This week on NewsOK: New apps, updated apps and everything from Bennie Owen to Kendrick Perkins
Serving another iPad experience
We launched our custom iPad application for The Oklahoman last October. I wrote about it plenty, and we received quite a bit of national notoriety for this application. Since the launch in Oct. 2010, we opened the subscriptions up for all subscribers to The Oklahoman, as well as offering a la carte subscriptions for $9.99 per month. But we also launched a different iPad app with a completely different experience in the past month or so. This one gives readers a page-by-page experience on their iPad. In other words, it acts as an interactive PDF of the newspaper edition. Since we launched it, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback. The one review we have in the App store says this: “This is exactly what reading the paper electronically SHOULD be like.” That user is a true believer, but others prefer the customized tablet experience we had already built. Us? We honestly don’t care which application you use. We are simply trying to provide the best digital experiences possible for our users who continue to move their reading habits to new devices. The Oklahoma Print Replica app is just another option for you. And it’s free to all subscribers of The Oklahoman.
A weekend of rowing
Last weekend was a big weekend for the Oklahoma River with the USRowing Master’s National Championships in town. We had the event covered with a series of stories, photo galleries and videos. Dave Morris did a stellar job with a video recap of the event on Sunday. And the blog post from photographer John Clanton was top notch. Of course, the photos galleries were probably the most popular element of the weekend (NewsOK readers absolutely love photos).
Growing Oklahoma Watch coverage
We launched a third Oklahoma Watch page recently. Oklahoma Watch, you might remember, is a “non-profit, investigative and in-depth reporting team that collaborates with other news organizations and higher education to produce journalism that makes a difference in the lives of Oklahomans.” We launched a page on NewsOK late in 2010 as we began our combined Women in Prison series with Oklahoma Watch. And recently, we started Oklahoma Watch pages on Tax Credits and on Immigration. It’s all found on our Oklahoma Watch page. But more than anything, it’s proof of what we think our role is here … the continued focus on serious issues is something that we at The Oklahoman and NewsOK are committed to.
The Kendrick Perkins saga
The Kendrick Perkins saga has been pretty interesting this week. It began on Saturday, when news from Beaumont, Texas, came out with information about Kendrick Perkins being arrested early that morning. It was a misdemeanor, but it didn’t look good. Jenni Carlson wrote a column about it, pointing out exactly how it didn’t look so good. “But to be an NBA player in your hometown doing a youth camp and raising money for life-skills and drug-awareness training for kids, to be arrested less than 24 hours after going to the hospital and being told to cool it, to blow off a charity game and a camp banquet to then go out to a club and get arrested, that is plain dumb.” Darnell Mayberry followed up with reports from the Perkins camp saying that he’s innocent and he wants to clear his name: “‘He was not drinking alcohol, nor was he intoxicated,’ said White, CEO and founder of EAG Sports Management. ‘Not one drop of alcohol Friday night. We’re not sure why they said Kendrick was intoxicated.‘ ” It’s interesting, and NewsOK will have it all covered. What else are we going to do … cover NBA games during a lockout?
This just in — I have a favorite app
I’ve had my iPad for about six months now. I love it. This week, I finally decided on my absolute favorite app. It’s one I downloaded months ago but never really used on a regular basis. This week, I opened the MLS MatchDay 2011 app and realized how much information it gave to soccer fans of the top U.S. league. Granted, I don’t follow the league that closely, but I casually follow what’s happening in Major League Soccer. And if central Oklahoma would have joined the league with a team in 2004 (check the NewsOK archives for history on that), I would have been following the league very closely. As it is, I just felt I should share that for its functionality and content, the MLS Match Day app is my favorite.
NewsOK TV video worth seeing each day
NewsOK TV is a show that Dave Morris and Angi Bruss have been doing for the past month or so. It’s always a great recap on what people are talking about every day.
