Marathon blogs, disemboweled cats, Billy Joel reviews and much more this week on NewsOK
Marathon coverage
The annual Oklahoma City Memorial marathon is going to be held in just a couple of weeks. That’s just enough time to see all the content on our Marathon page on NewsOK. The page is home to a really interesting interactive map and video of the race route. The page is also home to a blog by three journalists in our operation that are participating in the race. I’m always intrigued by the stories of people who are training to finish a race like this. You can follow their progress on the blog. There is plenty to take in on this page, so I invite you to check it out well in advance of the May 1 event.
Bombing page
And the reason for the Memorial Marathon — remembering the events of April 19, 1995 — should never be forgotten. That’s why I take this opportunity to again remind our users of this site we built in 2005. As I load the page, the opening video and music still makes me stop whatever I’m doing and watch. The site is full of history, photos and information about the victims. If you do nothing else on NewsOK this weekend, browse through this site.
Gas-saving myths
I was browsing through our Know It: Money page this week and came across an excellent story on the myths and urban legends about saving gasoline. The story came from AAA Oklahoma and does a good job of sharing the truth about what we often hear about saving money on gasoline. I learned some good things in this article, but the most interesting? … Myth No. 10: Putting the tailgate down on your pickup saves gas. False: You get better mileage with the tailgate up. Counterintuitive but true.
This week’s disemboweled cat story
From the “we-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” department comes this week’s story by Nolan Clay — Oklahoma City woman disemboweled cat, put liver in makeup box. It’s really impossible to read that headline without clicking through and reading the story. Go ahead. try it.
Elephant
Yes … that photo on the right — it’s an elephant. It’s from a screen catpure of the Elephant Cam on NewsOK this week. The live video is always embedded on our Elephant Nation page that was the inspiration of reporter Carrie Coppernoll. The video was also embedded in Carrie’s story on Tuesday about the baby elephant that’s about to arrive. Trust me when I tell you that we will cover the elephants at the Oklahoma City Zoo as they add another to their group.
Another conversation about comments
I had a pleasant conversation on Thursday with a NewsOK customer that uses our site frequently and likes to comment frequently. He was comparing our commenting functionality and philosophy to the comments on other news websites he has used in the past. He was in the process of changing his news home to NewsOK.com and still beginning to understand our commenting. Some thoughts he shared … (1) He loves being able to respond to someone’s comments, (2) He loves being able to sort comments by oldest or newest and (3) He likes being able to LIKE and FLAG comments. He does wish, however, that we would allow commenting on Letters to the Editor, but he understood our reasoning (essentially, that people who are forced to share their first and last name should be attacked in the comments by anonymous posters). He also asked that we expand our list of banned words. He gave some recommendations, and they were good recommendations (I won’t repeat them here), so I expanded the list of derogatory terms that aren’t allowed in our comments. In the end, it was another pleasant conversation with a NewsOK customer.
Get the Thunder in your inbox
Just in time for the NBA Playoffs, we launched a daily Oklahoma City Thunder e-mail newsletter on Thursday. The email is packed full of Thunder articles, videos, blogs and more. It goes out at noon every day, and you can sign up by selecting the option on your NewsOK Settings page and choosing to receive sports newsletters.
History on NewsOK
Joe Hight, one of the key leaders in The Oklahoman/NewsOK newsroom was at a conference last week where many of his conversations centered around our unique approach to a History Page on NewsOK. It’s a page that’s worth a visit on a slow afternoon. It isn’t full of breaking news or sports opinions, which drive a lot of our traffic. But it is full of outstanding content that can be read at any time. Check out Mary Phillips’ blog posts on “The Archivist” blog or flip through our list of historical photo galleries. If you want to learn something you didn’t know before about Oklahoma History, this is your place.
TSA official makes news
I was fortunate enough to attend the PLN (Peer Learning Network) Spring Partner luncheon on Thursday. PLN is run by the Zig Ziglar Center for Ethical Leadership at Southern Nazaren University, and OPUBCO is a member. As a result, I get to attend some of the events throughout the year. On Thursday, John Pistole was speaking. Pistole, who is the top official in the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA), had much to talk about this week after the YouTube video of the pat-down on a 6-year-old girl went viral on the web. Pistole answered questions from the large audience, including some good ones from our own reporter, Jennifer Palmer. Palmer turned his reactions into a NewsOK.com exclusive Thursday afternoon, and it became one of the most popular stories on our site that day. Good question, good reporting and a quick turn-around for our readers. That’s what our reporters do on a daily basis.
Billy Joel … even better than Huey Lewis
I like Fridays. That’s when we publish our latest list of CD Reviews each week on NewsOK. This week’s list of reviews included a review of “Billy Joel: Live at Shae Stadium — The Concert.” I appreciate Brandy McDonnell’s review, because I know that she knows her music. “Two jam-packed CDs are needed to capture the 2½-hour concert, which mixes familiar hits, album cuts and high-wattage guest stars, including Oklahoma native Garth Brooks, Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney.” Two and half hours? That’s the Billy Joel I know. I just might have to buy a CD for the first time in a few years.
Most-viewed article
The runaway winner in our most-viewed article race this week came on Friday, when we picked up a lot of views on “Oklahoma rejects $54.6 million federal grant.” This article was a good story that was featured on our home page, but it was also linked to from the popular Drudge Report website. What was the most-popular article not linked from the Drudge Report this week? It was this gem from reporter Nolan Clay: “Oklahoma City woman disemboweled ca, put liver in makeup box. “(See my previous note about us not being able to make this stuff up!) If you want to know even more about the rejection of the federal grant, check out the article’s author, Michael McNutt in this excellent explanatory video:
Most-viewed blog post
It’s OU football again. This time, Jake Trotter’s post on Sunday about freshman wide receiver Justin McCay’s tweet about his injury led the blog traffic charge on NewsOK.
Most-viewed video
OU football spring game preview information led the way in our video views this week. It wasn’t close:
Winning awards, visiting with a Pulitzer Prize winner and telling important stories this week on NewsOK
Some more notes and thoughts about a week on NewsOK.com.
