Looking back at September in the middle of October
September was a record-breaking traffic month for NewsOK.com.
It was so outstanding that I had to stay far away from my blog for two weeks just to let the servers cool down. But now I’m back (we’re looking for a strong October, as well).
Breaking traffic records isn’t new. Our audience continues to grow steadily. The opening of the football season in September always provides a nice boost. And unfortunately, when a Heisman-winning quarterback at the University of Oklahoma sprains his shoulder in the first half of the first game, people care – and they go to the one place that covers OU football better than any other place.
It also rained a lot in September. And if people online in Oklahoma are interested in anything more than they are interested in football, it’s weather. We launched a new interactive weather radar. It’s really cool. You can change the settings and see exactly what you want to see — things like warnings/watches, current temperatures and lightning information. You can also scroll across the map and see the live radar for Australia if you want. (I believe knowing the weather conditions in Australia can be a big help).
We also shattered the records for traffic on the NewsOK blogs. It’s been the fastest growing area for traffic on NewsOK in the past year, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Penny Soldan’s Television Blog and Brandy McDonnell’s BAM’s Blog led the way, followed closely behind Tim Henley’s Celebrity Gossip Blog, George Lang’s StaticBlog and Matt Price’s Nerdage. As you can see, our Life and A&E audience loves blogging. That works for us. (Side note – my blog did not crack the top 50. I’m counting on you to change that in October).
Thanks for making September a stellar month in both page views and unique visitors. We’re growing and adding and improving NewsOK.com every day. We’ll count them up again at the end of October.
Celebrity Watch page grows in content and popularity
I was in a meeting the other day with an OPUBCO Communications Group executive and a couple of others. We were discussing a few items about the way we treat and present content on a variety of our pages.
The Celebrity Watch page on NewsOK came up as an example.
Katherine Heigl is seen in this image taken from a daily photo gallery on NewsOK.com's Celebrity Watch page.
‘That’s my favorite page on NewsOK,” said the executive. He was referring to the layout of the page and the content within.
I can’t disagree much, either. The truth is, for a sub-section page deep inside NewsOK.com, The Celebrity watch page is loaded with great content.
We have articles from NewsOK and from content partners at the Associated Press, Entertainment Tonight and Parade. We have many new stories every day from those providers.
We also have our our Celebrity blogger, focusing on bringing new information every day to our local audience. That blog consistently ranks among the top 5 is daily traffic among those in the NewsOK blog network.
We’ve just recently added a daily slideshow through our partnership with Parade. It’s a new photo gallery every day full of celebrity fashion or sightings.
New photos, new articles, new slideshows, new blogs and new videos every day …. it’s no wonder it’s a favorite destination for many NewsOK users.
Plus, no where else can you see headlines like this:
Quentin Tarantino: Brad Pitt Is My Robert Redford
or this:
Rachel McAdams: Nudity Shouldn’t Be A Big Deal
You just can’t get these headlines on the Technology page in the Business section.
An afternoon break with Helen Ford Wallace, the trendsetter
I just had a nice afternoon break to discuss blogging with NewsOK’s first staff blogger - Helen Ford Wallace. Helen often stops by on Wednesday afternoon before her 3 p.m. video shoot at OPUBCO Studios on the seventh floor of the OPUBCO tower.
Helen is a trendsetter here at OPUBCO Communications Group. And that’s no exaggeration. After getting to know her about five years ago, I gave her the “trendsetter” title much to her amusement.
I wasn’t amused. It’s the truth.
- It started with the blog.
- Then came the podcasts; she was the first to regularly bring in Oklahoma City’s heavy hitters to our podcast studios.
- Then came the niche publications; she was quick to participate and share her ideas for the OKC N Style magazine that we’ve produce over the past few years.