Download our videos on NewsOK.tv app
Speaking of NewsOK TV, I highly recommend finding and downloading our NewsOK TV app for your iPhone. We updated the app with new functionality on Aug. 10, and it’s definitely worth a look. Check out the iTunes app store for the latest upgrade. It’s all you need to see every video that we produce at NewsOK.
A trip through The Oklahoman archives
Bennie Owen
I received this question from a NewsOK user this week: “I’m looking for an article … that was printed in 1969. Do you know if the online paid subscription archive would go back that far. Thank you for your time.” My answer: “I would recommend using our archives for The Oklahoman. We should have everything you are looking for dating back to 1901. The link is available on the NewsOK home page sub-navigation.” The Oklahoman’s archives are a real treasure that are sometimes overlooked. Just for fun, I did a quick search for Bennie Owen (I wanted to be sure I could find some I ended up with a long list of stories. After all, Bennie Owen is a legendary football coach at OU and the namesake of the field at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Here is just one item I found – a notes column from Charles J. Brill that included a passionate plea to make Owen the athletic director at the school. I love reading old columns from our archives. You’d enjoy it, too.
‘Know it’ all about the state quarterbacks
We launched two new know it pages this week in preparation for the football season. You can now read everything you need to know about OU quarterback Landry Jones and OSU quarterback Brandon Weeden. We can only hope there’s no know it curse, though. Two years ago, we launched pages for Sam Bradford and Zach Robinson. Bradford was injured in the first game. Robinson’s numbers fell short of legendary ‘know it’ status. We wish better ‘know it’ luck to Jones and Weeden.
Most-viewed video
Get ready for a steady diet of Berry Tramel and college football. We start with the most-viewed video this week:
Most-viewed article
The most-viewed article this week was Berry Tramel’s column about the Sooners and their future conference affiliation: OU wants no part of the SEC.
Most-viewed blog
Berry led the blog charge this week. This was also about college football: Big 12 football: Houston is no solution.
Most-viewed photo gallery
The gallery is more than a week old, but it still was popular this week. It was the photo gallery we created to go with our obituary of legendary OU quarterback Jimmy Harris. It should be noted, of course, that the primary column that the gallery was linked to was Berry Tramel’s column: The quarterback who never lost.
The Oklahoman’s iPhone app serves well in San Diego
I was in San Diego last week — a truly enjoyable weekend vacation.
But I was surprised at one detail. I stayed at a hotel that didn’t offer wifi. It wasn’t a small hotel; This was one of the major hotels on the San Diego harbor.
What kind of hotels don’t offer wifi? Apparently quite a few, says my wife, who tends to travel more frequently than I do. I think that will change very soon, says me — a disappointed hotel customer.
Sure, I could purchase wired Internet access with the connection in the room, but I didn’t even bring my laptop. (Who needs a laptop anymore? I use my iPad).
One point to note, I don’t have 3G access on my iPad, so I had no way to use NewsOK or download editions of The Oklahoman on my iPad.
So how did I stay in touch with the news in Oklahoma while I was away?
Well, I do have 3G connection through my iPhone, so I used the NewsOK Mobile site for my breaking news on the best news website in the world (that’s NewsOK). I enjoyed that, all the while keeping in mind that our mobile audience is our fastest-growing user-base that we have on the site. I see why. It’s a nice way to get a quick view of what we’re playing up.
But the cool thing I used that I don’t normally use was The Oklahoman’s iPhone application (normally, I use the iPad application). I downloaded the Friday, Saturday and Sunday editions of The Oklahoman on my iPhone and browsed the articles, videos and photos in a clean, packaged reading experience on my phone.
So, I’ve written plenty about the iPad app and I’ve written plenty about the NewsOK site and mobile site. But I don’t often talk about how great the iPhone app is.
But now that I’ve used it in a real world situation where I needed it to serve my needs as a news consumer, I’m a big fan.
The Oklahoman takes the stage at Apple’s WWDC
This photo made the rounds in our building on Monday.
It’s an image of the the annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). Take special note of The Oklahoman logo on the right side. It’s referencing our iPad application.
