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A week well spent on NewsOK

Posted by
on March 4, 2011 at 5:55 pm

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.

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Deaths, Trades and Oscars — a guaranteed week on NewsOK

Posted by
on February 25, 2011 at 4:59 pm

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.

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A week where NewsOK and Oklahoma returned to normal operations (there was no snow)

Posted by
on February 18, 2011 at 3:56 pm

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.

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Greyson Chance, Bryan Painter, comments on Catholics … and NASCAR — just another week on NewsOK

Posted by
on February 11, 2011 at 5:00 pm

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.

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Around the NewsOK world — the week of Jan. 23

Posted by
on January 28, 2011 at 5:20 pm

It’s been another great week on NewsOK. It’s been rife with controversy, which is always good for out web traffic numbers. So … thank you controversy. But the real thanks goes to our team of journalists that brings this stuff to you.

Olivia Munn

LOOKatOKC and Olivia Munn

Olivia Munn is kind of a big deal. That’s what I hear anyway. Features Editor Matt Price, who also authors our Nerdage blog, seemed quite surprised when I admitted that I didn’t know who she was prior to our recent coverage of her. In any case, I learned all about her on the front page of NewsOK more than a week ago. She was also on that week’s cover of LOOKatOKC, where LOOKatOKC editor George Lang had an excellent story about her rise to success. But the really cool thing about all of that is the Oliva Munn tweeted our story about her, and all of her fans became instant LOOKatOKC readers. Here’s what she said: “Oh, hello Hometown Paper! Yes, I do love my fans… And The Oklahoman newspaper!” It’s quite a maze, I know, but the bottom line is this: I now know who Olivia Munn is, and — with one more click (there, done) — I’m following her on Twitter. In case you want to follow me on Twitter, just click here.

Remember the 10

On Saturday night, we launched our page that covers the 10th anniversary of the 2001 OSU plane crash that killed 10 members of the OSU basketball  program. I remember that night very clearly. I remember where I was when I heard the news. I remember what I was doing. And thanks to this page, it can take me back and I can remember the victims and the impact on the program and the community. The pages, the stories and the archived content is really good, but the video … well — no words can describe how good it really is. You have to watch it.

A teaching tool at Yale

On Wednesday, I received an email from a teacher in the fine town of Yale, Oklahoma. She wanted to show her students the video that we produced, but the Internet connection at the school wasn’t reliable and she wondered if she could have a hard copy. Frankly, we’re in the business of having people use our website. That’s how we can serve our purposes — informing the public and supporting our business with advertising revenue. But when we can educate children, we’ll break our standard operating procedure. David Jones, our top-notch video producer, quickly provided her with a link. Her response: “Thank you! I will try it.  … I appreciate your promptness!” Exclamation points on gratitude messages fill my heart with warmth.

Answering your Thunder questions

Oklahoma City Thunder reporter Darnell Mayberry started a new thing on his blog this week. He started a mailbag, answering questions from our readers based on their submissions. It was a good read, but that’s not surprising. After all, our daily coverage of the Thunder — with stories, videos, columns, notes, blogs, chats, twitter posts, etc — outpaces anything you can find anywhere. That’s a guarantee.

Proof of Concept – sell your iPad?

Jay Spear has been a longtime employee at OPUBCO Communications Group. He’s performed in many different jobs — too many to list, really — but he recently started a blog he titled “Proof of Concept.” He had a good post this week that’s worth a read. It’s titled, Time to buy / sell your first iPad. Check it out.

More good reporting … search warrant madness

Sgt. Maurice Martinez

The story about the Oklahoma City police officer who was arrested on  Jan. 19 on sex abuse complaints has weaved and twisted all over the place this week. The strangest turn came when a locked room was accessed by someone while the house was under police guard. But the police said that they had already searched the home. All this leads to a lot of questions that begin with “How in the world …” or “Why in the heck …” or “Is it normal for police to …” There is much more detail in the stories that are linked above, but all I can say is my traditional … “you can’t make this stuff up.”

