‘Endangered Black History’ nDepth series comes highly recommended
We are in the middle of a six-part series titled, “Endangered Black History,” that I would highly recommend our users take a look at.
We’ve organized this coverage as part of our nDepth – Stories of the Ages presentations, where we tell a story in a long-form and high-design format. We’ve completed dozens of nDepth stories over the past few years, but this is perhaps our most ambitious project, because we’re linking six of them together over the course of a few weeks.
We’ve already released Part 1: The Overview, Part 2: Langston and Part 3: Boley. There are still three more to come.
Graphic artist Chris Schoelen is producing the designs, reporter Ken Raymond is writing the stories, video producer Paige Dillard is producing the videos and web editor Nick Tankersley is putting it all together on the web pages.
They all deserve high praise for the extra effort that benefits our readers, but the work goes far beyond them — videographers, photographers, editors and researchers have come together to make this a successful story-telling effort.
It easy to navigate. The stories are detailed and descriptive. The videos add more context to the words that surround them. And the photos — well I’m a sucker for historic photos.
But here’s my favorite part: We went with Facebook comments to keep the conversation going in this series, and it’s proved to be an interesting way for users to share the series with others and offer their own commentary and insight.
Take a look. But don’t worry, there’s no rush. We’re going to keep this package active on the site for years to come.
Week in review: OU football news leads most-viewed items on NewsOK
It’s time again to review the most popular items on NewsOK in the past week. Enjoy …
Most-viewed article
Ryan Aber’s recruiting piece on Tuesday about OU’s focus on wide receiver prospect Dorial Green-Beckham led the way. That surprised me, actually. I know recruiting news is big, but I fully expected one of our OU coaching turnover stories to lead the pack. But the Mike Stoops story was edged by a wide receiver story. It just goes to show that OU football off-season news is sometime more interesting that in-season.
Most-viewed blog post
Breaking news about Mike Stoops did lead the way for our most-viewed blog post this week. Reporter Travis Haney shared the news that was breaking on several outlets on Wednesday. As he reported: “The announcement is coming – and coming soon. Just doesn’t sound as if it’ll be today.” And now … here it is Friday, and we’re still waiting for that announcement (strike that — the announcement just came)
Most-viewed photo
We get a break from OU football with our most-viewed image from the week. What that means is … this was the image our readers clicked on more than any other this week. It was a reader-provided photo of an accident on I-35 and 122nd last Friday.
(click for larger image)
Most-viewed video
Tuesday’s video about the return of OU quarterback Landry Jones was our most-viewed video of the week. Jenni Carlson and Travis Haney discussed OU football way back when the quarterback was the big story (not the defensive coordinator). That makes for a dominant week of OU football on NewsOK in the second week of January.
Closing the book on 2011 end-of-year interactive projects
Opening the first full week of a new year, I thought it would be good to offer a shotgun approach to some of the items you might have missed in recent weeks. So here goes …
- The 2011 Year in Review page was released. We take a simple approach to this page. It’s simply the 25 most-viewed articles of the year. In 2011, our readers liked conference realignment articles a lot. It shows in our Top 25.
If you enjoy reviewing a year by looking a lot of photos, you could do a lot worse the our photographers’ end-of-year galleries for a variety of topics — Sports, News, Features and my personal favorite — Portraits. Seriously, the gallery of portraits is just really good photography.- Angi Bruss has a new A-List that was released this week. she does a great job as she explores local merchants each month and what they provide to improve the lifestyles of Oklahomans.
- George Lang’s Static unveiled another holiday special in late December. Static X-Mas was shot at Deep Deuce Grill in Oklahoma City. Stay in the holiday spirit — even if it’s January — by letting Static X-Mas play while you work.
At the end of the year in 2010, we revised and enhanced our Ongoing Coverage page for Oklahoma DHS. If you’ve read The Oklahoman or NewsOK, you know that reporters Nolan Clay and Randy Ellis have shine a bright light on DHS in recent years. The updated page now has a page devoted to Child Welfare, detailing the controversial cases in recent years. The timeline that’s on these pages is very deep and descriptive. Check it out.
