This week: Remembering 2010, wimgo, slideshows and new personalities
Another roundup of NewsOK.com and the happenings on our site this week.
- We’re almost all the way to mid-January (and we might be all the way there, depending on when you read this), so this is my last opportunity to encourage you to visit our 2010 Year in Review page. This page is simple. It’s the top 25 articles that were viewed on NewsOK in 2010 — the good, the bad and the ugly. Don’t look at us. You guys clicked on them. Actually, it’s a a pretty good cross-section of what our readers tend to click on. And the commentary from web editor Nick Tankersley, who put together this page, is quite entertaining at times.
Steve Lackmeyer, author of the much-read OKC Central blog, sent me this post from the OKC Talk message board he frequents. He found it interesting because they were talking about our partner - wimgo.com. The people in the discussion on the post are really just saying what we’ve know for quite some time — wimgo is an awesome resource for making decisions about your life. If you need to decide how to spend your time or your money, wimgo is a comprehensive resource for everything about events, movies, restaurants or businesses.- Bob Przybylo’s blog post on Monday was interesting to me because he featured the progress of the Edmond North boys basketball team under new head coach Jeff Tanner after a tough loss to Norman. Said Tanner: “We have to get tired of having these results. Norman played like a team that was tired of losing. Our energy and our focus has to be there every game.” I took particular interest in this post because coach Tanner is new to my neighborhood in Edmond, and his family is a great addition to our block. We wish him and his team very well. But that’s my personal interest. You should take interest in this post because it highlights the depth of coverage the Bob and the rest of the NewsOK Varsity coverage team offers with its constant blog posts, Twitter streams and article updates on the site. Varsity is the absolute best and most comprehensive coverage of high school sports anywhere. It’s not even close. We’re very proud of our high school coverage.
- Our photography department put together three really interesting slideshows this week. The first was posted to NewsOK after Mary Fallin’s inauguration. The second was a photographic story about the Rocktown ice-climbing wall this winter (I’ll just look at the pictures and leave it to others to experience it firsthand). The third was a nice story about Julie Adams, who is juggling life as a young mother while finishing high school at Emerson High School.
- We have a whole page of slideshows, and we archive them going back to when we first started these. It’s just another example of great story-telling on NewsOK.
- The saga of the Bethany man who was arrested and charged in the stabbing death of his wife topped our article traffic this week. This is my cue to say again … you can’t make this stuff up.
- Oklahoma State football fans got some good news this week, when Justin Blackmon and Brandon Weeden both announced that they would play at OSU next season instead of declaring themselves eligible for the NFL Draft. The video of their announcement was our top video on the site this week:
- We launched a new ongoing coverage page this week to house all the content related to the 2010 U.S. Census. We have all of our stories that analyze the census data, plus a pretty cool map of Oklahoma’s foreign-born residents broken down by county. Another really cool item to digest if you have a free afternoon is the New York Times’ interactive map breaking down every city and every block in the United States. It is one impressive map. So impressive, in fact, that we insist you browse it. That’s why we’re linking to it from our Census page — because we love great journalism.
- Marcy Williams is a web editor on my staff who recently retired. She had been working with us for more than a decade, and her work online pre-dated most web experts you come across on Twitter — and all of those early online efforts came after she retired as an elementary school principal. She is already greatly missed in our newsroom, but her life in retirement can still be followed with her Travel Along blog. See her post this week about trying to go to an OU-Texas game without a ticket — and let that be a lesson to all as they prepare for the 2011 OU-Texas game.
- On Wednesday, I came across this story on our Know It page that covers Unusual Oklahoma. It was about a boy in Woodward who was rescued after his tongue was stuck on a frozen metal pole. It was a story straight out of the famous holiday movie, “A Christmas Story.” This wasn’t a story that inspired great journalism. And it wasn’t a story that became extremely popular on the website. But it does illustrate just the massive amount of content we can offer in a single day. And it’s probably the story that I’ll remember more than anything else this week. Especially the this line: “… the boy told officials he got stuck after his brother dared him to lick the pole.”
