Another nDepth — we could all use a little more grace
Lost in all the Bedlam 2010 commotion this last week was our most recent nDepth: Stories of the Ages presentation.
This week, we featured the story of Oklahoma’s most famous ballerinas. That’s right. It’s a story that’s much different than Bedlam.
But it is a story that’s just as unique for Oklahoma.
The five ballerinas had the skills and the techniques that all dancers needed, but unlike many dancers, the five ballerinas had the spirit and passion credited to their American Indian heritage and Oklahoma roots.
I invite you to investigate our “Graceful Heritage.” It’s told in a way to allow our readers to learn more about their state and its cultural history.
We know this story won’t draw the same amount of page views that our story about the Lingerie Football League managed to bring (more to come on that in tomorrow’s post). But that doesn’t mean it’s not a story worth telling.
Seriously, give it a look.
A story for the ages — an nDepth look at Murray Humphreys
Al Capone’s right-hand man lived in Norman?
Who knew?
It was a fact. And many locals knews that bit of history. Bit it wasn’t common knowledge.
And that’s the kind of story we love to tell on NewsOK.com.
I’ve written about our nDepth series in the past. It’s a type of story-telling that is very-much preferred in many parts of our newsroom.
- Reporters who love to write up a good story love to have the freedom to stretch their wings and let a story breathe.
- Graphic artists love have a wide-open page to let their creative juices flow.
- Copy editors love not having to cut a well-told story into a couple of short newspaper columns.
- Videographers love trying knew things with transitions while finding the best soundbites, the best images and best angles to paint the picture of the story we’re telling.
I just like reading the stories and watching the videos, like rest of our hundreds of thousands of daily users.
Last week’s story about Murray Humphreys was a great story — and one of the things that made it so great was the fact that nobody had really told it in detail before.
He was one of the lead gunmen in a garage killing in Chicago in February 1929, killing seven rival gangsters, better known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was also credited with encouraging criminals to protect themselves by using the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from being abused by government in a legal procedure. A book also claims Humphreys invented the concept of laundering money.
Who knew?
I’ve lived in Oklahoma for more than 30 years, and I didn’t know.
But I do now. And so do you, thanks the our nDepth.
‘Book of Hope’ nDepth piece put things in proper perspective
This morning, I was frustrated with my Kindergarten-age son.
He showed me a large poster sheet that was filled with questions for him to fill out.
Awesome. Looks like fun.
He’s supposed to tape photos of himself and of his family, as well as answering a series of questions about himself.
Super. Can’t wait. … uh. Wait a minute.
“When does it need to be done?” I asked while still multitasking on my daughter’s hair.
“Any day,” he responded.
OK … it must be for a project in a week or two. I’ll get more details later. Cool.
(To be honest, the deadline sounded ‘cool,’ because I imagined it being something my wife would work on with him some evening this week.)
But then minutes later he brought me another piece of paper that read something to the affect of …
“Congratulations! Tyler is the student of the week! Fill out the paper and return it on Monday ……. “
Arrgh! That’s today. And there are lots of questions there.
And – worst of all – it’s a really big deal to him
Yeah, I know. I should have looked in his backpack on Friday. But I was still frustrated. I sat him down to fill out the large sheet of paper and proceeded to look for photos. (Photos, by the way, that we don’t have. It’s a digital world. We don’t have many photos you can actually hold.)
In the end, we were 40 minutes late today. It was frustrating. What should have been a fun project was instead a stressful project.
My older son was bossy about the way my Kindergartner wrote. My younger daughter didn’t like her shoes. I couldn’t find the scissors. I cut myself on a kitchen knife (don’t ask). And where do we keep the tape, anyway?
The sheet about Tyler looked like it was put together by a 5-year-old and a parent who didn’t have much time to help.
It looked that way because that’s what it was. And, I must admit, I wasn’t a very nice father about the whole ordeal. I feel a bit bad about not being able to enjoy that “Student of the Week” project.
But it will go down as another memory of the hectic life of having three children. I could have done better. Hopefully, the third child will see the benefit of all the lessons I’ve learned.
But just when I start feeling sorry for myself, NewsOK’s storytelling can bring me back to reality. I realize I don’t really have a lot to complain about.
The featured story on NewsOK this morning was an nDepth: Stories of the Ages piece written by Bryan Painter’s about the Book of Ages at Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center.
This video says it all.
So after work today, I’ll make sure to be an “organized evening” father to make up for “wild, running-around-looking-for-a-pair-of-scissors in the morning” father. I’ll gladly hear about everything that being a ‘student of the week’ means.
After all, it’s OK being a little late for work now and again. I’ll take that inconvenience any day compared to the struggles inside the Book of Hope.
Change of Heart – the story of Dr. Nazih Zuhdi
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.
Screwdrivers, condoms and Penguin Boy — just another NewsOK feature
I read this paragraph last week on NewsOK.com:
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.
It’s like I’m right there in the wrestling ring
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.
Showcasing an nDepth inspiration
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.
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.
Watching, reading and learning about Wanda Jackson
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.
Get to know OPUBCO Communications Group
This description of this blog is “everything you ever wanted to know about NewsK.com.”
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.