Surviving the Dust Bowl
I just want it to rain. I’m tired of drought conditions that are threatening Oklahomans’ livelihoods. I’m tired of wildfires that are threatening Oklahomans’ homes, livelihoods and lives. I just want one of those three-day showers that we traditionally tend to get in the Oklahoma’s Aprils. We had a story this week about the drought conditions being the worst we’ve had since the Dust Bowl. It gave our NewsOK editors a nice opportunity to link up one of our best nDepth: Stories of the Ages packages we’ve built on “Surviving the Dust Bowl.” As you’re praying for rain this weekend, check out “Surviving the Dust Bowl.” You might need the tips.
OKC Thunder bandwagon
In a tradition we started last year, we launched our end-of-season Thunder Bandwagon page to detail the building of a contender in the NBA Playoffs. The page is sponsored by OKC Thunder Cycles, and it features a fun StoryWall from the 2010-11 season, a Loud and Proud Fan Photo contest, and photo gallery with the best photos from the season and some of our best feature stories about the players. The page is great for all Thunder fans.
Home & Garden sponsor
The NewsOK Home & Garden page has a new sponsor as of this week. Appropriately, it’s sponsored by Marcum’s Nursery. The Home & Garden page now features a new enhanced look and feel, plus tips from Marcum’s and videos from a series of producers, including The Associated Press and CBS News.
Blake Griffin: To boo or not to boo
Blake Griffin made some news this week. All he did was play winning basketball against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but the Thunder fans’ reaction to his play sparked a nice debate for sports fans in Oklahoma (and within our own newsroom). Darnell Mayberry noted the fans’ boos on one of his Twitter updates during Wednesday’s game. Then, he shared his opinion again on his blog after the game. Sports editor Mike Sherman wrote a blog post Thursday afternoon that sparked even more debate after we featured that post at the top of NewsOK’s home page. Berry Tramel followed all that up with his column that was released on NewsOK on Thursday night. To recap, Darnell didn’t like the boos, Mike hated the boos and Berry didn’t mind the boos. That sports department … they are never short on opinions.
Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant: Know It
With all the booing going on, it’s a good thing we launched our Know It page on Blake Griffin last week. And it’s a good thing we enhanced that page (and the page we have on the Thunder’s own Kevin Durant) with featured presentations of their blogs. So, follow our Know It pages on Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant, and follow their blogs on our pages.
Telling important stories
Our site is full of information that people just need to know about. That occurs to me every week, and I often write about that thought, but it just occurred to me again on Wednesday afternoon. The trial in the drowning death of 2-year-old Allie Croom began this week. The story, like so many we tell on NewsOK, is important for us to follow. We’ll follow them. We’ll cover this trial and tell you if a jury sees it as a tragic accident or murder. I think it’s important that we do that. I hope you think so, as well.
Anthony Shadid in the house
Speaking of telling important stories that need to be told … Oklahoma City native Anthony Shadid stopped by our newsroom on Friday to talk about his recent near-death experience in Libya and his thoughts on covering the Arab world throughout his Pulitzer-Prize winning career. Shadid is a great story-teller, which is part what makes him a great journalist. Shadid can honestly say that he survives his craft. That’s not something every journalist has to say. It’s honorable to be so passionate and continually risk your life to tell people’s stories. If you want to really understand what he and his colleagues went through in Libya while in captivity, you must read their piece in the New York Times after they returned.
NewsOK & The Oklahoman win awards
Shadid does great work in the Middle East. And the New York Times does great work in New York. And so does NewsOK.com and The Oklahoman. Want proof? Check out our awards at last weekend’s Associated Press/Oklahoma News Executives competition. The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com won 21 individual first-place honors and 48 individual awards. My boss, Kelly Dyer Fry, said this: “Being recognized by our industry peers is a proud moment for all of us. We work every day to bring quality news to our readers. These awards tell us job well done.”
Most-viewed article
Berry Tramel’s column about new men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger’s salary let the way this week for article traffic on NewsOK. I find it extremely interesting that this makes the third consecutive week that an article about the OU men’s basketball coaching job has led the way for articles on NewsOK. Berry’s take? “OU paying Lon Kruger $2.2 million is cents-less.”
Most-viewed blog post
More OU basketball. This story keeps getting traffic. This week, the most-viewed blog post is the Tuesday post about former OU coach Jeff Capel being hired as an assistant coach on the Missouri staff.
Most-viewed video
Strange. The most-viewed video this week was a video from last week. It was a video of Bob Stoops talking about building depth on his football team this spring. Watch it below:
Love from Olivia Munn, a haircut for Dave Morris and a brave trip to Egypt for Katya Kruglak
See the news and notes about NewsOK.com on this very fine final week of March.
Olivia Munn still loves us
We received a fun package in the mail this week. It came from actress and icon Olivia Munn, who we have written about a few times in the past month or so in The Oklahoman, NewsOK.com and LOOKatOKC. I even wrote about how she posted a link to our story on her Twitter account so all her fans could see what George Lang wrote. But this week, we received this (click the image to enlarge):
Blake Griffin know it launches
We launched a new ‘know it’ page this week on one of Oklahoma’s finest — Blake Griffin. It was an easy call, really. Our most popular ‘know it’ pages have centered on Oklahoma’s most famous people – Sam Bradford and Kevin Durant. And Blake Griffin is about to be named the NBA’s Rookie of the Year. He has a chance to become the most dominant player in the NBA at the rate he’s going. He’s already the most exciting player in the league. All those superlatives? That’s all it takes to become a ‘know it‘ page on NewsOK.
Know everything about severe weather
Speaking of our know it pages, this is a great weekend to browse around on our Severe Weather know it page. The page was updated with fresh information last week as Bryan Painter organized another set of tips — things like what to do when you’re on the road, how to prepare and tornado myths. This page has tips, historical information and tons of links. No kidding — the Severe Weather know it can help you be ready for this storm season.
Dave Morris on video
Dave Morris appears on many of of our videos. He is the Director of Video, after all. And he’s a top-notch host that we’re lucky to have fronting our stories. And this week, he became a top-notch BALD host. If you wonder what happened to his full head of short hair, just watch this.
