dating back to 2008. You can search the homicides by your Oklahoma City address and then change the proximity of the returns near that address. It’s a great tool for our users. But it’s also a great example of teamwork at the OPUBCO building. Local Editor Rick Green’s team is responsible for reporting on these homicides and adding the information into the database. Web editor Nick Tankersley is responsible for building the data structure in the Django frameworks and delivering clean data for display. The Audience Development team of designers and developers is responsible for making the user-interface as slick as it now is.

 

Most-viewed article

Jeff Capel dominated our readership this week. I already mentioned above about our coverage the day he was fired. The big story that day was the big story of the week as well. So what was our second most-viewed article? It was this: Jenni Carlson’s chat recap from Tuesday.

 

Most-viewed blog

Jeff Capel coverage won this category, also. This time from the OU blog. The second most-viewed blog post? It was this (also from the OU blog): Non-conference football schedule set in stone.

 

Most-viewed video

Jeff Capel again.

I’d show you the second most-viewed video, but it would just be another video about Jeff Capel. I think you get the picture.

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Wildfires, Bob Stoops, Justin Bieber and the OKC skyline

Oklahoma wildfires

I must start this week’s review with our intense coverage on Friday of all the grass fires in Oklahoma. Reporters, photographers and editors did what they love on Friday — they delivered important information that the community needed and wanted. We saw a huge spike in traffic Friday afternoon, which is normal for big news like 30 wildfires in the state.

 

Serving up education news

We have had quite a year in education news this year — from a combustible state Board of Education to a controversy in the Mid-Del district. On Sunday, we shared a story and a database that really added to our already deep year in education coverage. Megan Rolland and Tricia Pemberton reported on the combined salaries of superintendents in Oklahoma school districts. Database editor Paul Monies helped produce a database of all superintendents in Oklahoma and their salaries. You can see all the Education coverage with our special education news page on NewsOK.

Football appetizer

It’s March. It’s not football season. But when OU coach Bob Stoops takes a jab at Oklahoma State, it’s news. And that’s why we had this story on Tuesday afternoon. Stoops just said a few words … “You see we got another championship banner up? It’s not a South Division one, either.” … but it’s all the fans need to keep them busy until August.

 

A vote for letters to the editor

We don’t give our Letters to the Editor enough credit. They are often a good read — well worth the time it takes to browse through them once a day. If you read this each week, you know that I’ve written plenty about our comments on our articles. I like our comments; I support their continued use by the customers who use them each day. But there’s something to be said about the requirements behind the letters to the editor we run on NewsOK (via The Oklahoman’s Opinion page). Authors are putting their verified identification behind every statement they make in this public forum. Frankly, I support users to participate in the conversation in any way they are most comfortable. But the letters are an interesting read when we post them. You can find them daily on our home page just below our top stories along the left side of the page.

 

You can’t make this stuff up

Each week, we always have some interesting stories with some odd twists. This week was no different, especially on Wednesday. That day, the crime reporting team had stories of two homicide victims. Both appeared to have been killed under unusual circumstances — so unusual, in fact, that you absolutely know that we would never make this stuff up! See the stories here … Police identify Oklahoma City homicide victim … and here … Woman ordered to trial in death of Oklahoma City man.

 

Oklahoma City skyline history

We featured an old gallery in our Multimedia Showcase this week. It’s old because it was created more than three years ago. But it’s also old because it contains photos from decades ago. Our users appeared to enjoy it, if web traffic is any indication. You should check out the gallery of historic photos of the Oklahoma City skyline for yourself.

 

State basketball fun

Our sports staff covered the Oklahoma state high school basketball tournaments from beginning to end for two straight weeks. It finally ends on Saturday (March 12), when the final stories, galleries, videos and scoreboards are updated. You can find it all on our high school basketball tournament coverage page. I’ve updated every story on this page in year’s past; I know exactly how difficult it is to get so much information on one page, so we created separate pages for the boys tournaments, the girls tournaments and the full scoreboards for boys and girls.

