Surviving the Dust Bowl

I just want it to rain. I’m tired of drought conditions that are threatening Oklahomans’ livelihoods.  I’m tired of wildfires that are threatening Oklahomans’ homes, livelihoods and lives. I just want one of those three-day showers that we traditionally tend to get in the Oklahoma’s Aprils. We had a story this week about the drought conditions being the worst we’ve had since the Dust Bowl. It gave our NewsOK editors a nice opportunity to link up one of our best nDepth: Stories of the Ages packages we’ve built on “Surviving the Dust Bowl.” As you’re praying for rain this weekend, check out “Surviving the Dust Bowl.” You might need the tips.

OKC Thunder bandwagon

In a tradition we started last year, we launched our end-of-season Thunder Bandwagon page to detail the building of a contender in the NBA Playoffs. The page is sponsored by OKC Thunder Cycles, and it features a fun StoryWall from the 2010-11 season, a Loud and Proud Fan Photo contest, and photo gallery with the best photos from the season and some of our best feature stories about the players. The page is great for all Thunder fans.

Home & Garden sponsor

The NewsOK Home & Garden page has a new sponsor as of this week. Appropriately, it’s sponsored by Marcum’s Nursery. The Home & Garden page now features a new enhanced look and feel, plus tips from Marcum’s and videos from a series of producers, including The Associated Press and CBS News.

Blake Griffin: To boo or not to boo

Blake Griffin made some news this week. All he did was play winning basketball against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but the Thunder fans’ reaction to his play sparked a nice debate for sports fans in Oklahoma (and within our own newsroom). Darnell Mayberry noted the fans’ boos on one of his Twitter updates during Wednesday’s game. Then, he shared his opinion again on his blog after the game. Sports editor Mike Sherman wrote a blog post Thursday afternoon that sparked even more debate after we featured that post at the top of NewsOK’s home page. Berry Tramel followed all that up with his column that was released on NewsOK on Thursday night. To recap, Darnell didn’t like the boos, Mike hated the boos and Berry didn’t mind the boos. That sports department … they are never short on opinions.

Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant: Know It

With all the booing going on, it’s a good thing we launched our Know It page on Blake Griffin last week. And it’s a good thing we enhanced that page (and the page we have on the Thunder’s own Kevin Durant) with featured presentations of their blogs. So, follow our Know It pages on Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant, and follow their blogs on our pages.

Telling important stories

Our site is full of information that people just need to know about. That occurs to me every week, and I often write about that thought, but it just occurred to me again on Wednesday afternoon. The trial in the drowning death of 2-year-old Allie Croom began this week. The story, like so many we tell on NewsOK, is important for us to follow. We’ll follow them. We’ll cover this trial and tell you if a jury sees it as a tragic accident or murder. I think it’s important that we do that. I hope you think so, as well.

Anthony Shadid in the house

Speaking of telling important stories that need to be told … Oklahoma City native Anthony Shadid stopped by our newsroom on Friday to talk about his recent near-death experience in Libya and his thoughts on covering the Arab world throughout his Pulitzer-Prize winning career. Shadid is a great story-teller, which is part what makes him a great journalist. Shadid can honestly say that he survives his craft. That’s not something every journalist has to say. It’s honorable to be so passionate and continually risk your life to tell people’s stories. If you want to really understand what he and his colleagues went through in Libya while in captivity, you must read their piece in the New York Times after they returned.

NewsOK & The Oklahoman win awards

Shadid does great work in the Middle East. And the New York Times does great work in New York. And so does NewsOK.com and The Oklahoman. Want proof? Check out our awards at last weekend’s Associated Press/Oklahoma News Executives competition. The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com won 21 individual first-place honors and 48 individual awards. My boss, Kelly Dyer Fry, said this: “Being recognized by our industry peers is a proud moment for all of us. We work every day to bring quality news to our readers. These awards tell us job well done.”