You can now see everything produced by Helen Ford Wallace on Helen’s personality page. Helen is an icon at The Oklahoman and NewsOK. She’s has enough energy to fill the newsroom, which I’ve written about before. And now she joins our other prime personalities with a page devoted to all the work she produces — blogs, videos, articles, photo galleries, Twitter posts, etc.- The new personality pages bring up another cool page we have on NewsOK. All the personalities we’ve pulled out to a separate page can be found on our NewsOK Blogs main page, where you can see all the personalities and all the blogs we have available on the site. I love to visit the page once a day, because I always see something I hadn’t seen on the site yet.
- Database editor Paul Monies doesn’t have a personality page, but he has the next best thing. He edits and controls a page completely devoted to one of his passions. His passion is right your right to know. He blogs on his Data Watch blog and posts tons of database information that empowers you as an American citizen with more information. He has city code complaints, pot hole complaints, gifts from stat lobbyists and much, much more. One thing that caught my eye this week was his map of the top neighborhoods in Oklahoma City with home vacancies.
Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
Enjoy another week of NewsOK browsing.
New ‘know it’ communities launched on NewsOK
We launched a series of new ‘know it‘ comunities this week, bringing our total number of know its to 41.
But there is something quite different about these ‘know it’ communities. The ones we launched this week are centered around geographic communities in and around central Oklahoma:
We have all the information you need about these cities — phone numbers and addresses for city offices, schools, police departments, fire departments, etc.
We have all the news updates and key information about life in those communities — information about senior centers, city parks, entertainment spots, etc.
It’s really about putting the idea behind the ‘know its’ and applying that concept to our biggest communities in central Oklahoma. The ‘know it’ mission is stated plainly on our main ‘know it’ library page.
We pull together the research, reporting and aggregation of resources to help Oklahomans navigate a given topic from beginning to end.
We’ve done that and more with these new pages.
We also added an important element for our users and for those who want to get a message out to those communities. Our developers have created a unique way to post your neighborhood association message, church bulletin, company press release or story about your family reunion on these communities. Simply attach a document (a Word file, a PDF or JPEG) to an e-mail to the address associated with each community. (The e-mail addresses are posted on those communities for you.)
We wanted to keep it pretty simple. We don’t have a bunch of online forms for you to fill out to send us your info. We simply ask that you send us an e-mail with an attachment. It’s that easy.
The process is working quite well, and we’ve had plenty of submissions already sent this week.
I invite you to check out the new ‘know its’ and participate in your community.
Oklahoma Places piece brings back memories of a proposal on the rocks
A Bob Doucette photo from the Charon's Garden Wildernes Area outside of Lawton.
Almost 10 years ago, I knelt on a large boulder in the rocky desert of Western Oklahoma and proposed marriage to my girlfriend.
I had planned it all day, but my nervousness postponed the proposal, and we kept hiking along until I finally made the move. By the time we headed back to camp, we realized we had gone further than we had intended and ran out of water. As a result, we became temporarily lost, partially dehydrated and completely exhausted on the walk back to camp.
But we survived and are still married. I still “joke” that I proposed in the middle of nowhere so I could have left her there if she had said no. (But we all know I was the one who would have ended up face down in a cave three weeks later).
I remembered that fine moment in my life as I read, watched and listened to Assistant News Editor Bob Doucette’s piece on the Charon’s Garden Wilderness Area – part of NewsOK.com’s series on Oklahoma Places.
Bob is a hiking and outdoors expert. By day, he edits stories, deals with reporters and organizes content for our daily news products, especially the stories we report on Oklahoma politics at the state Capitol. But when he takes the editing hat off, he becomes a hiker, backpacker, angler and skier — and he blogs about his adventures in his Out There blog as part of our ‘know it’ topic on Outdoor Recreation.
Bob’s article and slideshow effectively described the area west of Lawton in the Wichita Wildlife Refuge. He puts it best in one sentence:
Welcome to one of the last wild places left in Oklahoma.
I haven’t been there in many years now, but his piece reminded me of the few times we camped there next to the wild Buffalo that probably enjoy walking through a camp site at 3 a.m. just to scare the heck out of guys who grew up in suburban Tulsa.
The Places series is one of my favorite Web initiatives of 2009. To date, we’ve produced 13 unique places in Oklahoma, and we plan many more. It’s a great site to visit to learn more about the unique areas in Oklahoma. Just last week, we launched a piece on the Drum Room at the UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music. You can see a full panorama of the room and get a feel for the area with John Estus’ description.
It’s just one more place that makes Oklahoma special.