The speaker was apparently talking about the major news companies that have developed apps and begun to reach an audience on the iPad. Apple will have an app called Newsstand that will help deliver editions directly to our subscribers. The speaker was explaining that the media companies behind him were ready to take advantage of this upcoming app.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the image was up there for an extended period of time. But it did cause our esteemed Creative Director Scott Horton in our Audience Development department to post this on Facebook:
Technology is moving so fast that our 15 minutes of fame has now dwindled to 15 seconds. Someone at Apple must think we’re doing pretty good by listing us with some of the top publishers in the world. Congratulations to our team for all your hard work on the new Oklahoman iPad and iPhone app. – Apple World Wide Developers Conference, San Francisco, June 6, 2011.
Scott is one of the world’s biggest fans of Apple, so I will speak with him about getting The Oklahoman’s name above the New York Times’ logo. He’ll have that discussion with Steve Jobs, he says.
A question from the audience … Are we on Android devices?
I received this email from a user over the weekend:
“I was curious is there are any plans to expand your digital offerings to Android based devices?”
The answer? I’ll just repeat it here:
“We do have a NewsOK app for $0.99 for Android devices. We also have an app for The Oklahoman (daily downloadable editions) available for Android devices. You should find those in your various Android app stores.“
Two weeks worth of NewsOK memories
I missed last week. Thanks to everyone for all the messages of concern when my weekly blog didn’t appear on NewsOK. Wait, let me count all the messages of concern I received … hang on … carry the zero … yes, that’s right … Zero. That’s how many concerned messages I received. It doesn’t matter now, because I have two weeks worth of highlights from NewsOK.com. Enjoy.
‘A Thousand Hail Marys’
All notes about the great things to see on NewsOK in the past couple weeks have to start with Kelly Fry’s nDepth piece about her son’s fight with addiction. We’ve done some excellent nDepth pieces in the past three years, but this is undoubtedly the best. I urge you to read it and watch the video. But it doesn’t take much urging. If you start, you’ll finish.
A special PDF presentation
We also took the opportunity to put together a special PDF version of this story that we marketed to our iPad subscribers. The PDF is best viewed in the iBooks application on iPads, but it’s also viewable on any computer. The design from Art Director Todd Pendleton is outstanding.
Drug deaths covered this week
On the same day that we released the “A Thousand Hail Marys to Florida” piece, a story broke about a woman’s death after ingesting a designer drug. Several others were hospitalized. On Friday afternoon, we learned that a second man died after spending days in the hospital. It’s a sad story that we developed throughout the week. Then, on Wednesday night, we posted the 911 call from the night on May 7. It’s just further proof about how drug abuse and drug addiction affects every community.
An official iPad convert
I spent an hour Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and The Oklahoman, as I do on most every weekend morning. But this weekend was a bit different. It was just my second weekend as an iPad owner. Before I bought my own iPad, I used one of OPUBCO’s devices during the week. That convinced me to buy my own. In the weeks since I received my iPad, I’ve tossed my large portfolio notebook in the trash and I stopped dragging my laptop home every night. I’ve even stopped using the family iMac we bought earlier this year. Almost everything is easier on the iPad. And yes … I now spend my weekend mornings with a cup coffee and my iPad edition of The Oklahoman. But here’s the kicker … after I had set it down and moved along, I wanted to look something up about the Oklahoma City Thunder game against Memphis on Saturday. I picked up my iPad and started moving to the quickest way to find a story about it. Did I choose NewsOK.com on my Safari browser? Nope. I launched The Oklahoman app again. I found my story, read it and moved along. That’s was my ‘aha’ moment. There is indeed a future for packaged reading experiences like we have with The Oklahoman on the iPad. It’s easy, quick and already downloaded to my device. That’s not to say there’s not a future for NewsOK (I love NewsOK), but I understand why I pay to subscribe to The Oklahoman’s reading experience.
