Week in review: OU football news leads most-viewed items on NewsOK
It’s time again to review the most popular items on NewsOK in the past week. Enjoy …
Most-viewed article
Ryan Aber’s recruiting piece on Tuesday about OU’s focus on wide receiver prospect Dorial Green-Beckham led the way. That surprised me, actually. I know recruiting news is big, but I fully expected one of our OU coaching turnover stories to lead the pack. But the Mike Stoops story was edged by a wide receiver story. It just goes to show that OU football off-season news is sometime more interesting that in-season.
Most-viewed blog post
Breaking news about Mike Stoops did lead the way for our most-viewed blog post this week. Reporter Travis Haney shared the news that was breaking on several outlets on Wednesday. As he reported: “The announcement is coming – and coming soon. Just doesn’t sound as if it’ll be today.” And now … here it is Friday, and we’re still waiting for that announcement (strike that — the announcement just came)
Most-viewed photo
We get a break from OU football with our most-viewed image from the week. What that means is … this was the image our readers clicked on more than any other this week. It was a reader-provided photo of an accident on I-35 and 122nd last Friday.
(click for larger image)
Most-viewed video
Tuesday’s video about the return of OU quarterback Landry Jones was our most-viewed video of the week. Jenni Carlson and Travis Haney discussed OU football way back when the quarterback was the big story (not the defensive coordinator). That makes for a dominant week of OU football on NewsOK in the second week of January.
This week’s most-viewed NewsOK article
This week’s list of our most-viewed article was bound to be interesting.
We had conference realignment driving the sports talk in our state.
We also had the OU-Florida State game ramping up the excitement around the watercooler.
Then came the news the planned sale of the company I work for.
What would lead the way?
Well, football is still king in Oklahoma.
Of the top 15 articles that led the web traffic on NewsOK, 14 of them were related to OU football — either realignment coverage or OU-FSU coverage. The top article of the week was Berry Tramel’s Sunday piece blaming Texas for the conference mess. He even did a video:
They loved that one in Texas.
Of course, you are probably wondering about the one news article that cracked the Top 15 this week. And you guessed it … coming in at No. 4, “OPUBCO to be sold.” It might not have been No. 1 on the top-viewed article list, but it was the article most people I know were chatting about.
Thanks to some viral news stories, breaking news coverage and football season, September is shaping up to be a very strong month for NewsOK traffic. Thanks for reading, watching, clicking and sharing our content.
We promise to keep delivering.
NewsOK week in review: Mobile gameday coverage, Mr. Know It and early morning mowing
Follow the OU and OSU games on your mobile device
This is the one thing I’m most excited about this week. We’re making one huge improvement to our live college football game day coverage this year. We’re launching special game coverage pages for OU and OSU so users can easily see all our live content from their mobile device. Go ahead … log on with your iPhone while you’re sitting on the couch …. or while you’re sitting at the tailgate or inside the stadium …. or while you’re shopping with your girlfriend. This page will serve every need. We’ll have our live chat, a live photo gallery, a live boxscore, updated blog posts, update articles, a complete scoreboard and more — and it will be formatted specifically for your mobile device. It will truly be everything you need on your mobile device.
Full Access — Print + Digital
I could write a book about the great offerings we have for Full Access to all our products on multiple devices. But nothing says it better than this video commercial, so I’ll just stop typing ….
Ed Godfrey — the music man
Trace Adkins (not Ed Godfrey)
Outdoors editor Ed Godfrey had an excellent blog post late last week. After listening to Trace Adkins’ new song, “Just Fishin’,” Ed decided to rank the top 10 fishing songs of all time. Ed didn’t think Adkins’ latest would reach the top 10 of all time fishing songs. I disagree.
2011 Football preview — Digital Part 1
You still have time to read all the content in The Oklahoman’s 2011 Football Preview. NewsOK built a special page for the “Dynamic Duos’ coverage, including pages for OU, OSU, High School and Big 12/Nation. There really no better way to get fully prepared for the football season.