Most-viewed article

Berry Tramel’s column about new men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger’s salary let the way this week for article traffic on NewsOK. I find it extremely interesting that this makes the third consecutive week that an article about the OU men’s basketball coaching job has led the way for articles on NewsOK. Berry’s take? “OU paying Lon Kruger $2.2 million is cents-less.”

Most-viewed blog post

More OU basketball. This story keeps getting traffic. This week, the most-viewed blog post is the Tuesday post about former OU coach Jeff Capel being hired as an assistant coach on the Missouri staff.

Most-viewed video

Strange. The most-viewed video this week was a video from last week. It was a video of Bob Stoops talking about building depth on his football team this spring. Watch it below:

Static goes to Austin

George Lang and Kyle Roberts spent some of last week in Austin for the SXSW Festival. They took that opportunity to film some episodes of Static: Season 3. The first episode from that trip — Pretty Black Chains — was posted last Friday, and more came this week. Static has been a critical success, so we’re doing many more episodes this year, thanks to our sponsor — Fowler Volkswagon.

Anita Bryant: Sunny Side of Life

The nDepth: Stories of the Ages did its job again with its latest release on Sunday. Robert Medley did the reporting and wrote the story. Steve Boaldin did the design. Angi Bruss narrated the video. In the end, we told quite a story about the legendary and controversial Anita Bryant. And we learned what she’s doing now and what she thinks about her life in the 1970s, when she was a lightning rod in the middle of the gay rights debates. Some people knew a lot about Anita Bryant before reading this piece. After reading it, they know a lot more. Others didn’t know anything about her before reading this piece. After reading it, they are informed. Check out the latest Stories of the Ages on our nDepth page on NewsOK.

OU coaching search: Fans get the vote

Sports editor Mike Sherman and columnist Berry Tramel had an idea last week. Put 64 possible OU men’s basketball coaching candidates in a tournament bracket and let Berry pare down who he thinks will end up with the job. OK … it’s not a new idea. They did the same thing five years ago the last time the job was vacant. Berry had 64 potential candidates, and the eventual winner — Jeff Capel — wasn’t in his bracket. This year, we’re doing something a little different. We’re allowing the fans to cast their votes to help us determine the eventual winner. My choice? It’s Tubby Smith. I’m a big fan of Tubby Smith. I voted for him until he was eliminated in the quarterfinals. It was fun to play along.

My favorite video this week

I’ve been folowing the O’Connell’s saga for months. On Tuesday, we posted the video of the original O’Connell’s being torn down. To me, that video made the entire thing real. It was even more real than my real-life visit to O’Connell’s in December for my last meal in between those historic walls. Sometimes, video just tells a great story.

Travel Along blog update

Marcy Williams had another fine post on her Travel Along blog this week. Actually, she had three posts on her trip to Texas — NASA, Kemah Boardwalk and Galveston Beach. I went to Galveston last year with my family, as well. I’ll say this … Galveston is underrated. It’s an fairly easy drive, and the kids loved it. I’d go back.

Oklahomans in Turkey

This is a blog post about a blog post about another blog post. Check out Carla Hinton’s blog post on her Religion and Values blog. Her post is about Louisa McCune-Elmore’s trip to Turkey as a guest of the Institute of Interfaith Dialogue in Istanbul. Louisa is an important member of our community as editor-in-chief of Oklahoma Today magazine.  Carla will be posting some of Louisa’s posts on the religion and Values blog, but you can see all of Louisa’s posts on JenX67.com under the Oklahoma to Istanbul posts. So … a blog post about a blog post about another blog. That’s a blogging community at work.

New blog for all the ‘know it’ pages

Don Gamill has started a new blog for all of our ‘know it’ pages on NewsOK. There’s more to come on Don’s ‘know it’ mission. You can expect to see a personality page for him soon, where everything he know about the ‘know its’ will be hosted. As it is, this is what you can expect on the know it blog: “… guest posts from local and national experts on all “know it” topics, as well as regular updates from Communities Editor Don Gammill.”