More kind words about our product
Speaking of the iPad edition, we received some kind feedback from a reader who recently bought an iPad and launched his subscription. Melissa Howell, a colleague that spends a good amount of her time editing the MOOD website, had the conversation with the esteemed reader. She shared it with me: “I love what you guys have done with the iPad. I am so hooked!”
Remembering May 3, 1999
Tuesday was May 3. That gave us an opportunity to send readers to our May 3 page that we built two years ago on the 10th anniversary of the devastating storm. I really like this site, because it does an excellent job of sharing the stories of the victims and what they remember from 10 years prior. The videos featured on this page never get old. And the stories they tell in the articles are mesmerizing. Schedule some time before clicking, though. You’ll want to browse a while on this page.
‘Hot Ink’ launches
Professionals in our newsroom volunteer their time to work with high school journalism students to produce an annual publication we call “Hot Ink.” We printed it a few weeks ago, and the website went live last week. You even saw a number of their completed articles in The Oklahoman on Sunday (May 1) as we showcased some of the young talent with a couple of inside pages of The Oklahoman. Carrie Coppernoll leads the group, and she does an outstanding job. Want proof? Just check out the Hot Ink website and read the articles. It’s worth your time.
A page full of interactive graphics
We have recently launched a page under our Multimedia main navigation that showcases the daily interactive graphics offered by The Associated Press. It’s really an interesting page to visit, because you get a little bit of everything. In just a few minutes, you can see everything about the death of Osama bin Laden to a live map of active wildfires in the country to a panoramic photos of the crown at the Royal Wedding last week. We started updating this page a few weeks ago, and we feel it’s ready for you to look at everything on it. Enjoy.
Courtroom fisticuffs
David Prater
What’s the old joke about attending a boxing match when a hockey game broke out? Well … reporter Nolan Clay went to cover a fist-fight, and a closing argument in a first-degree murder trial broke out. According to Nolan’s reports, Oklahoma Country District Attorney David Prater more than held his own after a convicted murderer took a cheap shot at him. This has to go directly into the “we-can’t-possibly-make-this-stuff-up” file. I’ll say it again. If this was a Hollywood movie script, I wouldn’t have believed it. But since Nolan reported it, I believe it.
Our users send message to bin Laden?
Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday (May 1). We learned about it on Sunday night. Our editors had it covered that night with a bunch of stories and photos and interactive elements. I’m proud of that. On Monday, we saw some elevated traffic, something I expected after such a big news event. But our biggest hour was at noon. That’s not normal. Our busiest hours on the site for traffic are generally in the morning. But maybe our users were up to something. At the end of the day, our traffic chart for Monday kind of made it look like our audience was intentionally sending a message to the recently deceased bin Laden. I’ll let you make the call.
Geronimo nDepth piece came in handy
The code word for the operation to get bin Laden was “Geronimo.” That sparked some discussion about the proper use of the Apache warrior’s name, and it sparked some outrage. Luckily, we created an nDepth — Stories of the Ages piece on Geronimo a couple of years ago. It’s great read, and it has a really good video with it. Since the nation was suddenly interested in Geronimo last week, we took that opportunity to make sure our readers were an informed as possible about his life.
Finishing in the top 7,500
Columnist Carrie Coppernoll ran the half-marathon on May 1. I wrote about how she wrote about her training as she prepared for the event, but her column after the event was a great read, as well. Carrie finished in the top 7,500 in that race. That’s infinitely better than I did. Good for her.
Loud and Proud Thunder fans
As long as the Oklahoma City Thunder are playing in the NBA Playoffs (we hope that’s for another couple of weeks), we will continue to encourage users to submit their photos that prove they are the craziest basketball fan on Oklahoma. Our rules stated that we will accept entries until the Thunder loses in the playoffs, but we had a glitch that opened voting for those that had entered. That made at least one participant angry. I can’t blame her for being angry. We corrected the glitch and tried to make the submission process even more clear. Bottom line … it’s not too late to enter the contest for your chance to win an iPad.
Thunder bandwagon
Speaking of the Oklahoma City Thunder, there is still plenty of room on the Thunder Bandwagon.
