NewsOK breaking news team re-launches blog
If you’re looking for another blog to follow, you can do far worse than NewsOK’s new Breaking News blog.
Breaking news reporter Tiffany Gibson picked up this blog a few weeks ago, and she’s been great about taking some extra time on the blog to keeping readers updated about what we’re covering and how we’ve covered it. She even shared her Storify on the Amanda Knox trial to allow local readers some extra insight.
OK, so the blog isn’t “new.” If you dig through our posts far enough, you’ll see that we were using this same blog to help cover big events a couple years ago. We’ve since gravitated to specific blogs during big events (see Bryan Painter’s weather blog and our long list of sports bloggers), but we saw this blog as the perfect opportunity to communicate with our readers every day. And Tiffany has done well in spearheading the initiative.
Now we just hope you check it out.
And follow @Tiffanyg89 on Twitter to keep up with our newest breaking news reporter.
Sports, nDepths and Halliburton executives dominate last full week of August on NewsOK
A blank blog post for about 15 hours
Thank goodness for moms. At a family gathering last weekend, the No. 1 reader of this blog reported that last week’s blog post was blank — as in empty …. nothing to read at all except for a catchy headline. I called up the blog post on the computer and saw that her report was accurate. I’m not sure how that happened. I do know that I made some changes (fixing typos) Friday night on my iPad. I must have pushed the wrong button. Luckily, WordPress has a nice version history of all posts, and I was able to retrieve what was there on Friday night. Whew!
NewsOK.com is hiring
I’m hiring a web editor position. We recently lost a good hand. It’s a shame. But we understand that not everyone spends their entire career here. There are plenty of opportunities for career growth for good people, even when times are tough in the news publishing business. But with every loss comes great opportunity, so we’re looking for a web editor that can do a wide variety of things to help us grow: “NewsOK.com is looking for a web editor to work closely with our online sports initiatives and our sports department. We need a journalist skilled in social media, blogging, content curation, industry technology and trends and solid news judgment to connect with our audience and continue our aggressive digital media efforts. Contact aherzberger@opubco.com.”
OHP sex scandal page
We launched a new Ongoing Coverage page last week amid the series of stories covering the case of Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Patrick Venable. Venable is charged with second-degree rape after being accused of taking a woman into custody in the early morning hours of June 20 and then driving her to her house in Guthrie to have sex. Venable’s next court appearance is set for Sept. 22. On our ongoing coverage page, you can see all the previous stories on this case and read the court and read the affidavit that led to the charges.
Fighting Back – a new nDepth
We launched a new nDepth special presentation this week that is intended to be the first in a series of nDepth specials titled “Fighting Back.” The first one was a story about Reggie Whitten, who has started several non-profit organizations during the past few years after the death of his son Brandon. In this nDepth piece, Jenni Carlson shares Whitten’s story about Brandon’s addiction and eventual death – and how he turned that tragedy into a life spent trying to help others in the world. It’s a powerful story.
Berry’s take on Perkins
Berry Tramel had a Berry-like take on the recent Kendrick Perkins controversy that we reported on last week (and I blogged about in my previous post). From Berry: “What a crock. Hey, Gran Torino, let me tell you what Clint Eastwood would not do in this kind of situation. He wouldn’t hide behind some shill. If he felt he was wronged, he would say so. Or at least, keep quiet and not let anyone else do his talking for him.” We’ve really had all sides of this story covered. Now we’re just waiting on the truth to come out.
Happy iPad customer No. 1
I received an email this week from a longtime newspaper subscriber who now gets the edition every day on his iPad. This customer is a perfect example of a traditional newspaper reader who has transitioned to a digital device as his lifestyle has changed. He was patient and pleasant, but he couldn’t get an edition to download on Tuesday morning. After a quick email exchange (I handed him off to our customer service specialist for digital products), the problem was fixed. We don’t have many problems with customers trying to get an edition or get connected, when we do, we’re happy to help as quickly as we can.
Happy iPad customer No. 2
I spoke with my brother-in-law last weekend. He lives in Springdale, Ark., and reported that he is a new subscriber to The Oklahoman on his iPad device. This customer is a perfect example of a non-traditional newspaper reader who has connected with us because of his new device. He didn’t read the newspaper daily when he lived in town, but he’s always been a digital news consumer. The Oklahoman’s iPad app is a great way to stay informed, especially as it relates to Oklahoma. He’s interested in staying informed about his former state. So because of technology and our development, he’s a new customer. That makes us happy.