 

A blog for the arts audience

Two weeks ago, I mentioned our new blogger, Elizabeth Hurd, and her new blog — Scene & Hurd. Elizabeth was kind enough to leave a comment on that post. Here’s what it said: “Alan, thanks for promoting scene & hurd. I am hoping this blog becomes more than just a place where I post reviews of what I have seen, but a blog that artists and audienc can exchange ideas. thanks!”

 

Commenting experiment

We’re experimenting a little bit with Jenni Carlson’s blog. Jenni’s an outstanding reporter, she’s terrific on our videos and she’s a standout blogger in our network. We wanted to see how her readers would react to using Facebook profiles to post comments to her blog posts. So, for now, the only way to comment on her blog is to log in through your Facebook account. Check it out. Let me know what you think. Email me here: aherzberger@newsok.com.

 

Most-viewed article

Remember that football appetizer I mentioned earlier in this post? Yeah, that was the most-viewed article of the week. It wasn’t close this week

 

Most-viewed blog

Brandy McDonnell took the award again this week. This time, she got some help from Justin Bieber, so it wasn’t really fair. Her post on Tuesday was titled, “Rascal Flatts’ Joe Don Rooney: Justin Bieber’s ‘got a huge future ahead of him’.” Rascal Flatts worked with Bieber and gained a lot of respect for him. Justin Bieber liked it, too. It was posted on his Facebook Fan page for all his fans to see, including the 22,936 fans who ‘liked’ it.

 

Most-watched video

And now … back to Oklahoma football:

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A week well spent on NewsOK

See below for another week of news and notes as NewsOK navigated another week in 2011.

 

Darnell just a little off his prediction

Thunder beat writer Darnell Mayberry held his weekly live chat on NewsOK on Monday. Shortly after the chat, we posted an article with the highlights from the chat. The headline? Darnell Mayberry: 99.9 percent chance Kendrick Perkins signs long term with OKC Thunder. It became the most-viewed article on the site that afternoon. Then, take a guess what happened the next day? This headline happened: Thunder signs Kendrick Perkins to extension. Yep. Darnell missed it. We had an uncomfortable meeting with him late Tuesday afternoon. He needs to be more accurate. Obviously, he should have said it was a 100-percent chance. (That’s a joke.) But here’s the take-away. Darnell knows what he’s talking about. Here’s the other take-away. Participate in Darnell’s live chat every Monday to find out what will happen on Tuesday.

 

Ed Godfrey joins our personalities

We added another personality to our list this week. Welcome outdoors expert Ed Godfrey to our family of personality pages on NewsOK.com. You can find his blog posts, his columns, his articles, his Twitter posts and even like him on Facebook. And check him out each month (the first Friday of each month) for a live chat that he does on NewsOK, hosted by and sponsored by H&H Gun Range.

 

Another complaint about comments

I received a message this week from a user who was not happy about our commenting policy on NewsOK. “What’s with all the commenting disabled crap? No wonder you people are going out of business.” I explained it to him (but I did not address the false claim that a changing business model is the same as ‘going out of business’) … “We routinely disable comments on articles about fatalities and on local crime stories. That’s a decision we made years ago in an effort to maintain a constructive and civil dialogue. And we’ve disabled comments on articles where the discourse has become increasingly destructive. We are unable to moderate every comments on every article, so we rely on user moderation. At times, even that becomes unmanageable. Is there a particular article you were referring to?” This did not please him, and he brought up another news outlet in our state (one that we share content with, but not every business decision with) : “Then why does Tulsa World not have this problem. I have noticed it on more than just fatality stories. Just forget it. I see why newspapers are going under.” I share this interchange just to prove that I can’t please every unhappy customer. If you want to see what I’ve written about our comments in the past, just go here.

 

OKC Skyline cam angle

We received a couple of messages from customers on our site that want to see a better view from our camera that keeps an eye on the Devon tower. One didn’t like the view we showed of the sky or the one that pointed down. Another didn’t like the view of the completed middle section. Frankly, that tower keeps growing on us, and moving the camera to get a perfect angle is difficult. We rotate among several angles, and depending on when you are looking and what they’ve completed, the view you see might not be your favorite. All that said, we will work to improve that experience.