Steve Lackmeyer stirs it up

The OKC Central Blog is back in the middle of reporting on a minor controversy in Oklahoma City. He’s talked to many of the parties involved and helped inform people about what is going on with the mysterious 5320 marketing campaign. He’s received some criticism, as well. Love it … hate it … indifferent — that doesn’t really matter. Entertaining and informative to follow? Yes.

Wanda on the web

Breaking news reporter Robert Medley mentioned to me this week that Wanda Jackson is trending in the national news. He wanted to point out that the piece he wrote about her a couple of years ago would be good to showcase again. Well — Robert works the early shift and he covers a lot of unhappy news in the crime arena, so I forgive him for missing my blog last week — it was a good idea, and we did feature his nDepth:Stories of the Ages piece this week on NewsOK. But then Robert shared this fine nugget (note that Robert has spent a lot of time on stage and in the music industry himself): “What a shock. Someone I wrote a book about in 1992 when the only places that wanter her to play were Southern Baptist churches in south Oklahoma City — and now she is on Conan.”

Board of Education meeting mess

On Thursday, Megan Rolland covered the Oklahoma Board of Education meeting with new state superintendent Janet Barresi. It was anything but a boring meeting. It started with board member Tim Gilpin and Barresi (and others) arguing about her choices for staff member and how they were paid. And as Megan wrote in the fourth paragraph: “From there it only got worse.”

Pregnant women … worthless?

Here’s what was worse: Board member Herb Rozell commented about a pregnant staff member of Berresi, saying, “If she has that child in April and takes off six weeks, she’s worthless to us.” All together now … we absolutely cannot make this stuff up.

Troy Aikman leads the way on NewsOK

The stories about the Board of Education are among our most popular this week. But they came a very close second to a much more important story that took NewsOK by storm: Troy Aikman and his wife separating. What’s ironic about that? It’s not even our story. It’s the Tulsa World’s story. We didn’t run the entire story, but NewsOK and the Tulsa World often link to each other’s articles after running three paragraphs. We did that in this case. What’s even more ironic about that? It wasn’t even Tulsa World’s story. It sourced the Dallas Morning News as the original reporting source.

OSU Remember the 10 video

This was our most popular video. And deservedly so. Congratulations to our sports department and to our video department for producing such a great piece that helps put our lives (and our heightened interest in Troy Aikman’s marriage) in perspective.

That seems like a good note to end on. Enjoy NewsOK for the next week. Look for another post next Friday afternoon.

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A week on NewsOK: Charles Barkley, Wanda Jackson, Martin Luther King Day … and more

Posted by
on January 21, 2011 at 1:25 pm

It was a busy week on NewsOK. We covered a lot of stories that are just bad news, but we also told a lot of uplifting tales, shared some great stuff from the past and talked to some of our best customers.

Look for another series of updates on the site next week. But don’t let these blog posts discourage you from browsing NewsOK every day. It’s worth it.

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This week: Remembering 2010, wimgo, slideshows and new personalities

Posted by
on January 14, 2011 at 5:58 pm

Another roundup of NewsOK.com and the happenings on our site this week.

Enjoy another week of NewsOK browsing.

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Caller shares his thoughts on judge’s ruling and The Oklahoman’s responsibility

Posted by
on October 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm

The phone rang today.

It was a subscriber to The Oklahoman. The fact that he was using the phone to contact me is a good indication that he prefers our print product. Most feedback I get about NewsOK.com comes in the form of email.

But this man was quick to point out that he was a subscriber. He said it with pride.

(And just as an aside — we get these calls quite often, but usually they are received by my colleague, managing editor Mike Shannon. His title resonates with our print subscribers, and he is very good at talking to our readers.)

He wanted to share his opinion about our article on the Metro/State cover this morning about cameras not being allowed in the Jerome Ersland murder trial. I realized quickly that he didn’t really want to discuss this decision as much as he wanted to share his opinion.

But as the caller concluded his passionate monologue about how the public should be allowed to see what’s going on in the courtroom, he said something that really struck me.