We will have plenty more interactive elements in 2012. NewsOK will do its best to inform, entertain and enlighten with whatever tools we can find.
The well-told story of Freckles Brown and Tornado
We put together another nDepth – Stories of the Ages piece for Sunday. It’s called, “The Ride,” and it focuses on the most famous “Eight Seconds in Rodeo History” when Freckles Brown stayed atop Tornado in 1967.
The story appeared on the front page of The Oklahoman on Sunday and was featured prominently on NewsOK.
I’m no rodeo aficionado, but I really enjoyed this piece by contributor Ron J. Jackson Jr.
I spoke on the phone this morning with a true rodeo fan who said he was there that night in 1967. He said that Jackson had “everything right” in his accounts and that it was a “great article.”
I agree. Reading the story of Freckles Brown and Tornado is worth the time. If you haven’t read it yet, do so today.
And make darn sure you take the handful of minutes to watch the great video, narrated by Bryan Painter and Doug Sauter.
NewsOK TV app worth a spot on your home screen
The NewsOK TV app in the iTunes store might be the coolest app we have that we don’t talk about enough.
We’ve had it for quite a while — well over a year, I know. But our latest update (released in the iTunes store on Nov. 29) really makes it a nice addition to your phone. We added push notifications to the app, allowing users to get a note when we add a new video.
The iPhone notifications are pretty handy. It sounds like a pain, I know … getting an alert every time something changes on your phone. But these notifications are subtle enough not to annoy you and useful enough to make it worth the effort. The cool thing is that when Dave Morris‘ NewsOK TV crew adds freshly edited video to the website, I know about it while I’m messing around with my phone. I’m now much more likely to be informed and entertained. And that’s useful to me as a news consumer.
The notifications are really nice, but the app is easy-to-use, too. It’s a different way to ingest your news and information on your mobile device, that’s for sure. Rather than a lot of pesky reading and scrolling, it’s a relaxing watch and listen. And trust me, we produce enough video, that you get a wide sample of information just from the NewsOK TV app.
And our final cool feature worth mentioning? It’s the upload your video process. We know it’s cool because we’ve used it a live testing to get a video we shot from the field into our system for editing.
It works for us, so it can work for you, too. Shoot some video with your phone, then upload it to use through the app. You can even slice the beginning or the end off the video with an easy edit process in the app.
Trust me, if you shoot some breaking news and share it with us, you’ll likely go worldwide within minutes.
Download the app and use it. Before long, it won’t be our best-kept secret.
Catching up on the OSU bowl updates on NewsOK
See the photo gallery from the Bedlam game.
I wasn’t at my house for the live coverage of the BCS announcement last night. I missed the live show and immediate opinions from the experts. That’s OK. I think I know what they all said.
But I did get immediate word of the BCS poll results, thanks to NewsOK’s text alerts and email updates. I saw it quickly. Then I saw all the updates on Twitter and Facebook. I read the stories and blogs on my iPhone. I was informed and up to date. I even vocally shared my disappointment with the system to anyone within ear shot (yeah, OSU should be angry).
But browsing today, I had a chance to see everything I missed while I was out, including this video from the OSU football facilities with the team.
Excellent work from the NewsOK sports and video teams. They were both all over this story.
Seeking Truth: nDepth piece shares Dr. R. Murali Krishna’s story
Kelly Dyer Fry wrote another heart-wrenching piece. This time, instead of sharing the gripping story of addiction within her own family, she shared an equally gripping account of an equally challenging affliction from the family of Dr. R. Murali Krishna.
The title is Seeking Truth: Where is my Amma? It shares Krishna’s accounts of his mother’s fight with mental illness while he was a young boy in India.
It’s part of our “nDepth: Fighting Back” series, where we tell inspirational stories of people making a difference in our community. Dr. Krishna definitely qualifies, and the only proof you need is Kelly’s story.
As he enters the backyard trimmed with rose bushes, he sees his mom. She is standing in the yard. Smoke is rising from her yellow sari with black trim. Flames. She is setting herself on fire.