2011 football preview — Digital Part 2
The site mentioned above is great for NewsOK users, but what about our iPad users? Well, we also created special PDF editions for OU, OSU and high school football previews. The editions are built specifically to look great on your iPad. It’s high design and in-depth preview coverage built for you to store on iBooks on your device. You don’t have to have an iPad to download these special editions. Go ahead, read it on your laptop or even your iPhone. But if you have an iPad, you really have to give this a try. 1) OU edition. 2) OSU edition. 3) High school edition.
Stop-motion football fun
Speaking of getting ready for the football season, a couple of our video animation experts and one of our artists were busy making outstanding intro animations for our videos. Check out the “Making of NewsOK 2011 Stop Motion Intros” video, starring Kyle Roberts, Billy Davis, Steve Boaldin and Berry Tramel. (Berry did no work on this project, but we think it’s important that he appear in all videos this Fall). This video is really cool, because it shows the amazing talent we have working in our building every day. I’m impressed.
Steve Lackmeyer and the MidTown controversy
Steve Lackmeyer was in MidTown a week ago for an inaugural outdoor food market celebration. He previewed the event with a story. He was at the event as a reporter. He was there when the event was shut down by a number of local agencies. He blogged about it. He Tweeted about it. He wrote a couple of follow-up stories about it. He was so on top of this story that you might wonder if Steve orchestrated the entire thing just so he can report on it. Well, Steve’s a well-respected voice in our community, but he’s not that powerful. He is, however, a quality reporter that stays after stories once he starts to report on them. For that, all of our readers appreciate him.
I dare you not to read this story
We had a well-read story for our Oklahoma readers on Tuesday. It became a well-read story on an international level on Thursday when the Drudge Report linked to the story. The headline says it all: “4:30 a.m. mowing leads to Oklahoma City man’s arrest.” There’s really nothing more I can say to make you click on that story.
Alan Herzberger — star photographer
When we saw the first evidence of smoke to the southeast of our building on Tuesday afternoon, the breaking news reporters sprang into action. As our photographers and reporters raced to the scene and our editors raced to put the information we already had on the top of NewsOK, I took my iPhone a walked to our parking garage to snap a photo of the smoke from a distance. As I walked back to the building entry, I emailed the photo to pics@newsok.com. Before I reached the elevator, I saw the alert that my photo was live on our August User-Submitted Photos gallery. On the elevator, I emailed that to Robb Hibbard, our Digital News Editor. And when I returned to my desk, the photo I took moments earlier was at the top of NewsOK.com — 620 pixels wide. I was very proud.
Mr. Know It debuts
Look closely at that photo on the right. Is that Mr. Know It? Or is it a cardboard Mr. Know It? The debate in our newsroom rages on, but the important thing is that Mr. Know It is available to visit all areas of central Oklahoma. We just can’t know for sure if it’s a real-life Mr. Know It or a cardboard Mr. Know It. It doesn’t really matter, as Communities Editor Don Gammill (the real-life one) says: “He’s generally available to travel, and he’s easy to work with. You’ll never hear him complain, and he’s always smiling.”
A new web editor will join us
I hired a new web editor that serve a multitude of purposes for NewsOK. Her name is Lindsay Houts, and if you are in the social media circles in Oklahoma City, you are already know her. She’ll start soon, and you will see her involved quite heavily with our sports coverage in the digital space. I hope you connect with Lindsay and welcome her to our team.
Most-viewed article
Remember that story about the man who was arrested after he was mowing his lawn at 4:30 a.m.? It was our most-viewed article of the week. We even followed up the story to get more information for our readers. After all, the first story was so popular, we felt there was a little more to tell, so check out Friday’s story, as well.
Most-viewed blog post
Travis Haney was the author of our most-viewed blog post last week. Well, this makes two straight weeks for Travis. His post, “Here we go: A&M gone, now what for OU?,” was the most-viewed post in the NewsOK blogging network. He was breaking down all the options for OU in the conference realignment mess facing the Big 12 Conference.