- Then came the videos. You can set your watch by her Parties Extra! video series. Every week, she delivers. Here’s the one from last week:
She’s made a career of being a hard worker and the ultimate ambassador for The Oklahoman (and now NewsOK.com and wimgo.com). And just to prove her trendsetter status, she was unafraid to shoot her own video and post to her blog. I have a hunch we’ll see more of these posts in the future.
And I have a hunch they will get better and better.
NewsOK launches new high school sports coverage page — Varsity
High school football practices started last week.
It was Tuesday, to be exact. That was also the same day we launched our new initiative in covering high school sports better than anyone else.
It’s called Varsity, and the main idea is this – we are putting sports reporters on specific coverage areas and blogging about those schools every day. We aren’t structuring our high school sports coverage around events and sports anymore. Instead, we are focusing our coverage in the same ways the fans focus their interests – the schools.
The new coverage solution comes directly from the mind of sports editor Mike Sherman, who hatched his plan early this summer. From there, NewsOK web editors Nick Tankersley and Dane Beavers thought about how to leverage our existing blogs to best accomplish our goals. Add some designers, some marketing professionals and some strong developers, and poof — Varsity is born.
You’ll see that Sherman has thought a lot about how to organize his team of reporters. There are specific pages and specific blogs for all the largest areas of interest around Oklahoma City, plus pages that coverage private schools, Oklahoma City schools (including Douglass, Star Spencer and Millwood) and all the rest (including powerhouse programs like Guthrie to the north, Washington to the south, Clinton to the west and Jenks and Union to the east).
And we’re not done. We will be adding more functionality in the coming weeks. You’ll see the ability to upload your photos, the ability to post to eh page using Twitter and the most updated team and player stats in the state.
In the meantime, become a fan of Varsity on Facebook or follow our blogging network on Twitter.
Another man dies on the Internet
Tulsan Beau Taylor began false report about death of fighter
We had an article today about a Tulsa man making up news about another athlete.
The news? That one of the atheletes was dead.
The news made it to TMZ.com.
Oh … the irony. I wrote a couple weeks ago about traditional media outlets and the way it’s difficult decisions about the breaking news about Michael Jackson’s death. TMZ beat everyone that day, no doubt. But they also beat everyone on this story.
I’m sure they aren’t thrilled about that. Nobody wants to get anything wrong, least of all our own Bout Blogger – the Boneman.
But the moral of this chapter in the story is in the prankster’s defense. It pretty much says it all about the age we live in.
Taylor, 31, said he was surprised because he posts “nonsense all the time. I’m always joking around.”
Nonsense makes headlines. That’s why traditional media outlets sometimes move carefully.
Shotgun approach – browse new things on NewsOK
I used to write a weekly column that appeared in The Oklahoman. I would communicate with my readers (dozens and dozens of them) about things that were happening on NewsOK.com.
But there were some days when I just didn’t have something new and innovative to write about. On those days, I wrote about just about everything.
I called it the “shotgun approach.”
So … in honor of my former column, which is now a blog (welcome dozens of readers), here is the blog version of the shotgun column:
- Check out our Ongoing Coverage page. We launched it last week when we realized we had some great ongoing coverage pages that get lost in the shuffle.
- Check out our new Trooper-Paramedic scuffle page. We have all the stories, videos, documents and more to follow this story. We can’t seem to get enough of it.
- Bryan Painter’s weather blog is great stuff for people who want to know something unique about the weather every single day.
- Perhaps you missed our Scholar-Athletes page that we launched last Saturday. Jenni Carlson led the coverage, and we packaged all the nominees together in one spot.
- We also started a news quiz each Monday for the news consumers who love to test their knowledge. I get a perfect score every week.
Now, I’m off to vacation in Des Moines, IA. I will return to active posting for my dozens of readers on Monday.
Couchsurfing through Europe with Oklahoma angle
Blogs are launching all the time on NewsOK, so you always have to keep you eye on what’s going on on our blogs page.
One cool one that just started up is Casey Cornett’s (yes, that Casey Cornett) blog about his June adventure of couchsurfing through Europe.
