Wildfires, Bob Stoops, Justin Bieber and the OKC skyline
Oklahoma wildfires
I must start this week’s review with our intense coverage on Friday of all the grass fires in Oklahoma. Reporters, photographers and editors did what they love on Friday — they delivered important information that the community needed and wanted. We saw a huge spike in traffic Friday afternoon, which is normal for big news like 30 wildfires in the state.
Serving up education news
We have had quite a year in education news this year — from a combustible state Board of Education to a controversy in the Mid-Del district. On Sunday, we shared a story and a database that really added to our already deep year in education coverage. Megan Rolland and Tricia Pemberton reported on the combined salaries of superintendents in Oklahoma school districts. Database editor Paul Monies helped produce a database of all superintendents in Oklahoma and their salaries. You can see all the Education coverage with our special education news page on NewsOK.
Football appetizer
It’s March. It’s not football season. But when OU coach Bob Stoops takes a jab at Oklahoma State, it’s news. And that’s why we had this story on Tuesday afternoon. Stoops just said a few words … “You see we got another championship banner up? It’s not a South Division one, either.” … but it’s all the fans need to keep them busy until August.
A vote for letters to the editor
We don’t give our Letters to the Editor enough credit. They are often a good read — well worth the time it takes to browse through them once a day. If you read this each week, you know that I’ve written plenty about our comments on our articles. I like our comments; I support their continued use by the customers who use them each day. But there’s something to be said about the requirements behind the letters to the editor we run on NewsOK (via The Oklahoman’s Opinion page). Authors are putting their verified identification behind every statement they make in this public forum. Frankly, I support users to participate in the conversation in any way they are most comfortable. But the letters are an interesting read when we post them. You can find them daily on our home page just below our top stories along the left side of the page.
You can’t make this stuff up
Each week, we always have some interesting stories with some odd twists. This week was no different, especially on Wednesday. That day, the crime reporting team had stories of two homicide victims. Both appeared to have been killed under unusual circumstances — so unusual, in fact, that you absolutely know that we would never make this stuff up! See the stories here … Police identify Oklahoma City homicide victim … and here … Woman ordered to trial in death of Oklahoma City man.
Oklahoma City skyline history
We featured an old gallery in our Multimedia Showcase this week. It’s old because it was created more than three years ago. But it’s also old because it contains photos from decades ago. Our users appeared to enjoy it, if web traffic is any indication. You should check out the gallery of historic photos of the Oklahoma City skyline for yourself.
State basketball fun
Our sports staff covered the Oklahoma state high school basketball tournaments from beginning to end for two straight weeks. It finally ends on Saturday (March 12), when the final stories, galleries, videos and scoreboards are updated. You can find it all on our high school basketball tournament coverage page. I’ve updated every story on this page in year’s past; I know exactly how difficult it is to get so much information on one page, so we created separate pages for the boys tournaments, the girls tournaments and the full scoreboards for boys and girls.
A blog for the arts audience
Two weeks ago, I mentioned our new blogger, Elizabeth Hurd, and her new blog — Scene & Hurd. Elizabeth was kind enough to leave a comment on that post. Here’s what it said: “Alan, thanks for promoting scene & hurd. I am hoping this blog becomes more than just a place where I post reviews of what I have seen, but a blog that artists and audienc can exchange ideas. thanks!”
Commenting experiment
We’re experimenting a little bit with Jenni Carlson’s blog. Jenni’s an outstanding reporter, she’s terrific on our videos and she’s a standout blogger in our network. We wanted to see how her readers would react to using Facebook profiles to post comments to her blog posts. So, for now, the only way to comment on her blog is to log in through your Facebook account. Check it out. Let me know what you think. Email me here: aherzberger@newsok.com.
Most-viewed article
Remember that football appetizer I mentioned earlier in this post? Yeah, that was the most-viewed article of the week. It wasn’t close this week
Most-viewed blog
Brandy McDonnell took the award again this week. This time, she got some help from Justin Bieber, so it wasn’t really fair. Her post on Tuesday was titled, “Rascal Flatts’ Joe Don Rooney: Justin Bieber’s ‘got a huge future ahead of him’.” Rascal Flatts worked with Bieber and gained a lot of respect for him. Justin Bieber liked it, too. It was posted on his Facebook Fan page for all his fans to see, including the 22,936 fans who ‘liked’ it.