Live chats during Thunder games
And if you haven’t joined the the live chats that we’ve had during the Thunder playoff games, you should. Prop up your laptop next to you and see what our reporters and other fans in the chat are talking about as the plays are happening. It’s a great way to add to the experience of the game in your living room.
Election results
We had some elections in the state on Tuesday (May 10). And as we’ve done with all elections recently, we had complete results. That’s something other news sites just don’t do. We have a deep database of election results that we are continuing to find ways to enhance in the coming months.
Static from Norman Music Festival
I’ve written a lot about Static and George Lang’s trip to Austin for SXSW earlier this year. But a couple weeks ago, Static visited the Norman Music Festival, and the episodes are starting to find their way on the Static website. Check out Episode 45: Other Lives.
Most-viewed article
Since I didn’t post last week, this is a two-week honor. It goes to a story that went viral, thanks to a link from the Drudge Report website. “A mentally impaired Oklahoma City man was held down and shocked in the genitals with a stun gun April 17 while his attackers forcibly tattooed the word ‘RAPEST’ on his forehead.” Judging by our traffic, you read that story, but if you somehow missed it, click here.
Most-viewed video
You guessed it. The same story … this time in video format:
Most-viewed blog post
Bob Przybylo’s post about Manny Pacquiao led the blog charge this week. I was a little surprised, but a lot of users around the world were searching on Manny’s name, and Bob’s blog post ranked high for those users.
Most-viewed gallery
The photos from the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on May 1 led the traffic for galleries on NewsOK. It’s been almost two weeks since we built that gallery. It’s definitely worth another look.
iPad news, Outlook updates and ‘Open Flames’ — all available on NewsOK
The iPad-vs.-newspaper battle in Cyril
My favorite story and video of the week came from reporter Don Mecoy on Tuesday. He had a nice story about a mother and son in Cyril who are avid readers of The Oklahoman. The mother, 94-year-old DeLois Patterson, prefers the printed newspaper. The son, 77-year-old Bill Patterson, prefers the iPad edition. Reports Mecoy: “When Bill Patterson buys a new iPad, he hopes to give his current one to his mother, who immediately dismisses the idea with a wave of her hand.” Great stuff. But the words only tell half the story. Mecoy’s video helps paint the picture.
A page for ‘Mr. Know It’
Don Gammill is a ‘know it’ all. It says so on his new Personality Page set up just for all his content. He is ‘Mr. Know It.’ You can see everything Don writes, blogs, tweets or posts on our newest page devoted to our reporters — the ‘Mr. Know It’ personality page.
Berry’s blog of the week
I stumbled across another great Berry Tramel blog post this week. This time, he wasn’t even the storyteller. He merely re-told a story that was told to him by Chip Land, the former managing partner of the old Oklahoma City Cavalry CBA team. It was a story about Denver Nuggets coach George Karl and his experience in Oklahoma City 20 years ago as the coach of the CBA’s Albany Patroons. And to entice you to read it, I’ll share the last line of the post: “So there you have it. George Karl thinks he had trouble in Oklahoma City this week. It was nothing like 20 years ago.”
‘Open Flame’ series begins at American Propane
Dave Cathey is cooking again. Actually, Dave is always cooking — and I, for one, am grateful. I’ve been using his recipe for old-fashioned chicken wings for important football games since I first saw the recipe last September. Now, I have a bunch of other recipes to try, thanks to his “Open Flame” video series in partnership with American Propane. The first video was all about chicken, and it featured some heavy-hitters in the local culinary scene. I enjoyed it so much that I watched the entire 8-minute video on NewsOK.
‘Open Flame’ out-take
Video director Dave Morris was at the ‘Open Flame’ shoot at American Propane and posted his thoughts about the event on his blog. He even posted an an out-take that didn’t make the final cut. Check out the 5-second video at the bottom of Dave’s blog post and see the Food Dude scurry from an open flame. I’m pretty sure the Food Dude hasn’t moved that fast since his soccer-playing days in college when he was a finely-tuned athlete on the brink of greatness.