Angi Bruss on video
Angi Bruss also appears on many of our videos. She is one of our video hosts, after all. She’s also a great story-teller and fine journalist. Check out this story below. It made me stop and appreciate how we can capture emotions and stories with a camera, a voice and worthy story to tell.
The Rosalin Reynolds story
The stories we’ve had in the past week on the 8-year-old Watonga girl haunt me. We’ve had daily coverage of Rosalin Reynold’s death — how she was found in the field behind her home … how the man who was arrested was related to her … how the mother ‘just can’t let her go‘ … how the accused was at the home passed out drunk … how mother and father were arguing that night and staying in separate apartments … and how the victim might have been sexually assaulted. You can read all the stories by searching “Rosalin Reynolds” using the NewsOK search window. It’s a sad story — one we have to tell, even if we’d rather not.
A question about the NOOK?
I received a question from one of my blog readers this week (yes … I did say that … I have a reader). Essentially, the question was about our Digital Oklahoman replica edition. Would the new NOOK that’s being released in April be supported? The problem in the past is that the Digital Oklahoman is a Flash-based experience, and Flash has not been supported by the NOOK. The answer? … “I’m not certain if the Nook Color upgrade will include Flash and allow for the flash-based Digital Oklahoman replica experience to be viewed on that device. Quick research leads me to believe that it will be available, but Nook is a closed Android device, so it might be configured in a way that would make the Digital Oklahoman unusable. I just don’t know for sure right now. I can tell you one thing you already know … we have an e-reader experience for the Nook through the eNewspaper store. That would be my first recommendation. But I understand if you prefer the page-by-page replica experience. Another option we will soon have is an optimized native Android application for smart phones with that OS. It’s a good question, and I hope to learn more soon. Thanks for your question. And thanks for attempting to find ways to use our product in the way that best fits your needs.” The reader replied, promising to find any way he can to read The Oklahoman … “Thanks for your reply! We’ll hold out hope that the rumored addition of Flash to the Nook this Spring will enable access to the Digital Oklahoman we’ve grown so accustomed to. One way or the other, with whatever e-reader or tablet, we’ll find a good solution to keep our favorite daily paper available!”
New video players
You can find some new videos available on our website. It’s through our partnership with NDN Videos, which publishes AP videos as well as many other news sources. You can see these video players sprinkled throughout the site, like our health page, our parenting know it, our technology page, our home and garden page and more.
Lock your car
Have you ever sat and watched to see how driver after driver locks his or her vehicle after parking and running inside the post office. Don Gammill has. It’s a fun column. My favorite part … “He stepped out, shut the door and pointed the remote at the car. He pressed it. Nothing happened. He moved closer and tried again. Nope. He moved all around the car, trying to get it to lock. Finally, after he had tried every angle he could think of, he just opened the door and pushed the lock, then closed it.”
Email us a photo
A reader sent us a photo via our new photo-submission process using the email address pics@newsok.com. The photo appeared on the cover of The Oklahoman’s Metro/State section on Thursday. It just proves how much fame you can get by sharing your photo on NewsOK.com. And just to prove it, I shared a photo on April 1 to launch our April user-submitted gallery.
Katya’s trip to Egypt
I’ve written about Katya Kruglak before. Her ‘Dusty Globe‘ blog is always a great read, but I just ran across her blog posts from a couple weeks ago where she detailed her trip to Egypt. That’s right … that Egypt. I wish I knew about these posts earlier. She posted some great firsthand accounts of visiting the post-revolution and post-Mubarak country. She actually had 10 posts from her week in Egypt, but it all started with this great lead on March 11: “Landed in Cairo about an hour ago. Before you start to wonder if I’ve lost my mind, I did check out all the various travel warnings before booking the flight and it seems with a little common sense travel in Egypt should be fairly safe now. Or at least I hope.” She was safe. And we’re thankful for her posts.
Most-viewed article
It was incredibly close this week. But Berry Tramel’s article on Thursday about “UCO’s Terry Evans meeting with OU regarding basketball coaching vacancy” led the way this week. On Friday, we reported that “OU is expected to name Lon Kruger as the next coach.” The Friday report might very well surpass the Terry Evans report (Actually, I’m quite certain it will). But since I compiled this list at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, the Terry Evans story get s the award. Regardless, we know this: the OU coaching search leads the way for article traffic on NewsOK this week. UPDATE: by 4:15 p.m. on Friday, the Lon Kruger story is the most-viewed story of the week on NewsOK. UPDATE NO. 2: Our sports coverage team is simply awesome. We had the scoop on this story this week, and we’re really proud of that.
Most-viewed blog post
The OU coaching search takes the award this week. Mike Baldwin’s blog post on how the “OU coaching job is not an easy sell” for big-time coaches across the country led the way for our blogs this year. This makes the second consecutive week that posts about the OU basketball job topped this list. And we thought nobody cared about OU basketball anymore?
Most-viewed video
You guessed it … OU basketball coaching job analysis … for the second consecutive week.
A show for Static, a blog for Turkey and vote for Tubby Smith
Another week has passed, and NewsOK users have picked a new OU coach, seen the highlights from SXSW in Austin and learned a little history about Anita Bryant. Read more about our week below.
Static goes to Austin
George Lang and Kyle Roberts spent some of last week in Austin for the SXSW Festival. They took that opportunity to film some episodes of Static: Season 3. The first episode from that trip — Pretty Black Chains — was posted last Friday, and more came this week. Static has been a critical success, so we’re doing many more episodes this year, thanks to our sponsor — Fowler Volkswagon.
Anita Bryant: Sunny Side of Life
The nDepth: Stories of the Ages did its job again with its latest release on Sunday. Robert Medley did the reporting and wrote the story. Steve Boaldin did the design. Angi Bruss narrated the video. In the end, we told quite a story about the legendary and controversial Anita Bryant. And we learned what she’s doing now and what she thinks about her life in the 1970s, when she was a lightning rod in the middle of the gay rights debates. Some people knew a lot about Anita Bryant before reading this piece. After reading it, they know a lot more. Others didn’t know anything about her before reading this piece. After reading it, they are informed. Check out the latest Stories of the Ages on our nDepth page on NewsOK.