Most-watched video
And now … back to Oklahoma football:
A week well spent on NewsOK
See below for another week of news and notes as NewsOK navigated another week in 2011.
Darnell just a little off his prediction
Thunder beat writer Darnell Mayberry held his weekly live chat on NewsOK on Monday. Shortly after the chat, we posted an article with the highlights from the chat. The headline? Darnell Mayberry: 99.9 percent chance Kendrick Perkins signs long term with OKC Thunder. It became the most-viewed article on the site that afternoon. Then, take a guess what happened the next day? This headline happened: Thunder signs Kendrick Perkins to extension. Yep. Darnell missed it. We had an uncomfortable meeting with him late Tuesday afternoon. He needs to be more accurate. Obviously, he should have said it was a 100-percent chance. (That’s a joke.) But here’s the take-away. Darnell knows what he’s talking about. Here’s the other take-away. Participate in Darnell’s live chat every Monday to find out what will happen on Tuesday.
Ed Godfrey joins our personalities
We added another personality to our list this week. Welcome outdoors expert Ed Godfrey to our family of personality pages on NewsOK.com. You can find his blog posts, his columns, his articles, his Twitter posts and even like him on Facebook. And check him out each month (the first Friday of each month) for a live chat that he does on NewsOK, hosted by and sponsored by H&H Gun Range.
Another complaint about comments
I received a message this week from a user who was not happy about our commenting policy on NewsOK. “What’s with all the commenting disabled crap? No wonder you people are going out of business.” I explained it to him (but I did not address the false claim that a changing business model is the same as ‘going out of business’) … “We routinely disable comments on articles about fatalities and on local crime stories. That’s a decision we made years ago in an effort to maintain a constructive and civil dialogue. And we’ve disabled comments on articles where the discourse has become increasingly destructive. We are unable to moderate every comments on every article, so we rely on user moderation. At times, even that becomes unmanageable. Is there a particular article you were referring to?” This did not please him, and he brought up another news outlet in our state (one that we share content with, but not every business decision with) : “Then why does Tulsa World not have this problem. I have noticed it on more than just fatality stories. Just forget it. I see why newspapers are going under.” I share this interchange just to prove that I can’t please every unhappy customer. If you want to see what I’ve written about our comments in the past, just go here.
OKC Skyline cam angle
We received a couple of messages from customers on our site that want to see a better view from our camera that keeps an eye on the Devon tower. One didn’t like the view we showed of the sky or the one that pointed down. Another didn’t like the view of the completed middle section. Frankly, that tower keeps growing on us, and moving the camera to get a perfect angle is difficult. We rotate among several angles, and depending on when you are looking and what they’ve completed, the view you see might not be your favorite. All that said, we will work to improve that experience.
Best OK Tweeter!
I was forwarded this link this week: Political analyst Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post apparently named our own NewsOK Politics twitter feed as the best political tweeter in Oklahoma. My response? Actually, I’m quite happy that we’re providing good analysis for those around the country. My other response? When I graduated from journalism school in 1997, I never expected that 14 years later I would be honored to receive an email with the subject line, “best ok tweeter.”
Bombing site worth another look
We had a story this week about former President George W. Bush being honored with the 2011 Reflections of Hope Award by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. That gave us an opportunity to drive readers to our Oklahoma City Bombing archive website, something we probably don’t do enough of. I don’t really know what to say about this site, other than that I recommend everyone visiting it. I’m humbled to have been able to work on that site a few years back. It’s a site I expect we will always have room for on our servers.
Live-blogging the Oscars
Brandy McDonnell and George Lang covered the Academy Awards last Sunday night about as well as any duo of entertainment experts in Oklahoma can cover it. Their blogs were entertaining and informative. And the best thing about them? If you didn’t get a chance to follow them on Sunday night, they still make a good read a week later. Check out Brandy’s here. See George’s here.
New sponsor for BAM
We’d like to welcome the Oklahoma City Museum of Art as a presenting sponsor of Brandy McDonnell’s blog. The OKCMOA picked a good one … Brandy’s BAM blog has been the most-popular blog on NewsOK for about three years now. You can also find the museum’s sponsorship on Brandy’s columns in the Weekend Look every Friday.