There are so doggone many things wrong with the government these days — all because people just don’t care.

If the public doesn’t oversee what’s going on, then we’re bound to have scallywags taking over.

And it’s your job as the fourth estate — isn’t that what they call it? — to stay on top of them and let us know what’s going on.

OK – so I don’t know how this caller defined ‘scallywags’ and whether he meant it as an offensive term (or, better put, I’m unsure the level of offense he intended). I don’t believe he was referring to pirates, though. And he never even told me if he was supporting Ersland’s defense or his prosecution.

But his thoughts on our news operation resonated with me, as did the the fact that he noticed that much of the public is apathetic about important topics that do indeed have an effect on their lives.

I can tell you this, though. We consider it our responsibility to keep people informed about things that matter to the community — whether it’s a football game, a murder trial, a car wreck or a city council meeting.

We take that responsibility seriously.

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Reader misses Crime Watch database

Posted by
on October 8, 2010 at 3:54 pm

I received this question from my blog this week:

I realize you hear this all the time, but what happened to Crime Tracker or Crime Watch?  The last question posted on newsok.com referencing Crime Tracker was from December 2008, so I wanted to check to see if it was still active?  It is truly the best resource when looking to buy a home, because otherwise it is almost impossible to know the presence of crime in neighborhoods.

The customer is correct. I’ve posted on this subject in the past. At the time of that post (Dec. 23, 2008), we had made the Crime Watch page live and available for the public. The page was live for several months, but we decided to remove the page from our navigation a few months ago when we thought it was doing more harm than good.

The data was not updated to our satisfaction. It was out-dated, and we were not able to keep up with every police department in the Oklahoma City metro area to find ways to easily keep the data fresh.

So, since it was old data and not something we were proud of, we removed it from public viewing.

That’s not something we are real happy about. It’s quite disappointing, especially when we become aware that a customer is missing it.

But the facts are simple:

It became too labor-intensive to gather the data from the police departments and then clean it up so that we could display it to the public. It just wasn’t as easy as plugging in a spreadsheet every month. And we always have to look at what we can successfully accomplish with the journalists we have.

I can say this: A Crime Watch function is something we’d like to bring back. It’s not a dead issue. It’s not something, however, that we’re actively pursuing with staff members right now.

But our Crime coverage page is one of our most popular sub-section pages. That page is going strong.

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Fan happy with NewsOK service for U Pick ‘Em contest

Posted by
on September 16, 2010 at 1:57 pm

Dane Beavers is a web editor on my staff.

He specializes in special content projects for sports and entertainment topics. He also handles many things on NewsOK, like our Topics pages, our social media efforts and our live chats. He’s an all-around swell guy.

That’s something one of our users learned last week after becoming frustrated with logging into our U Pick ‘Em football contests. The user had contacted us after he struggled with the process:

When I click on play game I get last years result, I tried to re-register but I am told I am already registered! I checked my cookies and they are turned on – Bottom line, I can’t get to the games to make my picks.

The bottom line of his message is the bottom line. He couldn’t get into the contest to make his picks. That’s all he wanted to do.

There were a few more e-mails as he tried to clarify the problems he was having. He expressed some frustration in an appropriate way in some follow-up messages. His frustration was understandable. But once Dane was included in the chain, things cleared up very quickly.

I just logged on to the college site using your user name and password, and I was able to get on and make picks (though I didn’t, of course).  ….. You may have to agree to the terms of service. If so, scroll down to the bottom after you log in and check that box. After that, hit save and you should be good. Hope this helps.

And with that, our football fan NewsOK user was happy. The proof is in his reply:

Thank you Dane, I was able to log in & make my selections – I really don’t understand why I couldn’t do this before, I was using the same log in info. as you. Oh, well – Bottom line you have made one senior citizen who doesn’t understand and really doesn’t want to understand this computer crap happy!!!  :)      GO SOONERS!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this user yells “SOONERS” at the end of e-mails. No word on if he prefers to yell “SOONERS’ or “BRAVE” at the end of the national anthem.

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