Fry — who, for the record, runs our newsroom – transitions from Krishna’s flashbacks to Krishna’s present-day advice. As the audience, we learn not only what drove and inspired Krishna to become a community leader in the field of mental health.
We also get a bit more insight on how the world can change for a family dealing with mental illness.
‘Finding a Forever Family’ — a special NewsOK nDepth story
In the midst of all the earthquake madness this weekend, you might have missed a special nDepth presentation we put together and launched on Saturday night on NewsOK.com.
So take the time to read “Finding a Forever Family” when you have a few spare minutes. It’s a story told by OPUBCO’s own Michelle Kelley as told to our Night News Director Yvette Walker. Michelle tells the her story of working with the system to adopt a child.
This isn’t the story of Michelle Kelley. It’s the story of a little boy and a little girl nicknamed Biggin’ and Darlin’. And it’s also the story of why some children have to wait so long to find families to take them in and love them forever — “forever families.”
We also created a special PDF presentation that is enhanced be flipped through on a user’s iPad. It’s best viewed in iBooks on the iPad, but it’s a good PDF to read in any way you want to.
I highly recommend reading it an whatever way you want. And for a nice preview, here’s a video to get you started.
Brave & Beautiful — watch the video
I post this blog today only to tell people that they should read Dave Morris’ blog post about the Brave and Beautiful video on NewsOK.
Dave is our video director here at OPUBCO Communications Group, but you probably know him best as a NewsOK.tv host. But he does plenty of work behind the camera, too.
From his blog post:
I sat each lady down in the OPUBCO Studios and asked them to tell me about their fight with cancer. Not an easy interview: “Please tell me about the worst moments of your life and how you dealt with it. And please look into the camera.”
Whatever he said, it worked. The women told their stories like pros. It was perfect.
In this case, Dave produced the video. Todd Frasure and David Jones did the video production. Assistant Photo Editor Chris Landsberger shot the still photos. And a host of others worked together to produce a stellar special printed section that appeared with The Oklahoman on Sunday (Matt Clayton, Steve Gorham, Suzanne Green, Melissa Howell, Kelly Lunsford, Todd Pendleton and Jerry Wagner). I highly recommend you take a look at that section.
In the end, the video was one of the most powerful pieced the video group has ever put together — and they’ve produced some awesome pieces.
QR codes make debut in The Oklahoman
Last Thursday, we quietly started something new in The Oklahoman.
We published our first QR code (quick-response code) as part of our organized effort to build a better bridge from our printed newspaper and the multimedia that’s available on NewsOK.com. With a smart phone like and iPhone or Android device — or with an iPod Touch — users can now see all the multimedia elements we have on NewsOK without getting up from their chair as they read the newspaper.
The first codes appeared in the sports section on Thursday. We added the Weekend Look section on Friday. We added the Business section on Saturday. On Sunday, those little codes were everywhere. We weren’t quiet about it anymore.
I even had a story on Page 2-A on Sunday, where I said this:
We are trying to find solutions for our readers who want everything at their fingertips. We know The Oklahoman’s print readers like to hold the newspaper in their hands. And we know that a lot of those readers also want to interact with our content — videos, photos, commenting, etc.
Here are the quick facts:
- We’ll have a code in the right rail of each section front. Scanning in those codes will take readers to a list of every story in that section and the videos, photo and more that are associated with them.
- We’ll have codes placed sporadically with some of our stories every day. Those codes will take readers directly to the multimedia that’s associated to that particular article.
- We’ll have codes with our daily poll question on Page 2-A. You can vote on the poll question right there.
- We’ll have codes in the weekend sports sections that drive users directly to our mobile Gameday pages for OU and OSU football.
- You can download The Oklahoman’s free iPhone app to scan these codes. We have a built-in scan-code reader that works great. But you can also use any generic scan-code reader applications that’s available for your device.
Enjoy the codes. I think you’ll find that it allows great access to all our content with just a swipe and click on your phone.