Shooting video
We had a tough judgment call this week when we received the dash-cam video of the police officers in Perry shooting a motorist who exited his car and moved toward the officers in a threatening manner. We had the article on the site, but the video really told the story. It showed the man acting as if he was holding a gun and acting as though he was about to fire. The video also shows the man going down after officers opened fire. We chose the show the entire video because it documents the chase, the man’s actions and the speed with which the entire event went down. Showing the entire video allows the user to see and evaluate everything about the public servants’ actions. It shows our users Exactly how quickly officers have to make a decision. It also shows how deadly those split-second decisions are. We received a few complaints that I’m aware of. That’s understandable. These kinds of decisions are always hard to make.
Something extra for iPad readers
We offered our iPad edition subscribers something a little extra this week — downloadable PDF documents of the state basketball tournament brackets. It was a test as we enter basketball tournament season for both college and high school basketball. You can expect more documents like that in the future. And you can expect that experience to improve. But the bottom line is that we aim to continue to improve the experience for our iPad edition subscribers.
Election night in OKC
Tuesday night was a big night for followers of local politics. The Oklahoma City Council members were chosen, as well as many other important decisions around the metro area. All the results can be found on our NewsOK Politics election results page. That’s a good thing. What was even better is that these results could be found on NewsOK on Tuesday night shortly after the polls closed. As soon as we knew the results, so did our readers. No one covers elections and local politics like we do. Just look at our NewsOK Politics page. We think it’s important.
Most-viewed article
The most-viewed article this week was a little different that what we normally expect, but that’s a very good thing. We had a story about holiday offers at Walmart that were excluded in Oklahoma. Reporter Jennifer Palmer did a nice job explaining the issue. Yahoo! picked up the story and linked to it from their home page, which gave Jennifer’s report a nice lift and pushed it to be our move-viewed article on NewsOK this week.
Most-viewed video
The most-viewed video this week was a sports video. The new players for the Oklahoma City Thunder were interviewed on Saturday morning about their feelings about their trade. It was our first introduction to Kendrick Perkins, Nate Robinson and Nazr Mohammed. Thunder fans were interested.
Most-viewed blog post
Darnell’s post about Kendrick Perkins signing a new deal with the Thunder came close this week, but it was no match for Brandy McDonnell’s post about Mila Kunis and Amy Adams. I don’t really know much about Mila Kunis and Amy Adams, but they are both prettier than Kendrick Perkins. Maybe next week, Kendrick.
OKC Skyline cam makes its debut on NewsOK
I know my blog doesn’t have the power of OKC Central.
And I know Steve Lackmeyer has already told his readers about the OKC Skyline cam that we launched a special coverage page this weekend.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t get back into the blogging swing with a post about what Steve has already told you about.
So … please check out the OKC Skyline cam — a live video feed of the Devon Tower construction site. The page is open to all NewsOK.com visitors, but the live video feed is only available to NewsOK registered users who are also subscribers to The Oklahoman.
That always makes the process a little tricky, because we have to link your NewsOK profile to your subscriber profile. We’ve done this for many users over the last couple of years as we’ve established our Digital Oklahoman and allowed access to those experiences to Oklahoman subscribers.
Simply put, if you are a subscriber to The Oklahoman and aren’t seeing the live video feed, then you need to visit your NewsOK Settings page and scroll down about halfway down the page along the left side until you see the section titled “Oklahoman Subscribers.”
The directions we have on that page say this:
If you subscribe to The Oklahoman please provide your account number below. This will allow you access to premium areas of NewsOK like ClubOK and The Electronic Edition. If you are unsure of your account number click here to look it up or call 1-877-98-PAPER (1-877-987-2737)
When you click to look up your account number, you should be able to enter your home address and phone number to access your subscriber profile.
We hope this works fairly easily for you. If not, customer service representatives can help. We will get it worked out for you to see the live video if you are indeed a subscriber.
Thanks for your patience. And thanks to Steve Lackmeyer and David Morris for making the live video of a growing downtown Oklahoma City available for our customers.
