Caller shares his thoughts on judge’s ruling and The Oklahoman’s responsibility
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.
Reader misses Crime Watch database
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.
Fan happy with NewsOK service for U Pick ‘Em contest
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.
Giving a voice back to a blacklisted user
I spoke with a NewsOK user today who wondered why he could no longer leave comments on NewsOK.
We had blacklisted him.
He wasn’t sure why he was blacklisted, but he was hoping I would change his fate.
I’m a reasonable man, so I made the change. He was able to post comments on NewsOK again.
We actually haven’t blacklisted many users on NewsOK. It’s not something we want to do. Generally, the decision is made because the user’s comments have gotten so out of hand and are rarely, if ever, contribute to constructive dialogue.
In the case of the user I spoke with today, I felt he should be allowed to comment. I had failed to conclude why we made the decision to blacklist him in the first place. So after a short discussion, he was back in business.
It’s just another story in the long list of discussion about comments on NewsOK. But it was another small step in improving the comments in the future on NewsOK.
Store is open for the NewsOK iPhone app
We launched an iPhone application about a month ago.
There wasn’t a lot of fanfare. There was no ticker-tape parade. We didn’t shout it from the mountain tops.
But we did launch the product. It happened right before the iPhone 4 was released. The new iPhone operating system gave us a few hiccups. Frankly, for a handful of days, the app just didn’t work on iOS 4.
But that was fixed, and now the app’s arrival can be sung from the top of the mountain.
If you look at the reviews for the application in the iTunes store, you’ll see that people who have downloaded it (it’s only $0.99) have either really enjoyed it or hated it.
Most of the people (ok … all of the people) who gave it the poor review were iOS 4 users in that 5-day window of trouble. I don’t blame them for being upset and disappointed with their purchase, but I do encourage them to try it again, if they haven’t already.
Here are some of the good reviews in the store:
Easy to navigate …all the top stories. Great app!
Updated and it works great on 4.0 now. Lots of content for a local news app.
Tons of ok news – love it
Here’s one of the bad review:
The app has yet to work, it just shows a black screen. Waste of money.
The poor review came on June 30, which is just about the time the updated version for iOS 4 came out. We hope that user has had a better experience since they were alerted about the update via the store.
Check it out. It’s cheap, and it has tons of information. Really … it is loaded with headlines, blogs and videos.
NewsOK customer misses Story Wall project
A NewsOK user contacted us on Twitter yesterday:
@NewsOK Just wondering, is the StoryWall dead? I thought it was really snazzy, what happened? http://bit.ly/StoryWall
Coincidentally, we had just been speaking about a Story Wall project for later this summer. So we told him:
@DarrenWasHere No, not dead. We’re still in the beginning stages. Look for more throughout the year. Glad you enjoy them.
Frankly, the Story Wall was an experimental way of telling a story. We completed a handful – and we actually received a good amount of positive feedback from our users about those projects.
We are anticipating some upgrades to the way we produce the Story Walls and the way we display them. Currently, we are planning to use the storytelling technique during our State Fair coverage in September.
That made our customer happy:
@NewsOK good to hear, StoryWall is one of those “I wish I’d developed that” kind of ideas!
Web editor Nick Tankersley is most responsible for the Story Wall concept. He deserves that credit. And he will work with the NewsOK development team to upgrade the product.
If that goes well, I expect big things for the future of our Story Walls.
A comment about our comments
I received this piece of feedback from a NewsOK user in the state of Washington.
Thanks to whoever is responsible for deciding to disable comments on stories such as crimes and deaths. We don’t need to read the hateful comments, speculation, personal agendas, etc that people put out on other newspapers’ sites.
Cindy
Port Ludlow, WashingtonWe moved from OKC five years ago, after 60 years in Oklahoma and Arkansas. We take USA Today and two local papers here but I still read the Oklahoman online every day.
Ultimately, Kelly Fry, our vice president of news and information, is responsible for that decision years ago.
Disabling the comments on articles involving crimes or fatalities is something we think is important for civil dialogue and general fairness. We’ve taken some criticism for it, but we still feel it’s important for our product.
We’ve been talking about our comments quite a bit internally — how we improve them … how we should treat them …. how we should display them. We’ve made some recent changes and are still evaluating the results.