Community blogs
We recently launched a community blogs page that has links to a lot of Oklahoma bloggers (45 of them, to be exact). Some of the bloggers are hosted within the NewsOK blogging community, but others are doing their own thing. We link to them as well. I’ve always known the blogging community is Oklahoma is strong, but having dozens of them in one place really helps get around the community quickly. If you’re a blogger, but don”t see yours on here, let me know. I expect that we will add many more in the next week or so.
Travis Haney is on campus
Our new OU football reporter Travis Haney started this week. And judging by his first two blog posts about his tour of the OU campus and his memories of the great Pat Summit, we’re in for a treat on his daily reports and musings about the OU football program. Check them out. Send him a note. And look for much more from Travis.
All-Access from ESPN
Speaking of the OU blog, Mike Baldwin is also covering the Sooners every day. This week, he had the rough assignment of watching television — something many OU fans surely watched as well. His breakdown — ESPN’s ‘All-Access, training Days With the Oklahoma Sooners’ is must-see TV — was helpful to me, especially since I’ve yet to see the program. Mike offered a series of notes about the show, and then said this: “The only negative for a reporter like myself is the media used to get this type of access years ago before college football coaches shut down watching practices. I miss those days. Not only did you get to see which backup players were close to being ready to contribute you saw more of the players’ personalties.”
Gina Mizell starts her gig with us
Staying with the sports theme this week (we are almost ready for football season, you know), check out the blog posts from the new OSU football reporter Gina Mizell. She opened up with an interesting comparison between the OSU football program and the Arizona State football program. She also talked about how she saw her first OSU practice. But her big introduction to us is this video with Berry Tramel from the OPUBCO Studios …
Most-viewed article
A Halliburton executive sipped from a cup of fracking fluid at an industry conference. We had an AP story on it, and Fark.com linked to it, driving the Halliburton executive takes a swig of fracking fluid article to the top of the list for articles this week on NewsOK.
Most-viewed blog post
Travis Haney’s aforementioned blog post about his experience with legendary Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summit was our most-viewed blog post this week.
Most-viewed photo gallery
For the second consecutive week, the gallery of the former OU quarterback Jimmy Harris has been the most-viewed photo gallery in our photo section. Jimmy keeps on winning.
Most-viewed video
An OU practice report from Tuesday was our most-viewed video this week:
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.
Special iPad section released for Thunder season review
It’s the end of July, and you’re finally rested up from all those late nights cheering for the Oklahoma City Thunder. And now that you’ve caught up on your sleep, you’re a little depressed at the prospect of the NBA season being delayed because of the lockout.
We have produced the perfect solution for you.
It’s a 50-page special digital edition in PDF format that is optimized for viewing in iBooks on your iPad. You can find the special section in The Oklahoman’s tablet editions for iPads and Android devices.
But you don’t have to have an iPad or another tablet to see this. You can also find it on our Thunder coverage page, which just so happens to have the most complete daily coverage of the Oklahoma City Thunder anywhere.
The best thing about this special section on the 2010-11 season? It’s much more fun to read about than the depressing lockout.
Adding another tab to the Meebo bar on NewsOK
I wrote last week about adding the Most Viewed tab to our Meebo toolbar at the bottom of every page on NewsOK.
Click on image for larger view
Then, a couple days after posting that blog update, we added another tab to the Meebo toolbar — this one is the Most Recent tab that shows the most recently posted articles from our entire website.
It’s a pretty unique article list. We don’t have anything like it anywhere on the site. It just a straight list of the most recent articles that we’ve activated. It is not a list of the articles we feel are the most important (you can see that at the top of our home page).
If you click on the tab, you’ll often see some articles from The Associated Press, since we feed much of AP’s content on the deeper pages within our site.
I think it’s a pretty neat tool to see the latest, even if it’s not the most important. Let me know what you think.
A new health page on NewsOK
I’ve missed two straight weeks of my extended weekly recap blog posts. So I decided to revert back to ‘daily’ posts that will allow me to get updates and information to NewsOK users more quickly.
Today, I write about something I meant to write about two weeks ago:
Our health page has been upgraded. We’ve chosen to focus a bit more on our health page, which can be found under “Health” inside the News navigation or under “Health & Fitness” inside the Life navigation on NewsOK. On our new health page, you can see links to all of our health-related ‘know it’ topics pages, including Cancer, Addiction, Heart Disease, Mental Health, Fitness and Flu. The page also has a constantly updated feed of AP stories and national videos.
Love from Olivia Munn, a haircut for Dave Morris and a brave trip to Egypt for Katya Kruglak
See the news and notes about NewsOK.com on this very fine final week of March.