In the MOOD for a show

Heather Warlick-Moore started a new show on the MOOD website last week. It’s called “This is Mood,” and the first episode is below. I like it. Well done. And … a big thank you to sponsor Eskridge Lexus of Oklahoma City to helping us make this happen for our growing MOOD audience.

Most-viewed article

On Tuesday night, a series of gunshots were heard in the middle of Oklahoma City. We reported that. But by Wednesday morning, we had been able to confirm more details about what happened. It wasn’t pretty. An Edmond attorney was killed by her ex-husband in a murder-suicide. The story took off on Wednesday and it quickly became a strong traffic driver for NewsOK. In the end, it’s the most-viewed article on the website this week by about 20,000 views over an article about OU freshman running back Brandon Williams, which came in at a strong second place.

Most-viewed blog

Remember that OU coaching bracket I mentioned earlier in this post? Well, the blog post we used to promote that fun game for the fans was our most-viewed blog post of the week.

Another word about Tubby Smith

Of course, I wanted Tubby Smith (and still do). I think he’d be a great choice for OU. But I’m not impartial. My father and I had season tickets for the Tulsa basketball team during Tubby Smith’s first season at Tulsa in 1991. And he was a top candidate for the OU job in 1994, according to this archived article from John Rohde. Nobody is really talking about him this time around — and that makes me think he’ll be named the next OU coach next week. I don’t know anything, but if it comes true, I’m taking credit for being a genius.

Most-viewed video

It’s (spring) football season again. OU football takes the lead in our video views with our first analysis of the week reaching the top of the list for most-viewed video this week.

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.

I came across the most recent article in our “Inspiring Couples” series last week.

Jim and Robin Riley

It was a piece about Jim and Robin Riley of Edmond. Jim is a former University of Oklahoma and NFL football player who had lived a hard life during and after his playing career.

But, the morning of July 16, 1985, the Rileys began a new life, in which they would discover true love and their purpose in life. That morning, Jim awoke to find a dozen close friends, along with family, in the living room of the couple’s Edmond home.

I often write about hidden gems found deep within the NewsOK family of pages. The “Inspiring Couples” is one of those gems. The series is linked by the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative’s “Forever. For Real.” project and its calendar featuring the same couples we’re featuring.

It’s all great stuff and a good cause. But here is what I like  most about this series:

It’s the great story-telling — the articles and videos. Through our interviews, reporting and writing, I as a news consumer get to know these every-day Oklahomans and understand their stories.

That’s what we do best.

We started giving money away this month.

It began on Oct. 10. It will end on Dec. 4.

Each week in between, NewsOK.com is giving away $500 to a newly registered NewsOK.com members.

This is our way to encourage news consumers who haven’t yet registered with our site to do just that.

We see our traffic. We know approximately how many people are using our site every day … every week. And we want to connect with each one of them.

Frankly, it’s possible to use our site and get a lot out of it without registering. But there’s a lot more you can do as a registered NewsOK member.

• Access to post comments to our articles
• Have news delivered to you via email or text messages
• Receive coupons and special discounts
• Easy entry into and NewsOK contest

And we’re going to keep adding more benefits for registered users.

So please, take the time to register — even if you think you don’t want to. At the very least, you could use $500.

And once you register and have the $500 in your pocket, then you can find out all the benefits of being a NewsOK member.

He specializes in special content projects for sports and entertainment topics. He also handles many things on NewsOK, like our Topics pages, our social media efforts and our live chats. He’s an all-around swell guy.

That’s something one of our users learned last week after becoming frustrated with logging into our U Pick ‘Em football contests. The user had contacted us after he struggled with the process:

When I click on play game I get last years result, I tried to re-register but I am told I am already registered! I checked my cookies and they are turned on – Bottom line, I can’t get to the games to make my picks.

The bottom line of his message is the bottom line. He couldn’t get into the contest to make his picks. That’s all he wanted to do.

There were a few more e-mails as he tried to clarify the problems he was having. He expressed some frustration in an appropriate way in some follow-up messages. His frustration was understandable. But once Dane was included in the chain, things cleared up very quickly.