I’ll write about the subject more in the future, but I love hearing feedback from our users. Keep it coming.
Responding to a reader about our comments on NewsOK
I wrote a post last week that pointed out some changes to the way we display comments on NewsOK.
I was pointing out that the tone of the public conversation on NewsOK has grown more and more hateful and destructive. My post garnered this response from a reader:
Yes I’ve been noticing how ya wont let me write down certain things for a comment and what i have wrote down hasnt been out of taste or ordinary, but that seems like y’all are going against what y’all live by? Your so called motto “freedom of speech” But your paper? so do what u want, but you let the comments that people want to here like obama haters, mexican haters, just haters period !! I from what I read its about 99% pure white people. Is that the intention is to get the white people all riled up? heck I got enough racism coming my way everyday just to let you know and I aint even mexican. Why dont u rename the paper The Oklahoma White News !!! For the paper motto you can say [White news is always the right news] being native american well thats what they want to call us now well I guess thats a big step from blanket a.. or wagon burner and my best one just plain ol’ chief anyhow I’am just one voice of many that probably feels the same way about what you let get commented so just letting u know how the small guy feels.
I responded to some of the reader’s point, and I thought it would be useful to post our conversation as a brand new post.
My response:
We do have a word filter and don’t allow comments containing certain characters.
As for the comments we take action on … our online editors on duty evaluate every comment that is flagged as inappropriate by our users. We decide at that time whether or not to remove the comment. Our intention is to maintain productive dialogue along with our articles.
And finally, we do believe in freedom of speech. However, NewsOK.com is not required under the first amendment to offer a platform for all language and all points of view. We definitely want a wide variety of voices. But we also want a civil, productive and on-topic discussion, so sometimes we are forced to remove comments as they are brought to our attention.
A small change to our comments on NewsOK
Comments on NewsOK are something I often hear about.
- I hear about how people love to read our comments.
- I hear about how people wish the comments on NewsOK were more – how can I say this? – intelligent? constructive? on topic?
- I hear about how we are sometimes inconsistent with allowing comments on some stories and not others.
- I hear about how our comments can be embarrassing when users share the article with friends in other areas of the country.
I’ve thought a lot about comments in the past year, but we haven’t changed our philosophy. We haven’t made any major changes to our comments.
But the internal discussion about comments has become more intense. And so today, we have a small change to the way we display comments on NewsOK.
Today, comments are not visible to users just by scrolling to the bottom of the article on NewsOK. A user must now choose to click a button at the bottom of the story to view the comments. Below is what it looks like on a story right now:
We think this helps users who are sometimes dismayed by the dialogue that happens at the bottom of our articles. But it also allows us to keep a live conversation open to users who either want to participate or want to read.
We are continuing to think about comments on NewsOK, and we might have more changes in the future. In the meantime, we are committed to offering an open dialogue among readers of NewsOK.
We will continue to follow our guidelines as we decide which articles to enable the commenting functionality. And we will continue to evaluate each article and each comment as we become aware of the tone of the conversation.
Berry Tramel offers wise advice for multitasking with laptop
I’m going to use another blog post to quote sports writer Berry Tramel. This question from a reader came from Berry’s mailbag blog post from Saturday.
Don: “This is the FIRST TIME I have ever read a blog. The term itself is annoying. Can you tell I may be a senior citizen? I enjoy your stories and comments. I would prefer to read them in the paper. It is difficult holding this computer screen in my lap and reading it while I have my morning coffee.”
Berry’s response:
I have a suggestion. Use a table.
The funny thing about the question and the response is that I read it on Saturday morning while sitting on my couch with a computer on my lap and fresh coffee on the table next to me. I was reading the newspaper, The Digital Oklahoman, browsing NewsOK and checking my Facebook account (which is how I became aware of Berry’s post, by the way — through his Facebook fan page post).
I’ve grown accustomed to consuming news and information with a laptop, even while curled up on the couch with my morning coffee. It’s a habit for me now.
I’ll agree with Don’s sentiment. It’s not the same.
But it’s a way of life for me now. The only hard thing to get used to is folding the computer neatly so I can finish the crossword puzzle.