Olivia Munn still loves us
We received a fun package in the mail this week. It came from actress and icon Olivia Munn, who we have written about a few times in the past month or so in The Oklahoman, NewsOK.com and LOOKatOKC. I even wrote about how she posted a link to our story on her Twitter account so all her fans could see what George Lang wrote. But this week, we received this (click the image to enlarge):
Blake Griffin know it launches
We launched a new ‘know it’ page this week on one of Oklahoma’s finest — Blake Griffin. It was an easy call, really. Our most popular ‘know it’ pages have centered on Oklahoma’s most famous people – Sam Bradford and Kevin Durant. And Blake Griffin is about to be named the NBA’s Rookie of the Year. He has a chance to become the most dominant player in the NBA at the rate he’s going. He’s already the most exciting player in the league. All those superlatives? That’s all it takes to become a ‘know it‘ page on NewsOK.
Know everything about severe weather
Speaking of our know it pages, this is a great weekend to browse around on our Severe Weather know it page. The page was updated with fresh information last week as Bryan Painter organized another set of tips — things like what to do when you’re on the road, how to prepare and tornado myths. This page has tips, historical information and tons of links. No kidding — the Severe Weather know it can help you be ready for this storm season.
Dave Morris on video
Dave Morris appears on many of of our videos. He is the Director of Video, after all. And he’s a top-notch host that we’re lucky to have fronting our stories. And this week, he became a top-notch BALD host. If you wonder what happened to his full head of short hair, just watch this.
Angi Bruss on video
Angi Bruss also appears on many of our videos. She is one of our video hosts, after all. She’s also a great story-teller and fine journalist. Check out this story below. It made me stop and appreciate how we can capture emotions and stories with a camera, a voice and worthy story to tell.
The Rosalin Reynolds story
The stories we’ve had in the past week on the 8-year-old Watonga girl haunt me. We’ve had daily coverage of Rosalin Reynold’s death — how she was found in the field behind her home … how the man who was arrested was related to her … how the mother ‘just can’t let her go‘ … how the accused was at the home passed out drunk … how mother and father were arguing that night and staying in separate apartments … and how the victim might have been sexually assaulted. You can read all the stories by searching “Rosalin Reynolds” using the NewsOK search window. It’s a sad story — one we have to tell, even if we’d rather not.
A question about the NOOK?
I received a question from one of my blog readers this week (yes … I did say that … I have a reader). Essentially, the question was about our Digital Oklahoman replica edition. Would the new NOOK that’s being released in April be supported? The problem in the past is that the Digital Oklahoman is a Flash-based experience, and Flash has not been supported by the NOOK. The answer? … “I’m not certain if the Nook Color upgrade will include Flash and allow for the flash-based Digital Oklahoman replica experience to be viewed on that device. Quick research leads me to believe that it will be available, but Nook is a closed Android device, so it might be configured in a way that would make the Digital Oklahoman unusable. I just don’t know for sure right now. I can tell you one thing you already know … we have an e-reader experience for the Nook through the eNewspaper store. That would be my first recommendation. But I understand if you prefer the page-by-page replica experience. Another option we will soon have is an optimized native Android application for smart phones with that OS. It’s a good question, and I hope to learn more soon. Thanks for your question. And thanks for attempting to find ways to use our product in the way that best fits your needs.” The reader replied, promising to find any way he can to read The Oklahoman … “Thanks for your reply! We’ll hold out hope that the rumored addition of Flash to the Nook this Spring will enable access to the Digital Oklahoman we’ve grown so accustomed to. One way or the other, with whatever e-reader or tablet, we’ll find a good solution to keep our favorite daily paper available!”
New video players
You can find some new videos available on our website. It’s through our partnership with NDN Videos, which publishes AP videos as well as many other news sources. You can see these video players sprinkled throughout the site, like our health page, our parenting know it, our technology page, our home and garden page and more.
Lock your car
Have you ever sat and watched to see how driver after driver locks his or her vehicle after parking and running inside the post office. Don Gammill has. It’s a fun column. My favorite part … “He stepped out, shut the door and pointed the remote at the car. He pressed it. Nothing happened. He moved closer and tried again. Nope. He moved all around the car, trying to get it to lock. Finally, after he had tried every angle he could think of, he just opened the door and pushed the lock, then closed it.”
Email us a photo
A reader sent us a photo via our new photo-submission process using the email address pics@newsok.com. The photo appeared on the cover of The Oklahoman’s Metro/State section on Thursday. It just proves how much fame you can get by sharing your photo on NewsOK.com. And just to prove it, I shared a photo on April 1 to launch our April user-submitted gallery.