There are daily updates and videos from the mayor’s son as he does what we all probably wish we could do or did in previous years.
Keep this blog as one of your favorites this month. Then I’ll tell you about plenty more blogs we have on NewsOK.
Fashion Matters … even to Digital Managing Editors
OK.
I’ll admit it.
I just spent a few minutes on another Web site looking at before and after photos of celebrities who “may or may not” have had plastic surgery over the years.
Now … I don’t just browse random network morning show Web sites (all right, it was the Today Show site) looking for random information about random celebrities that I “may or may not” have even heard of.
I clicked on that site because Linda Miller posted the link on her blog – Fashion Matters. She said it was an interesting page – she even included the word, “Yikes!” Really … how could I not click on that link.
Linda’s blog is one of our best blogs. She’s an expert – we know that. She’s been telling Oklahomans about fashion for years. She’s helps lead the direction of OKC N Style and her opinions and stories make up the bulk of the NewsOK Fashion and Beauty page.
So I proudly visit her blog for two reasons.
(1) If I’m going to read about fashion and trends, I want to learn from an Oklahoman who knows about Oklahomans. (I don’t want to dress like a Texan.)
(2) And more importantly, it’s always really, really interesting.
Mike and Carlos Boettcher partner with NewsOK.com for ‘On the Line’ embedded journalism
We lauched a new blog aimed at telling our soldiers’ stories from their eyes.
It’s called “On the Line,” and it features longtime war correspondent Mike Boettcher and his son Carlos Boettcher as they are embedded with U.S. service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their story was featured on the front page of The Oklahoman on Sunday and on NewsOK.com. A video interview with Mike and reporter Bryan Dean can be found here:
But the real meat of the package will be found on the blog itself – which Mike and Carlos have begun to feed in recent weeks.
Mike and Carlos are working independently of corporate media. They aren’t reporting from safe zones and telling the stories that our government wants us to report. They are embedded with the young people serving our country, allowing them to tell their stories from their points of view.
And no – they don’t have to be doing this. Mike and Carlos are essentially risking their lives so they can share the lives of the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why is NewsOK.com involved?After all, we are corporate media, right?
Simply put – the Boettchers needed a platform for their efforts. They wanted to be able to post blogs, videos and photos in an unfiltered way.
So we worked with Mike on a design and showed him how to blog. The rest is left to the journalists in the field – in this case, half a world away.
The Boettchers do not work for NewsOK.com – this is pure journalism at its base. Mike explains his mission and his motivation in his first blog post, titled “The Arrival.”
We invite NewsOK users to follow Mike and Carlos on their journey into war from the comforts of our offices, cubicles and living rooms.
We’re proud to be involved with this worthy effort.
Berry Tramel’s blog is “must-read” sports journalism
I was catching up on my favorite blogs the other day.
Since I was on The Oklahoman’s sports desk in a former life, I still spend plenty of time catching up with our sports bloggers. Berry Tramel’s blog is my first stop.
Berry is smart – but we all knew that. I’ve long stated to anyone who would listen that I thought Berry was the best writer I’d ever had the pleasure of working with. I said that when I worked for him on the sports desk. He has enough knowledge and skill that most of us could be working for him, but that would mean he would have less time for what he does better than anyone else — report, analyze and write.
My point is simple: I recommend his blog for all sports fans. Of all the blogs Berry writes (and he does indeed blog just about every single day), his responses to e-mails he has received almost reach “must-read” status.
And I quote:
Here’s a legitimate question. Why are some of these people sports fans? I mean, it’s obvious they’re not happy …..
It’s quality entertainment, even if you don’t agree with him.
Here’s one more quote to emphasize my point:
Ladies and gentlemen, whenever you think OSU has the corner on inferiority complex, go back and read this guy, who has so many self-esteem issues, it would take an army of therapists to straighten him out.
Like I said … quality entertainment.
He responds to e-mails about once a week. Don’t miss the next one.