Life page looks alive with quick face lift
We updated our outlook on Life this week.
You can check it out on our main Life page – a main navigation item on NewsOK.
What problem were we trying to solve? Actually, we were trying to solve the same basic problem we’re always trying to solve — how can we properly showcase the depth of content that we have in an organized and aesthetically pleasing way.
In our “Life” channel, that problem has become apparent in recent months with the growth of our ‘know it‘ series and the digital direction of our OKC N Style brand.
- The ‘know it’ series is our way of defining an important topic as it relates to Oklahoma. We’ve built more than 30 ‘know it’ topics in the past 18 months, and we have a big 2010 planned.
- The OKC N Style brand has been a slick magazine devoted to stylish living. We’ve been publishing it monthly within OPUBCO Communications Group in the past few years. I spent a year as the managing editor on that magazine, so I’ve long been a big fan. We are now moving that brand into a stronger digital space, and Dillard’s is serving as the presenting sponsor.
These two content brands strengthen our Life channel on NewsOK. We will continually update it and you can expect greater variety each day on that section.
Come and visit often and get a new perspective on NewsOK Life.
Reporting on Sam Bradford and the ‘know it’ curse
Sam Bradford made his decision public yesterday, ending a week of speculation, debate, cancellations and breaking news turned breaking predictions.
(Yes, that last part is a friendly shot at ESPN and their coverage on Thursday and Friday.)
In the end, everybody reported the truth at about the same time. Sam Bradford was having surgery. It’s scheduled for Wednesday. We’ve blogged about it. We’ve shot videos about it. We sent SMS text alerts. We sent e-mails. We wrote stories.
We have it covered. Reporters Jake Trotter and David Ubben have had it covered from the beginning. On Wednesday, NewsOK correctly reported the facts and reasons behind the news that Bradford’s news conference was cancelled. On Thursday, NewsOK was hoping it didn’t have to report about something that wasn’t scheduled and wasn’t planned, but when talk about an impending news conference became widespread, a report was necessary. It was good work by our local reporters. Jake and David can be counted on for the most complete and most accurate information about OU sports — guaranteed.
And now more about knowing Sam ….
See our ‘know it’ on Sam Bradford. It has everything you need to know about Sam. You can see all the stories, all the blogs, all the videos, all the stats, all the links from around the Web. You can even join the message board about Sam Bradford and talk about everything Sam.
We launched ‘know it’ topic pages on OU quaterback Sam Bradford and OSU quarterback Zac Robinson shortly before the season began. After the first couple of weeks, we thought we had unknowingly unleashed a ‘know it’ curse.
Look at the early evidence:
- Bradford was hurt and the Sooners lost. (See BYU)
- Robinson was looking a bit shaky early in the year. Was he secretly hurt? Did he gain too much weight? Was he just overrated?
Bradford’s luck continued down a unfortunate path, but Robinson has emerged as a strong All-Big 12 quarterback candidate. So I can rest easy — there is no ‘know it’ curse.
However, we also launched ‘know it’ topic on Kevin Durant. If he goes down with injury, I’ll reopen the investigation.
Video initiatives bring ‘innovator’ results for NewsOK
At NewsOK.com, we know that we do a lot of things well. We produce a lot of news and information content that a lot of people use as a part of their daily lives, whether it’s breaking news, features, investigative pieces or sports columns.
Yes, we do a lot of things well, and we do most of them at a pretty high level.
But there’s one thing that we do more intensely than just about any other media company that has its tradition based in newspapers …
Here’s proof: The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com have been selected as one of three finalists for the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Innovator of the Year award for its “total approach” in video. It’s an award that is considered the most prestigious of the APME awards, and the ultimate winner will be announced Oct. 30.
From the APME annoucement:
Three finalists were selected for APME’s third annual Innovator of the Year Award: The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, for a staffwide commitment to video; The News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla., for audience engagement efforts including packages that brought experts and readers together with in-depth reporting, photo and video to tackle issues; and The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., for environmental coverage called AllGreenToMe that brings print and online together and provides an international look at environmental challenges facing Delaware.
In its entry, it was noted that The Oklahoman’s commitment to video ranged from breaking news coverage to social networking to training to live feeds to Video Department productions to interaction with our special Web pages and “know it” communities to nDepth’s “Stories of the Ages.”