Katya’s trip to Egypt
I’ve written about Katya Kruglak before. Her ‘Dusty Globe‘ blog is always a great read, but I just ran across her blog posts from a couple weeks ago where she detailed her trip to Egypt. That’s right … that Egypt. I wish I knew about these posts earlier. She posted some great firsthand accounts of visiting the post-revolution and post-Mubarak country. She actually had 10 posts from her week in Egypt, but it all started with this great lead on March 11: “Landed in Cairo about an hour ago. Before you start to wonder if I’ve lost my mind, I did check out all the various travel warnings before booking the flight and it seems with a little common sense travel in Egypt should be fairly safe now. Or at least I hope.” She was safe. And we’re thankful for her posts.
Most-viewed article
It was incredibly close this week. But Berry Tramel’s article on Thursday about “UCO’s Terry Evans meeting with OU regarding basketball coaching vacancy” led the way this week. On Friday, we reported that “OU is expected to name Lon Kruger as the next coach.” The Friday report might very well surpass the Terry Evans report (Actually, I’m quite certain it will). But since I compiled this list at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, the Terry Evans story get s the award. Regardless, we know this: the OU coaching search leads the way for article traffic on NewsOK this week. UPDATE: by 4:15 p.m. on Friday, the Lon Kruger story is the most-viewed story of the week on NewsOK. UPDATE NO. 2: Our sports coverage team is simply awesome. We had the scoop on this story this week, and we’re really proud of that.
Most-viewed blog post
The OU coaching search takes the award this week. Mike Baldwin’s blog post on how the “OU coaching job is not an easy sell” for big-time coaches across the country led the way for our blogs this year. This makes the second consecutive week that posts about the OU basketball job topped this list. And we thought nobody cared about OU basketball anymore?
Most-viewed video
You guessed it … OU basketball coaching job analysis … for the second consecutive week.
A dusty trip through Mongolia
The Dusty Globe is something worth checking out.
It’s a blog written by an interesting young woman from New York named Katya Kruglak. We first started hosting Katya’s blog last year as she spent months abroad in various locations like India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and New Zealand. I highly recommend a trip through the Dusty Globe archives to see some interesting perspectives, photos and videos from her trip.
After you finish the archives, you’ll have plenty more to read from her current trip — Mongolia.
I can’t say I’ve ever been to Mongolia. And I can’t say I’ve ever followed a blogger from Mongolia.
So that means that Katya has cornered the market on Mongolian blogs.
Check it out. Post a comment. Let her know that we’re watching her Mongolian fun.
Today in History shows us windows to the past
The Oklahoman Archives is a product we’ve had for a long time. It serves our customers that see a great value in more than 100 years of history stored nicely away in a searchable vault.
You can sign up for one day ($8.95), one month ($33.00), three months ($78.00), six months ($140.00) or one year ($248.00).
But thanks to a sponsorship from Devon Energy, access to The Oklahoman’s archives is free to local schools throughout the state.
It’s been that way for many years, but we have added a new feature to our archives product. it’s called the Today in History page, and you can find it at the bottom of the left-hand rail of the archives page.
The Today in History page page shows users the big stories that happened in the past and notable birthdays for any given date. I mean, really, how else are you going to know about “Mean” Joe Greene’s 64th birthday?
Image from The Oklahoman, Sept. 24, 1910.
But the coolest addition to this page is the images from The Oklahoman’s front page dating back 25 years, 50 years, 75 years and 100 years.
Granted, all you can see are the big headlines (unless you dive deeper in our pay archives), but I always find old newspaper front pages fascinating. It’s amazing how we once all managed to survive without proper use of “white space” on our daily newspaper.
But we also didn’t wear seat belts all the time back then.
And we played football without appropriate helmets.
And we unapologetically ate bacon every morning.
At any rate, the Today in History page will make you think a lot about how times have changed.
Restaurants page added to NewsOK lineup
We added something new to Life this week.
And when I say, ‘Life,’ I’m referring to the Life navigation on NewsOK.com.
We added restaurants to the LIFE sub-navigation on NewsOK to complement our already deep food and recipes coverage we’ve always had.
It’s something we had to do. The Food/Recipes page was just getting so deep, and with all the Resturant reviews Food Editor Dave Cathey (a.k.a. The Food Dude) has been producing lately, it just makes sense to release a separate page for that information.
Plus, the Restuarants page, we have the ability to showcase wimgo’s The Corner Booth blog by Greg Elwell - a great resource for reviews about the places you might be eating.
Check it out. See the list of stories, or even better, browse all the showcase reviews we’ve produced about Oklahoma’s most visited restaurants. We have mroe than 120 of those reviews, so there’s plenty to read.
