NewsOK receives ‘Best Website’ honor from SNPA
You might have missed some news over the weekend with all the football fun in Texas and in Stillwater.
NewsOK was named the “Best Website” in its category by the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.
I don’t blame you for overlooking this news on NewsOK. After all, it’s routine information — what with all the awards we’ve received in recent years. Plus, it’s the second consecutive year NewsOK was given this particular honor.
Here’s a note from one of the judges:
NewsOK ‘really stood out — due to the great thought and effort to present a good user experience. Articles had tons of links, photos and a lot had videos. The design is well-thought out and intuitive. This is a site that readers will love to visit.’
NewsOK and The Oklahoman were also honored in three other categories for the SNPA contest:
- Print Quality — placing second.
- Best Use of Multimedia for Static — placing third.
- Best Use of Multimedia for Places — honorable mention.
The hangar that isn’t a hangar — from the ‘who knew’ department
What the heck is that big building in Norman that looks like an airplane hangar.
It’s north of Robinson off of Flood, so it’s near the airport in Norman, but it’s not actually on the airport grounds.
So what is it?
Only our Places series can tell you. (OK, so it was built as a hangar, but it’s not used as one.)
Perfect. Now I’m a little bit smarter today. That makes for a successful Monday.
Stepping inside (virtually) the round barn for the first time
Photo by Steve Gooch - The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com
I’ve driven past the round barn in Arcadia a few times.
I’ve heard people talk about it as a landmark.
I know seemingly everybody who has spent a decent amount of time in Oklahoma knows about it.
But I’ve never been inside the round barn.
Until now.
In the latest installment of NewsOK’s Places series, Ken Raymond does what we are setting out to do with the project: He put the reader in a unique Oklahoma location by describing the place with text, images and audio.
I’ve never been physically been inside the round barn. But I feel like I have. Ken described the location with his writing, then he described in with his audio recording. All the while, I scanned the area with our panoramic image – I looked up. I looked down. I zoomed in. I zoomed out. I even tried to see what was in the trash can.
Now I can say I’ve been there.
Oklahoma Places piece brings back memories of a proposal on the rocks
A Bob Doucette photo from the Charon's Garden Wildernes Area outside of Lawton.
Almost 10 years ago, I knelt on a large boulder in the rocky desert of Western Oklahoma and proposed marriage to my girlfriend.
I had planned it all day, but my nervousness postponed the proposal, and we kept hiking along until I finally made the move. By the time we headed back to camp, we realized we had gone further than we had intended and ran out of water. As a result, we became temporarily lost, partially dehydrated and completely exhausted on the walk back to camp.
But we survived and are still married. I still “joke” that I proposed in the middle of nowhere so I could have left her there if she had said no. (But we all know I was the one who would have ended up face down in a cave three weeks later).
I remembered that fine moment in my life as I read, watched and listened to Assistant News Editor Bob Doucette’s piece on the Charon’s Garden Wilderness Area – part of NewsOK.com’s series on Oklahoma Places.
Bob is a hiking and outdoors expert. By day, he edits stories, deals with reporters and organizes content for our daily news products, especially the stories we report on Oklahoma politics at the state Capitol. But when he takes the editing hat off, he becomes a hiker, backpacker, angler and skier — and he blogs about his adventures in his Out There blog as part of our ‘know it’ topic on Outdoor Recreation.
Bob’s article and slideshow effectively described the area west of Lawton in the Wichita Wildlife Refuge. He puts it best in one sentence:
Welcome to one of the last wild places left in Oklahoma.
I haven’t been there in many years now, but his piece reminded me of the few times we camped there next to the wild Buffalo that probably enjoy walking through a camp site at 3 a.m. just to scare the heck out of guys who grew up in suburban Tulsa.
The Places series is one of my favorite Web initiatives of 2009. To date, we’ve produced 13 unique places in Oklahoma, and we plan many more. It’s a great site to visit to learn more about the unique areas in Oklahoma. Just last week, we launched a piece on the Drum Room at the UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music. You can see a full panorama of the room and get a feel for the area with John Estus’ description.
It’s just one more place that makes Oklahoma special.
Places – exploring interesting spots in Oklahoma
Last week, we launched a project on NewsOK that has a simple name.
It’s called “Places.”
We launched with nine entries on the Places Web site. We’re going to add more each week. The goal is stated on the Places home page: “Accompany The Oklahoman’s writers and photographers as they investigate some of our state’s most intriguing places — seeing what they see, hearing what they hear and feeling what they feel.”
We think it’s pretty cool right now. But we think it will be a really cool site to visit and come back to as we add dozens and dozens of more entries into the site. We’ve already added one more this week - The Architectural Antiques and Dead People’s Stuff.
We’ve had some excellent feedback on the project, as well. Most of it is aimed at the lead writer for the project – Ken Raymond.
How enjoyable it was to read such creative writing being used to tell such a compelling story. Senior staff writer Ken Raymond did an excellent job of pulling a sad and dirty story together into a very intense word picture which read so well that I felt as though I was looking through a camera lens.
And there’s this thought from a very appreciative reader:
Your writing is appreciated. Thank you!! Your style reminds me of Rick Braggs “All over but the shoutin”—one of my favorites.
And this one – another person who read some of the entries in the newspaper:
I enjoyed your piece in yesterday’s paper, “Folks of all stations ride the bus.” It was well-written and interesting. I’ll watch for your by-line again.
We also had one who found us on NewsOK.
I am very excited about this new series, Explore at Places.NewsOK.com. There is so much to see and learn about in Oklahoma. I applaud your efforts to make it easier.
The last person said it perfectly … “Explore.”
That’s exactly what we are aiming for with this series and this site. We want to explore Oklahoma, and we want to take you with us. We’re not going to write traditional articles on the places we visit. We’re going to channel the story-teller in us. We’re going to use our imagination and tell you what it feels like to be in that place at that time — what we see, what we smell, what we think.
We’ll add audio, slideshows and panoramic images as available to help capture the essence of that place.
So even if you’ve never been locked up at the county jail, you can say you’ve been there – thanks to Places.
