I hope you didn’t miss our latest installment of our nDepth series this week.

We featured Dr. Nazih Zuhdi, who is a world-renowned heart surgeon famous for his 1985 procedure — the first heart transplant in Oklahoma.

Reporter Susan Simpson told the story from many different angles. My favorite line in the piece came from Dr. Zuhdi himself:

“Heart transplantation was so strange to Oklahoma,” Zuhdi said. “They thought I was a nut. They thought I needed to be evaluated.”

See the entire presentation at ndepth.newsok.com/zuhdi. And while you take the time to do that, check out all the nDepth pieces we have. They are all timeless tales.

Penguin Boy makes the most of it. He moves around the stage, letting people see that he does, in fact, have a common household tool buried in his nasal cavity. Then he pulls the screwdriver out, and the condom remains in his nose.

It’s an interesting excerpt – an excerpt that make it very difficult to not click on the image below to read the entire story.

The story is from reporter Ken Raymond, who spent an evening with a group of self-described freaks. Ken learned a little about what makes the individuals in the traveling group tick, and he shared his insights and their stories with us as part of the ongoing nDepth: People series.

The series on People will grow, as will our entire nDepth series in 2010. Look for more installments as the year goes on.

In the meantime, enjoy the freak show.

I spent a day at the Golden Goose Flea Market in Midwest City a few weeks back when the Mid South Wrestling Alliance held one of its events.

Welll … I think I spent the day there.

Frankly, I can’t remember if I was actually there or not. I can visualize being there. I feel like I had some conversations with some fans and participants. I heard the sounds, tasted the popcorn and sat in a metal folding chair.

I think.

That’s what reporter Ken Raymond photographer John Clanton can do with a project. They will put you in the middle of the action, and you won’t remember if you experienced that for yourself or if you read about it and watched a slideshow.

They pulled it off for their package on the Mid South Wrestling Alliance last week. Ken Raymond wrote the story. John Clanton took the photos and put together a slideshow. Throw in some great design and headline writing, and you have …. Ringmasters – a tale of professional wrestling in Oklahoma.

Check out the picture he paints of one of the top Mid South stars, Kevin Morgan, a.k.a. “The Awesome One”:

I don’t know the champ, but I met Morgan at practice yesterday. He’s a big guy — 6 foot 5 and 255 pounds — with wiry brown hair, a long, straight nose and a lantern jaw. In the ring, wearing his silver and black wrestling tights, knee braces and shiny black boots, he looks like a superhero, albeit one who takes a few nights off each week for a good steak sandwich and a pitcher of Bud. Like most of the wrestlers here, he’s strong and intimidating but looks better as a shirt than a skin.

I didn’t say it, Mr. Morgan. It was Ken Raymond. R-A-Y-M-O-N-D.

Be nice to him, though. He can really craft a story.

Check out the nDepth piece we showcased on the home page of NewsOK today. Reported by Jenni Carlson, it’s a story about Dick Hoyt, who is internationally known for the races (marathons, triathlons, etc) he runs pushing, pulling and carrying his wheelchair-bound son.

Jenni interviewed Dick Hoyt (you can listen to the interview) and talked to other Oklahomans who have been inspired by his story. We tell this story with our nDepth piece, which contains videos, text, slideshows and a lot of photos.

We wanted to showcase this story today because while the story appeared in The Oklahoman on Sunday, we know that the attention on NewsOK on Sunday centered on another local story (see Sam Bradford). So today, you get inspired with our nDepth.

And while you’re reading about Dick and his son, be sure to click through to our other nDepth pieces. We have 15 of them finished, and we plan to have many more.

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 …

Video.

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.

We launched another nDepth piece this week. It’s on the famed Rock ‘n’ Roll star Wanda Jackson, who still lives right here in Oklahoma City.

OK … full disclosure time: I had never heard of Wanda Jackson until earlier this year when news came out about her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

OK … second moment of full disclosure: I wasn’t really all that fired up about the upcoming feature on Wanda Jackson. I was certain it would be a good story, but I didn’t think I would be all that interested.

Then I saw the full story, the long video and the accompanying text.

I was, all at once, interested, educated and informed about her impact and her legacy.

Interested … educationed … informed. That’s a great accomplishment for an nDepth feature. And it’s something you should check out when you have a chance to sit and learn about an Oklahoman who made a huge impact on the early stages of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

So it seems like I should push people here to our nDepth profile on our company – OPUBCO Communications Group.

We released it more than a month ago, but it’s not something that we would put at the top of the Web site as a lead story. But I can certainly tell you about it on my blog.

I wrote the text. Creative Director Scott Horton did the design. The video was produced by Dave Morris’ video team.

The nDepth  site is pretty cool, showcasing what we do here — multimedia storytelling for consumers of news and information.