Outlook on NewsOK
The News and Information Center has been hustling the past few weeks, working hard to write, edit and produce the annual Outlook special section. The section is released on Sunday, and you can see all the stories on the Outlook website here (until Sunday, you’ll still see the 2010 edition). The 2011 edition will be ready for you to see on Sunday, and that’s the same time you can pick up the special newspaper edition in The Oklahoman in your driveway or at the newsstands.
Outlook on the iPad
But this year, we have a special edition of the Outlook section. It’s a special iPad magazine edition that features some of the best articles from the publication. It doesn’t have every story we wrote for the Outlook section, but it does have some specially-chosen stories presented and optimized for viewing on the iPad. If you are a subscriber to The Oklahoman’s iPad edition, you will see the download-able magazine in your Sunday edition. Looks for more features like this in the future as we continue to find ways to deliver content in new and exciting ways.
Thunder-mania!
It would be silly of me to post this week without mentioning the Oklahoma City Thunder and their big week with first-round playoff victories over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday and Wednesday. We have all the coverage of every game on our Oklahoma City Thunder coverage page, and during the games we have live chats so you can join the conversation with our reporters and editors while you watch the game. You can even join the conversation on your mobile device. There’s really no better place to get all the information about the Thunder than the NewsOK page. That’s a guarantee.
Most-viewed article
NewsOK users were very interested in the story that broke Wednesday morning about the Piedmont officer who shot and killed the retired firefighter in Yukon. We covered the story as it developed on Wednesday, and we followed it up with more details on Thursday. And the audio of the 911 call really helps tell the story. The video below almost became the most-viewed video of the week; it came in as a close second.
Most-viewed blog post
In case you weren’t aware that OU football is a big deal in this state, I bring you this blog post from Jake Trotter on Wednesday: “Sooners add another walk-on kicker.” That’s right … a kicker. Yes … a ‘walk-on’ kicker. That’s the most-viewed blog post of the week. No, you read that right … a kicker.
Most -viewed video
The highlights of OU’s annual spring Red-White game led the charge this week:
NewsOK – the week of the winter storm
This has been a wild week on NewsOK. We braved the weather (many of us from our kitchen table or home offices). We covered another massive blizzard (by Oklahoma standards). And we informed hundreds of thousands interested customers (yes — we had a bunch of page views, too).
Time-lapse video
Web editor Dane Beavers got stuck in the snow outside the OPUBCO building on Britton and Broadway. It was 6:15 a.m. Tuesday. He called me to let me know he might be late in starting the live chat about the blizzard. It was a chat we were counting on him to moderate. “Drats!” I thought. “Now, I’ll have to launch the chat.” In the end, Dane booked it into the building and launched the chat as I fumbled through the admin console. I imagine his quarter-mile run into the building like he was a fugitive running from the law after a high-speed chase — you know, the car spins to a stop and he opens the door and bolts away. In truth, however, he probably didn’t have near that amount of spirit in his get-away. But he should be commended for his effort. He was one of six or seven people that were in our newsroom that morning.
So in honor of that effort, I will post his favorite video from our coverage. A time-lapse video of the snow. As he said: “This is the best!”
Photographers are the stars
The header here says it all. I was commending Dane on his efforts Tuesday morning (mostly because I turned back and went home a couple hours earlier after trying out the roads). But photo editor Doug Hoke was another brave journalist that got stuck outside the building as he tried to come to work. And members his photography staff — Nate Billings, Sarah Phipps and John Clanton — came up with the idea and produced the time-lapse video. Stars, I tell you. They’re all stars. John writes about it on the Alternate Crop blog.
Photos are the star
While professional photographers get the best images — the most striking images — of these events. The community at large paints an amazing picture. Check out the hundreds of photos we received to our email address — pics@newsok.com. You can also look at the hundreds of photos in The Oklahoman’s photo gallery from Tuesday and Wednesday. They take some incredible photos.