Best OK Tweeter!

I was forwarded this link this week: Political analyst Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post apparently named our own NewsOK Politics twitter feed as the best political tweeter in Oklahoma. My response? Actually, I’m quite happy that we’re providing good analysis for those around the country. My other response? When I graduated from journalism school in 1997, I never expected that 14 years later I would be honored to receive an email with the subject line, “best ok tweeter.”

 

Bombing site worth another look

We had a story this week about former President George W. Bush being honored with the 2011 Reflections of Hope Award by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. That gave us an opportunity to drive readers to our Oklahoma City Bombing archive website, something we probably don’t do enough of. I don’t really know what to say about this site, other than that I recommend everyone visiting it. I’m humbled to have been able to work on that site a few years back. It’s a site I expect we will always have room for on our servers.

 

Live-blogging the Oscars

Brandy McDonnell and George Lang covered the Academy Awards last Sunday night about as well as any duo of entertainment experts in Oklahoma can cover it. Their blogs were entertaining and informative. And the best thing about them? If you didn’t get a chance to follow them on Sunday night, they still make a good read a week later. Check out Brandy’s here. See George’s here.

 

New sponsor for BAM

We’d like to welcome the Oklahoma City Museum of Art as a presenting sponsor of Brandy McDonnell’s blog. The OKCMOA picked a good one … Brandy’s BAM blog has been the most-popular blog on NewsOK for about three years now. You can also find the museum’s sponsorship on Brandy’s columns in the Weekend Look every Friday.

 

Shooting video

We had a tough judgment call this week when we received the dash-cam video of the police officers in Perry shooting a motorist who exited his car and moved toward the officers in a threatening manner. We had the article on the site, but the video really told the story. It showed the man acting as if he was holding a gun and acting as though he was about to fire. The video also shows the man going down after officers opened fire. We chose the show the entire  video because it documents the chase, the man’s actions and the speed with which the entire event went down. Showing the entire video allows the user to see and evaluate everything about the public servants’ actions. It shows our users Exactly how quickly officers have to make a decision. It also shows how deadly those split-second decisions are. We received a few complaints that I’m aware of. That’s understandable. These kinds of decisions are always hard to make.

 

Something extra for iPad readers

We offered our iPad edition subscribers something a little extra this week — downloadable PDF documents of the state basketball tournament brackets. It was a test as we enter basketball tournament season for both college and high school basketball. You can expect more documents like that in the future. And you can expect that experience to improve. But the bottom line is that we aim to continue to improve the experience for our iPad edition subscribers.

 

Election night in OKC

Tuesday night was a big night for followers of local politics. The Oklahoma City Council members were chosen, as well as many other important decisions around the metro area. All the results can be found on our NewsOK Politics election results page. That’s a good thing. What was even better is that these results could be found on NewsOK on Tuesday night shortly after the polls closed. As soon as we knew the results, so did our readers. No one covers elections and local politics like we do. Just look at our NewsOK Politics page. We think it’s important.

 

Most-viewed article

The most-viewed article this week was a little different that what we normally expect, but that’s a very good thing. We had a story about holiday offers at Walmart that were excluded in Oklahoma. Reporter Jennifer Palmer did a nice job explaining the issue. Yahoo! picked up the story and linked to it from their home page, which gave Jennifer’s report a nice lift and pushed it to be our move-viewed article on NewsOK this week.

 

Most-viewed video

The most-viewed video this week was a sports video. The new players for the Oklahoma City Thunder were interviewed on Saturday morning about their feelings about their trade. It was our first introduction to Kendrick Perkins, Nate Robinson and Nazr Mohammed. Thunder fans were interested.

 

Most-viewed blog post

Darnell’s post about Kendrick Perkins signing a new deal with the Thunder came close this week, but it was no match for Brandy McDonnell’s post about Mila Kunis and Amy Adams. I don’t really know much about Mila Kunis and Amy Adams, but they are both prettier than Kendrick Perkins. Maybe next week, Kendrick.

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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

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

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.

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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.

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