OU coaching search: Fans get the vote
Sports editor Mike Sherman and columnist Berry Tramel had an idea last week. Put 64 possible OU men’s basketball coaching candidates in a tournament bracket and let Berry pare down who he thinks will end up with the job. OK … it’s not a new idea. They did the same thing five years ago the last time the job was vacant. Berry had 64 potential candidates, and the eventual winner — Jeff Capel — wasn’t in his bracket. This year, we’re doing something a little different. We’re allowing the fans to cast their votes to help us determine the eventual winner. My choice? It’s Tubby Smith. I’m a big fan of Tubby Smith. I voted for him until he was eliminated in the quarterfinals. It was fun to play along.
My favorite video this week
I’ve been folowing the O’Connell’s saga for months. On Tuesday, we posted the video of the original O’Connell’s being torn down. To me, that video made the entire thing real. It was even more real than my real-life visit to O’Connell’s in December for my last meal in between those historic walls. Sometimes, video just tells a great story.
Travel Along blog update
Marcy Williams had another fine post on her Travel Along blog this week. Actually, she had three posts on her trip to Texas — NASA, Kemah Boardwalk and Galveston Beach. I went to Galveston last year with my family, as well. I’ll say this … Galveston is underrated. It’s an fairly easy drive, and the kids loved it. I’d go back.
Oklahomans in Turkey
T
his is a blog post about a blog post about another blog post. Check out Carla Hinton’s blog post on her Religion and Values blog. Her post is about Louisa McCune-Elmore’s trip to Turkey as a guest of the Institute of Interfaith Dialogue in Istanbul. Louisa is an important member of our community as editor-in-chief of Oklahoma Today magazine. Carla will be posting some of Louisa’s posts on the religion and Values blog, but you can see all of Louisa’s posts on JenX67.com under the Oklahoma to Istanbul posts. So … a blog post about a blog post about another blog. That’s a blogging community at work.
New blog for all the ‘know it’ pages
Don Gamill has started a new blog for all of our ‘know it’ pages on NewsOK. There’s more to come on Don’s ‘know it’ mission. You can expect to see a personality page for him soon, where everything he know about the ‘know its’ will be hosted. As it is, this is what you can expect on the know it blog: “… guest posts from local and national experts on all “know it” topics, as well as regular updates from Communities Editor Don Gammill.”
In the MOOD for a show
Heather Warlick-Moore started a new show on the MOOD website last week. It’s called “This is Mood,” and the first episode is below. I like it. Well done. And … a big thank you to sponsor Eskridge Lexus of Oklahoma City to helping us make this happen for our growing MOOD audience.
Most-viewed article
On Tuesday night, a series of gunshots were heard in the middle of Oklahoma City. We reported that. But by Wednesday morning, we had been able to confirm more details about what happened. It wasn’t pretty. An Edmond attorney was killed by her ex-husband in a murder-suicide. The story took off on Wednesday and it quickly became a strong traffic driver for NewsOK. In the end, it’s the most-viewed article on the website this week by about 20,000 views over an article about OU freshman running back Brandon Williams, which came in at a strong second place.
Most-viewed blog
Remember that OU coaching bracket I mentioned earlier in this post? Well, the blog post we used to promote that fun game for the fans was our most-viewed blog post of the week.
Another word about Tubby Smith
Of course, I wanted Tubby Smith (and still do). I think he’d be a great choice for OU. But I’m not impartial. My father and I had season tickets for the Tulsa basketball team during Tubby Smith’s first season at Tulsa in 1991. And he was a top candidate for the OU job in 1994, according to this archived article from John Rohde. Nobody is really talking about him this time around — and that makes me think he’ll be named the next OU coach next week. I don’t know anything, but if it comes true, I’m taking credit for being a genius.
Most-viewed video
It’s (spring) football season again. OU football takes the lead in our video views with our first analysis of the week reaching the top of the list for most-viewed video this week.
NewsOK’s spring break highlighted by Jeff Capel and Sunshine
A lot of people take it slow during spring break. Many families are on vacation. Extra-curricular activities are postponed. Plus, we have the St. Patrick’s Day and the NCAA Tournament. In general, the world takes a breather (except for wars and natural disasters). But we didn’t take a break on NewsOK. See below for notes from this week on our website.
Email us a photo
While the wildfires raged last Friday, we tried something a little new. We had been working on creating an automated way to collect photos that are emailed to us during breaking news events. The idea is simple, attach a photo in an email and send it to pics@newsok.com. From your mobile device, it’s as simple as snapping a photo and forwarding the image to that address. Those photos then automatically appear in our monthly user-submitted photo gallery. So, as the fires raged and we chased the news of the day, we asked you to send us your photos. We didn’t expect a ton of images, but it was worth a shot. The process worked very well. We received a handful of photos that helped us tell the story for our visitors that day. Thanks for sharing. … And now you know. If you have a good photo and want to share it with NewsOK, just send it pics@newsok.com. We are now accepting all photos.
NCAA Tournament has arrived!
Sunday night was a big night for college basketball fans. That’s when the NCAA tournament brackets were announced. Thursday morning was even bigger for college basketball fans. That’s when they all skipped work (or took a veeeerry looooooong lunch) and watched the action at Buffalo Wild Wings (presenting sponsor of our tournament coverage on NewsOK). We have all the coverage you need of the tournament this year. We have the printable brackets for the men’s tournament and the women’s tournament. We have the Hoops Madness picks contest and all the live scores. We even have tons of video analysis from our experts in the OPUBCO Studios.
Capel coverage
Jeff Capel was fired as the OU men’s basketball coach on Monday. I learned on Twitter. Then, moments later, I received a text message with the news from NewsOK. Then, I received a breaking news e-mail alert from NewsOK. Within about 10 minutes, NewsOK had a full story, a blog post with analysis from Berry Tramel, an online poll to take the pulse of OU fans, a photo gallery of Jeff Capel’s tenure at OU and a question to allow readers to share their opinions on who the next coach should be. The sports staff and the NewsOK editing staff worked fast to get the information you needed. It’s a good thing, too. The Capel news gave us a nice spike in traffic for what might normally be a slow spring break Monday.