Traffic on NewsOK
We had a lot of page views this week. We basically doubled our normal page-view number each day Monday through Friday this week. The most popular pages (even more popular than our home page)? That’s right — the photo galleries that I linked above. People love snow photos.
Photo by David McDaniel, The Oklahoman
Class of 2011
If you follow college football, you probably turned your attention away from the bad weather on Wednesday to follow the national college football signing day. Yeah, we got lots of traffic for our winter weather coverage. But we got another big boost with college football signing day coverage on Wednesday. We had a special coverage page with details on all the players that signed to play at OU and Oklahoma State. We also had live chats with some of the players at scheduled times throughout the day. It was really stellar coverage, and the sports department should once-again be commended for such thorough coverage.
Berry’s post of the week
Berry Tramel had a great post this week, and it happened to be related to our college football signing day package. He asked the same question I’ve often asked out loud: “Who uses a fax machine anymore?” He even offered a link to a story the Wall Street Journal produced about the same topic. But the most interesting part was when he relayed sports editor Mike Sherman’s response to him in an email as they discussed the Wall Street Journal story: “Next time you say something brilliant, let’s do something brilliant with it.” Now that’s great insight on how stories are produced (or unfortunately, not produced, in this case) on a daily basis.
Making mobile work
I had the opportunity Friday to speak at the Oklahoma Press Association Mid-Winter Convention. I was part of a panel discussion about making news mobile. We discussed The Oklahoman’s iPad application, the series of iPhone apps we have and our general strategy and goals with mobile news delivery. But the real honor? We were the warm-up act for Gov. Mary Fallin, who spoke minutes after I left the stage. My colleague, Jay Spear, commented: “Funny how the room looks more full now than it did when we were up there.”
Fallin on the juvenile affairs
One of the things Mary Fallin was asked about after she spoke on Friday was the controversy at the Office of Juvenile Affairs. I don’t sit through many Q&As with the Governor, so I was quite interested in the exchange. Let’s face it, our coverage of the controversy is the kind of journalistic work that make me proud to be affiliated with NewsOK and The Oklahoman. The Governor said she hadn’t had a chance to meet with the agency director, yet, but that she was pleased that the bidding process was going through a thorough review.
Women in Prison
The Oklahoma Watch series on Women in Prison picked up speed this past weekend with three stories. The premise of the series: Oklahoma sends more women to prison than any other state on a per capita basis and has for 14 of the past 15 years. It begs the question “Why?” It should be a very interesting series, which is being led by the Oklahoma Watch non-profit group and worked on in conjunction with many of the state’s top media companies.
The week’s top article
The top article on NewsOK this week was the article from Tuesday about the woman who was killed in the sledding accident following the blizzard. That story contained most of the details regarding the storm that day, so it served as an overall weather story most of the day on Tuesday.
The week’s top video
This is well-deserved … it’s a video of Dave Morris interviewing weather blogger Bryan Painter who spent Monday night through Wednesday afternoon at the Emergency Operations Center. He did an incredible job of keeping Oklahomans up to date on NewsOK.com with his live blogging, his reporting for The Oklahoman and his live chatting on the site. Talk about coverage heroes — Bryan’s one of them:
Photo galleries and comics added to The Oklahoman’s iPad edition
Is Santa bringing you an iPad this week?
Are you browsing the app store to see what you want to add to your new gift?
If you have a new iPad or you’ve had one for a while, let me offer two more reasons to download The Oklahoman’s iPad application:
- Photo galleries
- Daily comics
Beginning with tomorrow’s edition of The Oklahoman on the iPad, you can read all our comics and browse all our photos. It’s just one more upgrade to our constantly improving product.
On each section of the edition — Metro, Life, Sports, Business, etc. — you can see all the photos in that section. So if you just don’t feel like reading, you can browse the news as it’s told through our photos.
And while the galleries are additions to each section, comics is a bit different. It’s an entirely new section. So if you’ve held off buying a subscription to The Oklahoman in the iPad because the daily comics weren’t available, you no longer have that excuse.