I just logged on to the college site using your user name and password, and I was able to get on and make picks (though I didn’t, of course).  ….. You may have to agree to the terms of service. If so, scroll down to the bottom after you log in and check that box. After that, hit save and you should be good. Hope this helps.

And with that, our football fan NewsOK user was happy. The proof is in his reply:

Thank you Dane, I was able to log in & make my selections – I really don’t understand why I couldn’t do this before, I was using the same log in info. as you. Oh, well – Bottom line you have made one senior citizen who doesn’t understand and really doesn’t want to understand this computer crap happy!!!       GO SOONERS!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this user yells “SOONERS” at the end of e-mails. No word on if he prefers to yell “SOONERS’ or “BRAVE” at the end of the national anthem.

It can be found on our MOOD website, which contains lots of great information about fashion, culture and cuisine. It’s a site that works in conjunction with our weekly MOOD print section on Thursdays in The Oklahoman.

After a recent giveaway, I received this message from the winner:

The 3rd time I entered your weekly giveaway, I won. Can’t remember the last time I won something. Thank you so much for the Clinique makeup.
Will definitely enjoy.

I post as proof that you can get something for almost nothing sometimes.

This customer gained knowledge from the MOOD website, plus some Clinique makeup — all just for using a good website.

That’s a good deal.

It’s time to make your picks.

We do this every year … picks contest for high school football, college football and NFL football.

And every year, we think that we’ve pretty much captured the U Pick’Em audience for our contests.

But, every year, we find that the audience is waiting for this contest …. and they’ve brought their friends.

We launched this season’s set of contests last week without much fanfare We sent some e-mails to past participants, and we posted a link on our new sports pages for OU and OSU. But we didn’t spend a lot of time promoting or driving people to the contest. In hindsight, perhaps we should have. We have thousands of participants on all the contests, and pick are being made for Week 1 every hour.

It’s not too late for you. Sign up and play. Invite your friends and form a group.

There’s no rule saying you can’t have fun on NewsOK.com.

We are mere days away from the start of the NCAA Tournament.

You know … the day that your co-workers mysteriously disappear from the office, take looooooong lunches or are on “vacation.”

Side note: I will be out of the office on Thursday and Friday, but it’s a legitimate family trip to the sports ba – er ….  I mean …. Arkansas. Really. I know people in Arkansas. It’ll be good to see them.

But you can see all the coverage on NewsOK.com’s NCAA Tournament coverage page. The coverage is brought to you by Nissan, which is why we have such cool content. We have every thing you will need:

• The national stories
• Printable brackets
• In-depth coverage of the local teams (OU men, OU women and OSU men)
• Contests
• Live scores
• Live chats during the OU and OSU games
• Blogs
• Video highlights

You can also find the latest local stories on you mobile device, the iPhone or the traditional mobile site. That’s what I’ll be using as I drive and visit in …. Arkansas.

Second Side note: If I see any basketball on the TV while in Arkansas, it will be a mere fortunate coincidence. No lie.

Normally, we have one contest for our basketball enthusiasts.

Not this year. This year, we have three.

Why not, we figured. We always get a lot of our users to sign up for these games, so we might as well try three games. It doesn’t really take any more time to play three games and have opportunities to win three big prizes (all of our games have at last a large national prize).

• With our U Pick’Em game, you can win a $1,000,000 by picking all games correctly.
• With our Dell Sports Game of the Century contest, you can win a $100,000,000 grand prize. Yes, that’s the correct number of zeros.
• With our Athletix Nation Bracket Challenge, you can win a trip for four to Las Vegas during the NCAA tournament.

(Side note, if you win $100 million from a NewsOK contest, I get half …. it’s in the small print).

OK. That last part isn’t true, but it would be appreciated.

(Everything else in this post was absolute fact.)

I am playing every game. I’m just waiting for the tournament brackets to be chosen.

And as usual, when I get one upset picked correctly, I’ll tell everyone I know that I picked that upset and that I knew it all along. I won’t, however, mention the other 23 games in the first round that I did not know all along.