Images from high school basketball
Web editor Dane Beavers focuses on enhancing a lot of sports content on NewsOK. You see his work every day throughout the site. This week, you can see a fine idea on our Varsity page, where Dane featured the photo galleries from each of the high school basketball tournaments from last weekend. Oklahoma crowned 10 champions from Classes 2A-6A for both boys and girls. That’s a ton of celebration photos and images of disappointment. The high school tournaments are unique — and if you haven’t been, I highly recommend going. It’s raw, passionate competition — and it means the world to the participants.
More photos on Alternate Crop blog
Photographer Sarah Phipps posted some large images of the high school basketball tournaments on the Photo department’s Alternate Crop blog. I always enjoy visiting this blog because photographers will always have some interesting insight on the images that they like the best. Sarah also linked to the galleries I mentioned above, but she picks some of her favorites to showcase in the blog post. I encourage you to see her choices.
Posting other coverage of Japan destruction
I posted an extra blog post this week — a bonus blog. We were in the office looking at the ABC News presentation of the before-and-after images of the Japan destruction. It was jaw-dropping, so we linked it up with my lead in. Shortly after that post, I realized the the New York Times and MSNBC had posted equally impressive presentations. It doesn’t matter what brand you went with. The important thing is that you saw it. It just makes you shake your head. And then there were videos like this …
… again, shaking my head.
Blog comments
About the blog I posted in the middle of the week. It sparked a couple of comments from readers who had a difficult time referring to the Japanese people as allies based on the history of our two countries during World War II. Some highlights: “My heart is moved enormously by the suffering of the innocents in this horrible national disaster and i will give generously to help them… but I will not be called an ally of their nation. Period.” and “…they didn’t generously offer to help rebuild Pearl Harbor and all the ships in the harbor on 12-7-1941.” Said the third commenter on that post: “What is wrong with you guys. You embarrass me.”
Sunshine Week
But here in the United States, it’s Sunshine Week. You’re probably wondering what Sunshine Week is? Here’s a quick explanation: “An annual nationwide initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.” I know … this stuff isn’t the full of sizzle. It doesn’t have splashy headlines and sure-fire web-winners, like a story about a man who leads police in a chase before getting out of the car with two cats in his arms, but it’s stuff that is important for our community and our future. Heck, just forget for a moment about stories about dates of births or about government bids (just an exercise … you shouldn’t really forget about those). But here’s the point: If open records laws aren’t preserved for our citizens now, then we might never be able to bring you that story about the man, his two cats and the police chase. Now that’s a scary thought, isn’t it?
The next big thing
I watched “The Social Network” this weekend. I also saw “The Adjustment Bureau” in the theater. Before seeing the movies, I was more interested in “The Adjustment Bureau,” but I have to say that “The Social Network” was more entertaining. Since watching that story. I’m inspired to invent the next big thing. I’ll unveil this invention on NewsOK. Keep an eye out for it.
High praise from reader
We had an out-of-towner visit the city last weekend during the high school state basketball tournaments. He was impressed with the newspaper coverage of the tournaments: “I just want to say thanks for the excellent coverage of the 6A-2A state tournament games. That includes all editors, writers, and photographers. … I really enjoyed the layout, the stories, the photos. Just excellent work. … Yes, I enjoyed the online coverage of the A-B tourneys the previous week.” That’s a customer we’re proud of. He uses NewsOK.com when he’s out of the area and reads the The Oklahoman, as well. And he liked both of them. Congratulations to the sports staff, once again.
A real-life ‘stuck-in-the-well’ story
I was browsing the know it: Unusual Oklahoma on Tuesday and came across this article: Firefighters rescue Bartlesville boy, mom from 30-foot well. It’s a well-reported AP story from Bartlesville. The mother apparently slid down to wait with her 7-year-old son as the rescue team was called and assembled. Said fire chief Bob Hasbrook: “It was a general consensus out there that the mother was the general hero.” It’s a good story. I like good stories.
Homicide map upgrade
The Oklahoma City Homicides map and database was improved in a major way this week. Our designers and developers did exceptional work in making the data our News and Information Center is gathering more user-friendly to sort, search, filter and browse. You can now sort the data by gender, age, ethnicity and more. You can sort by years, dating back to 2008. You can search the homicides by your Oklahoma City address and then change the proximity of the returns near that address. It’s a great tool for our users. But it’s also a great example of teamwork at the OPUBCO building. Local Editor Rick Green’s team is responsible for reporting on these homicides and adding the information into the database. Web editor Nick Tankersley is responsible for building the data structure in the Django frameworks and delivering clean data for display. The Audience Development team of designers and developers is responsible for making the user-interface as slick as it now is.
Most-viewed article
Jeff Capel dominated our readership this week. I already mentioned above about our coverage the day he was fired. The big story that day was the big story of the week as well. So what was our second most-viewed article? It was this: Jenni Carlson’s chat recap from Tuesday.
Most-viewed blog
Jeff Capel coverage won this category, also. This time from the OU blog. The second most-viewed blog post? It was this (also from the OU blog): Non-conference football schedule set in stone.
Most-viewed video
Jeff Capel again.
I’d show you the second most-viewed video, but it would just be another video about Jeff Capel. I think you get the picture.
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.
Deaths, Trades and Oscars — a guaranteed week on NewsOK
It’s been a really busy week. But, really, they’re all busy these days.This week seemed especially long for me because we made a change that irked some of our users. But in the end, I had an opportunity to speak with dozens of customers who use our website every day. That makes for a busy, but very good week.
Women in Prison
Our series on Women in Prison took another big step this past weekend. One story in particular became very popular on the site, thanks to the viral nature of the Internet. It was actually a story by Ginnie Graham of the Tulsa World about “How $31 of pot gave mom a 10-year prison sentence.” You might ask why we published a full story by a Tulsa World reporter on our site (we often publish excerpts of daily articles and link to the World’s website for the full story). Well, the Women in Prison series is a journalistic endeavor from Oklahoma Watch, which is a non-profit, investigative and in-depth reporting team that collaborates with The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World and others. It’s a good series, and it underscores our goals here — to tell stories and share information that makes a difference in our community.