It’s one of many honors NewsOK and The Oklahoman have received in the last two years . You can see many of our recent honors on our Awards Page that lists the achievements.
We consider these honors validation that we are moving in the right direction journalistically.
And we consider our steady growth in traffic and visits validation that we are moving in the right direction for our audience.
Know it forums: Where Oklahomans help Oklahomans
A little more than one year ago, we launched our first ‘know it’ topic. We had two full pages of coverage about cancer, plus an extensive online piece under the new ‘know it’ brand on NewsOK.com.
The goal? To use the power and resources of our journalists to gather all the information we could on a topic that greatly affects us — essentially, to define that topic as it relates to Oklahomans. We found personal stories, showcased videos and organized a massive list of resources for visitors that wanted to find everything in one simple spot.
Thirteen months later, we have 28 ‘know it’ topics and plans for many more. We have won a handful of journalistic awards for the project, including the prestigious SPJ Sigma Delta Chi winner for Public Service in Online Journalism.
I can guarantee that we will continue to grow this ‘know it’ plan and continue with our mission of providing a resource for Oklahomans who need targeted information on specific subjects.
And part of that planned growth is a community conversation — a place where Oklahomans can go to share thoughts, ask questions or provide solutions. We want our audience to have a voice in defining these topics. We want Oklahomans to have a safe place to connect with other Oklahomans.
We want the interactive message boards on the ‘know it’ topics to be a place where Oklahomans help Oklahomans.
As of this week, we now have all 28 message boards active and open for our visitors to participate. You can have conversations on any of our wide variety of ‘know it’ topics, ranging from Addiction to Pets, from Mental Health to Youth Sports, from Parenting to Gardening, from Religion and Spirituality to Giving and Volunteering, or from Retirement to Travel.
Read the articles. Browse the blogs. Watch the videos. Use the resources. Take advantage of the pages that affect your life as much as you can.
Then, we encourage you to join conversation – where Oklahomans help Oklahomans.
Wayman Tisdale topic page shows archived coverage
Wayman Tisdale poses for a photograph before an afternoon practice session in 1982. Photo by David Longstreath.
I was in a meeting Friday morning when I learned of the Wayman Tisdale’s death.
I generally don’t become startled, but after seeing the update on twitter, via @NewsOK, I sat up and interrupted the meeting to look up the story on NewsOK.com on the conference room computer.
Over the next few minutes, the NewsOK Web editors built an extensive photo gallery and an enhanced topics page on Wayman Tisdale, while the sports department worked on videos, columns and more retrospective articles.
It turned into pretty good coverage, which can all be found on the aforementioned topics page.
That topics page came in pretty handy, especially since we just re-launched that feature last week. We saw the great benefits for having the archived coverage at a moment’s notice.
Today is a good day to go back and sift through that information, including stories that date way back into the mid-1980s, when Tisdale was ruling over the court at Lloyd Noble Center.
Topics pages launch on NewsOK.com
We launched something new this week. It’s called NewsOK Topics.
Basically, we’ve always had links to topics in many of our articles, but now we’ve packaged thousands of topics on an easily browsable page – from A to Z.
It’s a cool feature. Where else could you run across the latest articles and archived articles from NewsOK and around the world on people like Keith Urban, companies like Philip Morris International, Inc., or industries like the Electronics Sector.
Those are just a few of the thousands of topics pages.
But there will be even more. We will be incorporating more functionality to our Topics pages that we’ve turned into ‘know its’. We currently have 26 ‘know it’ pages on which we’ve enhanced the dynamic topics with focused coverage and resource guides from our News and Information Center. We will soon be showcasing new designs on those ‘know it’ topics and adding message board functionality for our users.
Stay tuned … and in the meantime, study our topics page on Sam Bradford. That should keep you busy for a while.
Know it on NewsOK
Our ‘know it’ series is back in place now on NewsOK.com’s redesigned Web site. We’ve actually built the ‘know its’ over the past few weeks, but now you can find all the information we’ve put together on Addiction, Personal finances, Cancer, Retirement, Death and more.
You can expect a lot more on our ‘know it’ in coming months. NewsOK will continue to research and build more information on topics that are important to Oklahomans. In time, you’ll be able to ‘know’ anything and everything as it relates to Oklahoma.
