High school huddle warms up the NewsOK high school coverage
It’s almost high school football season. And our sports staff is gearing up for the most in-depth and consistent coverage of high school football that we’ve ever seen online.
Watch below, and stay tuned next week for our new high school coverage page. Just remember this – NewsOK.com is where you can see the inside information from a staff of full-tme reporters delivering daily information about high school football in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma City RedHawks page ready for new season
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The Oklahoma City RedHawks season is near.
As in … it begins tomorrow … in Memphis.
That’s why we’ve been beefing up our Oklahoma City RedHawks coverage page in the last week or so.
- We’ve added a blogger, baseball writer and resident expert Matt Patterson, whose “Power Allie” blog has already taken off. He blogs often, about everything baseball as it relates to Oklahoma.
- We’ve added enhanced presentation of the latest RedHawks articles that will appear daily on NewsOK.
- We’ve also added updated links to the RedHawks schedule, standings and statistics.
Look for more, as well, including, more Major League Baseball information — standings, schedules, leaders, etc.
We’re gearing up for the home opener at Bricktown Ballpark next Friday (April 17), when the RedHawks host Memphis. When that day finally arrives, we’ll know that springtime is truly here to stay.
Funniest Pet Videos contest still going strong on NewsOK
We want to see your funny pet videos.
We launched a contest for Oklahoma’s Funniest Pet Videos a few weeks back in conjunction with the YOU! section of The Oklahoman and the ‘know it’ feature on Pets on NewsOK.com.
Frankly, we didn’t expect a whole lot of entries, but we thought it would be fun and a way to interact with our visitors – something we always are trying to do.
Turns out, there is an interest in funny pet videos. Marcy Williams – contest organizer and NewsOK Web editor – told me this week that she just viewed and uploaded out 10th entry so far. And the deadline for the contest is still 10 days away!
The videos are fun to watch, and they’re all posted on our Pets ‘know it.’ But you probably have a funnier video.
You still have more than a week to share it with us.
Keeping our customers happy by making our products accessible
I received an e-mail late last week from a user who was experiencing problem accessing our Classic Edition of The Oklahoman.
He was a subscriber of the print edition of The Oklahoman, but also has a log in for the electronic Classic Edition – and sudddenly, he couldn’t log in.
I directed him to our customer service specialist, Chaaze, who promptly helped him retrieve his user name and password for that content.
A day later, he was a happy Classic Edition user:
Thanks so much for getting on my problem so quickly. We have it online now. Thanks also to Chaaze who was kind, efficient and considerate. I imagine at some point she wondered why my middle name was not “huh?”as I asked her to repeat so many times. Thanks again.
The point of this post is simple: (1) To brag about how nice we all are here and (2) to show that we have so many different ways that people can access our content.
No. 1 is important, but No. 2 can’t be overstated. You can get our news and information online, in print, on special digital delivery mechanisms, on the iPhone, on the BlackBerry, on your generic cell phone, on the Amazon Kindle, on Twitter and coming soon … through mental telepathy.
(OK … The last one was a bit of a stretch).
Jim Chastain series reaches Chapter Two status
Chapter Two of the Jim Chastain series published in The Oklahoman on Sunday.
In case you missed it, check out the Jim Chastain page on NewsOK. It has a great design (creative director Scott Horton), great videos (photographer John Clanton), great writing (reporter Ken Raymond), great blog and — most of all — an outstanding person of focus.
Projects like these are interesting, because they highlight the talent for rich, deep coverage on a topic or subject.
Sure, we know that breaking news, political shenanigans, weather, crime and sports drive a lot of interest and traffic on NewsOK.com. But even in our changing industry, projects like “Life is Real” can give us a sense of duty and make a long-term difference in the lives readers around the world.
But the purpose of this post is really just to ask you to read Chapter Two because it’s really, really good.
Learning more about Jim Chastain
A reader sent an e-mail last week with a question about our page about Jim Chastain – ‘Life is Real’: Writing the Final Chapters.
Is there any way possible to get word to Jim Chastain ??? I want to contact him about his news article and encourage him. If I mailed my message to you could you get it to him. ?? I sent it to a J. Chastain in Norman but it was returned to me undeliverable. I also am trying to contact John lanton and Ken Raymond. Please tell me what I should do. Thank you so very much
Here is a link to Jim’s personal Web site. It’s a link to his contact page, where you can type a message to him.
Of course, you are also able to post a message as a comment on his blog:
Here is the information for reporter Ken Raymond: (405) 475-3331, kraymond@opubco.com
Here is the information for photographer John Clanton: (405) 475-3321, jclanton@opubco.com
And in case you haven’t been there recently, the Life is Real page has a new video from John Clanton and new blog posts from all three contributors. The good news is that there is good news there right now – and that’s always good.
Inauguration coverage update
I wrote yesterday afternoon about our planned Inauguration coverage. We planned to use the live feed from C-Span, which was working well until the traffic grew to about 20,000 viewers for that feed.
Thanks to OPUBCO Communications Group’s director of video David Morris and his team, we quickly switched to AP’s interactive display about an hour ago. It turned out really well. So well, in fact I’m listening to Aretha Franklin as I type of this (I hope it’s part of the ceremony ….. I’m assured it is).
David explains the video well on his blog.