New Death Listings
And now to the fun part of the week. I’ve written in the past about changing the format of our daily death listings. It’s part of a project that has allowed our newsroom to gather statewide death listings in a more efficient manner. It’s all in a database, so we’re now displaying those listings that way on the website. What it means for the users, however, is that the listings don’t look like they’ve looked every day for years. Here was my message to our users. Here are some of their comments: (1) I don’t like your new death listing, IT STINKS!!! (2) Congratulations, the obit listing is now totally unusable! (3) the new method of listing deaths is not progress. It is now impossible to know who has passed on. There was much more, but you get the idea. I responded to everyone. I made a point to show people who don’t like a searchable, sortable listing with a deep archive that we still have a printable listing for today that looks like our old way of presenting the death listings. I received some positive feedback after that: (1) just wanted to tell you, i just tried, the print button, and saw all of the obits, towns, and arrangements. (2) Thank you Alan!!! I’ll give it a try. When you’re older you resist change to anything you’re comfortable with. I appreciation your response. (3) Thank you for your response. I used the print link and yes, it opened it up. I really appreciate your help. Here’s the bottom line. We still have some improvements to make. We need to make these listings more available to users on a mobile device. And we need to change some wording on the “print these listings” to make it more clear. But I’m happy that I was able to speak to some of the users that make our Obits page such a popular destination each day.
50 years ago today
I was sitting in a meeting on Monday morning. We were looking at our Today in History page when a conversation broke out about the main headline in the front page of the newspaper that we presented on Feb. 21, 1961. The headline we were discussing was, “84,000 Get Furlough From Struck Airlines.” We were all guessing what it was truly about. Here’s what I found out later by browsing The Oklahoman’s Archives: “Three of the nation’s biggest, businest airlines ordered a complete shutdown of operations Monday night as a result of a wildcat strike of flight engineers, the worst tieup in American aviation history.” The Archives are a fun resource.
Blake was back
Blake Griffin returned to Oklahoma City this week. Jenni Carlson wrote a great column about how we knew Blake before he was the fastest rising star in sports. And this video we had from a couple years ago with highlights of his collegiate greatness was a fun watch:
iPad pride
This is just a note to say how proud I am of The Oklahoman’s iPad edition. I read The Oklahoman every day on the iPad, and the information and experience we offer daily on that application is remarkable. Plus, we also have a Live Edition on the app that shows the stories we’re featuring on NewsOK at any given time. It’s worth checking out.
Don’t forget … we’re on the Kindle
We haven’t forgotten. We publish every day on the Amazon Kindle. One day this week, some of the characters in the edition were messed up, making some of the stories difficult to read. It was a problem we resolved quickly. But it did give me an opportunity to speak with another reader of our products. This time, it was subcrriber to our Kindle edition. She saw the problem Thursday morning and let me know about the issue. And then on Friday, she said this: “Friday’s edition of The Oklahoman on my kindle was fine. thank you for your prompt response and for notifying me.”
Thunder trade on text
I was having a conversation with some colleagues on another floor of our building on Thursday afternoon at about 2 p.m. I received a text on my phone that said, “OKC Thunder trades Jeff Green, Nenad Kristic to Boston Celtics….” Being a sports fan and Thunder supporter, I was shocked. I knew that we weren’t expecting a trade like this on the NBA trading deadline. But I was also thankful that I can count on NewsOK to let me know that it went down. All of it goes to show that being signed up for NewsOK’s text message alerts can come in handy. You learn things that are important to you when they happen.
Oscars coverage
The Academy Awards are this Sunday. And the NewsOK A&E group has been preparing all week with tons of articles, blogs and videos of our predictions, etc. And on Sunday night, we will be showing the live blogs of George Lang and Brandy McDonnell, just like we did for the Grammys. I can do without The Oscars show. The blogs? Those are entertaining. And it’s set up nicely with this video from Dave Morris and George Lang:
Scene & Hurd
I always like to introduce new blogs that join the NewsOK Blogging network. This week, I bring to you Scene & Hurd, from Elizabeth Hurd. Elizabeth brings you ‘News and reviews from the Oklahoma arts scene.” If you’re into the arts community in Oklahoma, please check out this new blog.
Live video
We don’t do a ton of live video, but when we do … our users like it. On Friday afternoon, we streamed the Oklahoma City Thunder news conference live on our NewsOK Thunder coverage page. It made for quite a page. As I listened to Thunder general manager Sam Presti describe the trades and answer questions about his team’s future, I read our own Darnell Mayberry’s live chat from earlier in the day. Darnell provided some amazing insight from his perspective.
Most-read article
The aforementioned article about “How $31 of pot gave mom a 10-year prison sentence” was the most-viewed article on the site this week. It wasn’t even close, really. But the second most-viewed article? That’s right … the aforementioned trade of Jeff Green and Nenad Kristic to the Boston Celtics for Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson.
Most-read blog post
I missed this blog post entirely this week. Berry Tramel takes the honor again for his post titled, “OU football: Don’t throw stones at Alabama.” Said Berry: “But this is a wink-wink deal. One of college football’s dirty little secrets. Players are expected to totally dedicate themselves in the offseason, when eight hours a week of supervised workouts are permitted, and in the summer, when no coaches are allowed and everything is supposed to be totally voluntary.” I don’t know how I missed this on Thursday, but it was worth my time today.
Most-watched video
Berry’s here again, this time with his and Jenni Carlson’s Press Row video analysis of the Thunder trades. They even had to use Studio C in our OPUBCO Studios, but they got it done — and they provided some great analysis.
A week where NewsOK and Oklahoma returned to normal operations (there was no snow)
This week will forever be known as the week after two straight weeks of snowstorms that shut down our state. Our weather returned to normal. Our site layout returned to normal. And the traffic on NewsOK returned to normal daily numbers.
Apple makes it official
This is big news in our circles, no matter how you feel about it. After much speculation and rumor, Apple made their announcement on Tuesday, and the publishing world took notice. Some leaders in the publishing industry like Apple’s decision. Plenty of others do not. Here’s what our publisher, David Thompson, said: “We were glad to see Apple come to a conclusion on this. Though we still need some clarification, we look forward to working with Apple to mutually benefit our readers.” Thompson added that The Oklahoman’s iPad application continues to gain traction in our market. We are seeing growth in subscription numbers each week. Here’s the bottom line: We believe the iPad is an important device to deliver our content to. We will be working to make the product better and offer a solution for our readers on that device.