Here’s a bit of history. The Oklahoman’s iPad application has been available since October. We’ve refined the product and added some new features. Since our initial launch, we’ve had six updates to the app in the store.
We are currently on version 1.2.1, which sounds very technical. But here’s what 1.2.1 means to me:
- It means we’re still in the early stages of this product.
- It also means we are making major improvements quickly. Remember, our first version became available just a couple months ago.
So, today the new features we have for our customers is the addition of comics and photo galleries. But those new pieces of content rest on top of all the stories and related videos that have always been available in our daily product on the app.
I invite you download the app and take a look for yourself (your first edition is free). It’s available now in the iPad App Store.
Reader offers personal feedback to our iPad edition
After some correspondence with a reader of The Oklahoman’s new iPad edition, he offered this feedback.
I thought I would share with the world.
I do like the app. The structure is organized and easy to use. I think I’ll like having the media links close at hand as I use it more. The only downside I have found so far is that it doesn’t allow me to use the “pinch” feature of the IPad. I realize I can increase the size of the font so it won’t be a deal killer. For instance when I read my subscription to the Journal Record on my IPad I can make the words and pictures as large as I like. It is a little harder to navigate.
Although $5 a month is less than a lunch, I do bristle a little bit about adding $60 a year to the cost of my subscription when I can read the digital edition on my laptop for free. I realize it may be a necessary evil.
I think print and digital media have their place in the consumer’s news gathering experience. I find the digital version a faster and more convenient way to get up to speed on issues I’m interested in. The experience of handling a newspaper is a hard habit to break and I find myself reading articles I might have passed up in the digital version just because of physically coming upon them when thumbing through the pages.
Overall I commend you and the Oklahoman for being out front in the digital news revolution. I thought you’d like to know.
The Oklahoman’s iPad app is ready for download
I won the pool.
Last week, a group of developers, designers and project managers were adding levity to their work, taking friendly wagers on how quickly The Oklahoman’s iPad application would be approved by Apple and available to the public via the app store.
The team had just finished a little more than five weeks’ worth of heavy-duty programming to build the home-grown application. They did an outstanding job, especially when you consider the complexity of the product they delivered and the aggressive time frame in which it was requested.
But those brilliant professionals stink at guessing how quickly Apple will act. Some thought it would take weeks. Some thought it might even require some back and forth — as if there would be something in the application that would cause it to be rejected.
Not me. I did no development, but I was confident.
Next Wednesday. No rejections.
Yesterday morning, we received word that the application was officially under review. By the and of the day, it was approved.
I just wish we had real money on this pool.
Kidding aside, we’re extremely proud of this application. The Oklahoman’s iPad edition is a true example how a large initiative can come together quickly. We had it all:
- establishing a vision
- devising a plan
- developing a set of core teams
- planning for sustainability
- testing, testing and more testing
- working out the details
- testing again
And about the time we had many of our work flow, technical and content issues worked out, Apple approved the application. Nice timing, guys.
So yes, we’re proud. But we also know that this application isn’t perfect. We are continuing to add improvements to the app, and we expect you will see upgrades in the near future. We’ll be adding more content features, more technical abilities, more multimedia videos and a few small bug fixes. And after that upgrade, you’ll see another … and then another.
The development team built this application so that we can make many changes to the content display on the fly. Often times, we might not even need to send improvements to the app through Apple’s review process.
Bottom line: We will continue to refine the The Oklahoman’s iPad edition. That’s a guarantee.
So if you own an iPad, download it. It’s free. After you have it on your device, you can see one complimentary edition to give you an idea of the product’s offering. A monthly subscription is required to download future daily editions.
Try it for a month. Users from our test group say it fits their on-the-go, mobile lifestyle perfectly. They’re reading more now, because the great content is in a format that works well for them.
If you are like that, this product is for you.
And if you like it, be sure to let us know. The developers and editors that worked through all the bullet-points above deserve a big pat on the back.
But don’t forget — I’m the one that won the pool.