Political compliment
An old friend who works at a major metropolitan newspaper said something nice about NewsOK a week or so ago. Her news company was looking to increase the visibility of their politics coverage … “We just had a meeting to talk about our politics page online. I had looked at yours the other day and was impressed, so I pointed to it during the meeting. Everyone really liked it!” That was very kind. Our political coverage team works really hard to bring readers the information that’s important for our community. And I know that other major news companies have the same goals. If one of them like what we’ve done, that’s great. I know we’re borrowed plenty of ideas from other sites, including the one my friend works at.
Capitol tour
Speaking of our politics page, check out the Capitol building tour that we launched last year. It’s a floor-by-floor tour of Oklahoma’s state capitol. We built this last year, and it’s pretty fun to browse around. There are photos from many locations throughout the building, including some panoramic photos of key areas. We have featured that project this week with our multimedia showcase, which is just below our main stories on the NewsOK home page.
‘Do you really know what you are doing?’
Another item we featured in the multimedia showcase this week is our story from last February about about Oklahoma’s first heart transplant in 1985. The nDepth: Stories of the Ages presentation tells the story behind the story of Dr. Nazih Zuhdi’s 1985 medical first. This is one of my absolute favorite nDepth pieces we’ve put together. It serves as a great documentary piece, with archived video, insightful interviews and an historic perspective on the transplant. But I just love the dialogue between the assisting doctor, Dr. Allen Greer, and Dr. Zuhdi. “Do you really know what you are doing?” asked Dr. Allen Greer, his surgical partner. “You are going to be surprised,” Zuhdi responded.
Comments reaction
My last blog post generated some interesting reaction. The reaction came from the note about the comments we were receiving from users in our Archbishop articles. We disabled the comments because none of the comments were contributing to a constructive dialogue. Here’s one e-mail I received: “I appreciate that someone uses common sense in deciding to leave or disable posts. I am shocked at the vulgar, negative posts that are often left on sites. I am disappointed that negative posts were the only ones received regarding the Archbishop’s installation at least early after the article was displayed. I’m an educator who tries to teach tolerance and understanding to children and adults. The fact I’m Catholic doesn’t seem to be too important if I lead by example! Thank you for describing the event in an informational and objective manner.” That made me feel good. I also received a comment on my blog. Here’s an excerpt: “Perhaps the ability for reader’s to flag other reader’s comments for review would be a benefit to implement in the future? It would allow a certain level of self-policing amongst readers while leaving the ability to block comments or ban to the site editors so that it would not be abused.” The good news is that we actually do just that. We allow our users to flag comments as inappropriate, and our online editors address them within a few minutes. Thank you for your interest in this topic. It’s always good to know that users care enough about our website to share their thoughts on our policies and decisions.
Live Grammy’s coverage
Eminem
Sunday night was pretty fun. The Grammy’s were on television, so I got my Eminem fix. (I just want to see him smile … but it didn’t happen. We all lose in that scenario.) But aside from that, I watched two of our best bloggers sharing their thoughts on the show as it happened. George Lang and Brandy McDonnell both spent time live-blogging the event. They did a great job. It’s always so interesting to see the different takes and tones they have on an event like the Grammy’s. They are very different entertainment experts, but they are both very well-informed on all aspects of the entertainment industry. My favorite takes? From George: “Lenny Kravitz, dressed as M’shell Ndegeocello, introduces Muse. How many times can you borrow the beat from “Rock and Roll Part 1″ without being arrested in Thailand?“. And this one from Brandy: “I must say, I don’t get the people who hate Katy Perry anymore than I get those who adore her. Her music is so generic and forgettable I have trouble working up any ire or enthusiasm for it. She’s a perfect example of modern-day pop: All flash, little substance. The only reason I even care about her is she guest-starred on HIMYM, which happens to be one of my fave shows.”
Gundy’s Bieber-fever
We all got a nice laugh on Monday with this blog post from our OSU Sports blog. Seeing Justin Bieber imitate Mike Gundy and his rant is just entertaining stuff. And seeing Mike Gundy talk about how he is now a big Bieber fan is equally entertaining. Sure, Gundy’s phone call is staged, but it’s still entertaining.
Berry is hopping mad
I love our bloggers, in case you couldn’t tell. Berry Tramel’s take on ESPN’s coverage of the OU-Connecticut women’s basketball game was great stuff. And I quote … “But this was an awful idea. It was an awful idea 10 seconds into the game, when any neutral watcher could see this was going nowhere in terms of entertainment value. It was an awful idea at halftime. It remains an awful idea now.” Berry never has a problem telling his readers exactly what he thinks about something. Those same readers are lucky to be able to read him each day on NewsOK.com.
Most popular blog post this week
Oh, by the way, Berry’s post from above stands as the most popular blog post that was on NewsOK this week.
Inhofe squaring off
This blog post by Washington Bureau reporter Chris Casteel is also extremely entertaining. On Tuesday, Chris posted a video of Jim Inhofe having an impromptu debate about gloabal warming with author/activist Mark Hertsgaard and a few others. Chris spends his days interviewing, reporting and writing stories for The Oklahoman and NewsOK. But he also gives us some hidden gems that help give readers a good feel for life in the Senate hallways. Again … I love our bloggers.
2010 Census
Census coverage became a focal point this week. NewsOK was ready. We have an Ongoing Coverage page for the Census already on NewsOK. It has a lot of archived stories and graphics already in place. This week, we added more to that page and enhanced the content. If you like digging through data, this is a great page for you.
Most viewed article & video
Chad Peery
We had many articles that performed exceptionally well this week, including a story about Prince Harry being selected as the best man at the royal wedding. But the most viewed article this week was the story about Chad Peery. He is the Oklahoma City police officer who was seriously injured in an altercation at a local bar. That story is a pretty good example of how news flows in our newsroom. We first published information about the altercation late Tuesday night when the breaking news reporter received word of a disturbance. By Wednesday morning, we had more information and some booking mug shots of the men who were arrested. Then, we got more details about the severity of Chad Peery’s injuries. It’s a sad tale. And our audience took notice, which is why the update video, which included video of Peery’s mother talking about his injury was also our most viewed video.
Greyson Chance, Bryan Painter, comments on Catholics … and NASCAR — just another week on NewsOK
This week has been a big week for traffic on NewsOK. With the two weeks of snow, we’ve pretty much guaranteed that our traffic on NewsOK in February will top the traffic for Feb. 2010. That said, we always grow our monthly traffic as compared the same month the previous year. It’s happened every month since I’ve kept track of such things. It gets more and more difficult, but so far, we keep moving up the traffic ladder.
Check out the notes below to get my takes on the week of NewsOK. I’ll highlight some unique things on the site and some things I think you should know about.
Today in History
We have some great hidden content tucked away in NewsOK.com. One of those pages is our Today in History page that you can find along the right rail of NewsOK’s home page. With our Today in History page, you can find images of The Oklahoman’s front page 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago and 100 years ago. Those pages are fascinating to me. You can also find highlights about what happened on this specific date throughout history. And perhaps most important, you can find out whose birthday it is. Who doesn’t want to know that Mary Steenburgen’s birthday was on Feb. 8? (I learned that on Tuesday, and I’m the better for it.) The page is sponsored by Devon Energy. Devon also is responsible for providing The Oklahoman’s Archive access to local schools across the state as part of its sponsorship of historical archives.
It’s NASCAR season
To some in my family, the Super Bowl is fun and all, but it really means one important thing … that the NASCAR season is just a couple weeks away. For us, it means that you can begin playing our NewsOK Auto Racing U Pick’em Contest. For NASCAR fans, this is the ultimate game. I’m not sure exactly how many NewsOK users have played this game every single year since we launched it early last decade, but I do know that my father-in-law is one of those users. He’s always enjoyed it (even though I think he picks Jeff Gordon to win every race).
StaticBlog and Greyson Chance
George Lang posted a very popular blog post this past Monday afternoon, giving his readers an opportunity to see Greyson Chance perform live. “He’s taking time out from recording to perform two concerts Feb. 19 at Edmond Santa Fe High School to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network. And now NewsOK.com readers have a chance to win tickets to see Greyson perform live — before he’s playing basketball arenas.” That bit of news got people pretty excited, and we’ve seen a number of good entries. People should be excited, though. Young Mr. Chance can really sing. My favorite take on Greyson Chance came from George Lang himself in October: “I don’t mind being proved wrong, especially when the truth forces me to reconsider my dearly held cynical beliefs. Read this if you’ve always wanted to see me taken down a notch.” And then there was this video, which shows how good Greyson Chance is. It’s also another great example of the high-quality work our video team produces.
Kyle Roberts on video
Speaking of the outstanding video team, our own Kyle Roberts is making national news again with his music video that was shot entirely with the Nokia N8 smart phone. Kyle teamed with local musician Denver Duncan to produce the video on a song titled, “Stalker.” Check out the music video here. You should check that out, but you should also watch Kyle and Denver’s interview with Angi Bruss in our studio. And be sure to watch it until the end to see a performance of the song.
Printing a public record
We received an email from a concerned user this week, who upon a web search of her name found that she was listed in a weekly Land Sales listing last year. That’s a violation of her family’s privacy, she said. It’s actually not, as I explained in my response to her. “We treat the publication of those records like any other official document filed in the courthouse and available to any citizen. We publish a number of those documents on a daily basis (marriage licenses, divorces, etc.)” She seemed to understand, but still didn’t like it. “Next thing will be our medical records and bank deposits plastered on the web for all to see.” We are in a rather tricky place sometimes. We have a rich history of being a publishing channel of record (a newspaper, a website, a digital edition, an iPad application). It’s something we feel is important for the community at large. Sometimes, people like to see their name in the paper (or website or iPad application). Sometimes, people wish their name wasn’t so visible.
Dayton Power
Our company lost a great man this week. It’s a big loss for us. I can’t imagine the impact on his family. Dayton Power didn’t often work directly with the newsroom, so my interaction with him was limited. However, I know people who knew him very well. They are devastated. As one editor said this week: “We cover so many accidents and deaths, this puts it into perspective. Every death affects their family and friends so deeply.” Unfortunately, we got a taste of it this week. It doesn’t feel good.
See Bryan Painter in action
I’ve written plently about weather blogger Bryan Painter and his unbelievable effort during weather events. I wondered aloud … when does Bryan sleep? Well, when a storm is brewing, I now know exactly where his is, thanks to this video:
A Catholic commenting controversy
I actually don’t know if it’s a controversy, but our commenting always makes for some interesting blog posts. I’ve written about how we often struggle with the tone of our comments. There is even an entire category about it on my blog. It’s something I care about, that’s certain. The truth is … the commenting debate has raged in our industry for years, but it seemed to really pick up last year. And through the years, we’ve changed some things in our own system to improve the dialogue and give readers a voice. But this morning, an online editor pulled down comments on our story about the archbishop installation. By 7 a.m., she reported, the number of objections that we needed to look at were just out of hand. I, of course, always want to leave comments on an article if we can, so I decided to evaluate our editor’s decision. Of all the comments that had been posted to the article (some of which we had already removed), there were exactly zero that contributed to a constructive and civil dialogue. So … even though the article should have had comments enabled for community discussion, we disabled the comments. That’s disappointing. And don’t get me wrong– I was not trying to protect the Catholic faith. A faith that large doesn’t need me to protect it. I just try to keep hateful words and dialogue (from all points of view) off the website, especially if it’s already out of hand at 7 a.m.
Weather leads our article traffic
Our single most popular article on the site this week was our story advancing the winter storm that hit the state on Wednesday. The build-up is always almost as popular for our site as the aftermath. In this case, the build-up article led all articles on NewsOK.
Weather leads our video traffic
The most popular video this week? Weather, of course. This time, it was Dave Morris‘ morning update to the storm on Wednesday. Watch it here:
Weather leads our blog traffic
This wasn’t hard to guess. Bryan Painter’s weather blog led all blogs this week. He’s always the first to know about the weather. With the blog, you can be the second to know.