Most-viewed photo gallery
The wildfires in Oklahoma were our top news item this week. The stories, videos and photos dominated the NewsOK home page, and rightfully so. The gallery was highly trafficked. These photos were from the journalistic professionals that consistently serve up the best images about and around Oklahoma. (In other words, they aren’t the phone snapshots I take from the parking garage).
Most-viewed video
This week’s Press Row video with Jenni Carlson and Berry Tramel also covered conference realignment and the Big 12 Conference. It led all videos this week:
A week in review on NewsOK – August 12 edition
I decided this week to revert to a weekly blog format with a series of notes about what’s cool on NewsOK. If you like this better than random posts, let me know.
If you prefer shorter posts, let me know.
If you don’t really care, stay silent and roll your eyes.
Super 30
Barry J. Sanders topped the list. It’s fitting, since it seems like anybody slightly interested in high school or college football is talking about him. What’s the list I’m referring to? It’s the Super 30 list that The Oklahoman’s high school coverage team put together this summer. It profiles the top 30 players in the state, beginning with Norman’s George Kittle and finishing with offensive stars like Heritage Hall’s Sterling Shepard, Jenks’ Alex Ross and Sanders, who is also from Heritage Hall. Um … I’m not expert, but I think Heritage Hall will be pretty good this year.
The Boys of Summer
We put together two special presentations on NewsOK in recent weeks. The first was from our sports department — a story about a group of softball players who are all over the age of 75. It’s a great team. And the best part … they don’t replace you when you’re not effective on the field. According to the story, you’re on the team until you decide you can’t play anymore or you die (or both, I guess). Reading this story left me with a goal — I hope to one day play for the Royals.
Thrills Gone By
The other special presentation we had in recent weeks was a “Stories of the Ages” project that reflected on the deep history and memories of Oklahoma’s amusement parks. The story included all the memories of Springlake, Wedgewood Park and Frontier City. It even features earlier parks, like Belle Isle Park, Delmar Gardens and Wheeler Park. It’s a fun Stories of the Ages, especially if you grew up in Oklahoma City and have early childhood memories of these parks. I highly recommend spending some time with this story and reading all the ‘thrilling memories’ section of what our readers think about these spots.
A historic blackboard
Reporter Jane Glenn Cannon put together an interesting story this week about a blackboard with instructions from 1935 found behind a wall at Longfellow Middle School in Norman as workers were renovating the room. From the story: “Chalk writing on the board indicates a zoology teacher was instructing students on the requirements for an upcoming paper.” Zoology? Yuck. A college freshman-level zoology class was difficult for me in 1994. I’m certain I would have flunked the middle-school class back in 1935.
Gene Triplett honored
The Oklahoman’s Entertainment Editor is a soon-to-be Hall of Famer. NewsOK posted a story on Tuesday afternoon about Gene Triplett: “Raised in Oklahoma City, Triplett is a respected expert on live and recorded music, having interviewed such music industry stars as Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, and such homegrown talent as Wanda Jackson and Hoyt Axton in his nearly four-decade career.” Gene know his stuff. And he takes his craft and his coverage as seriously as anyone in our news operation. Congratulations to him.
How did we ever live without it?
I lost power Monday night as the first of a few storms swept through the Oklahoma City metro this week. The power went out at about 7:45 p.m. As I gathered the flashlights and candles in preparation for sunset, it dawned on me that I was just about to lose all the battery power in both my iPhone and iPad for the day. So … brilliant mind that I am, I used some of that juice to post that revelation to Twitter. But after that, I started to be more careful about how I used the phone. I needed to be able to make a phone call to my wife who was driving in the storm at the time. I was fully prepared to take my car charger into the garage (after manually lifting open my garage door, of course) and setting up office in the car. But thankfully, normalcy return when the lights came on at about 9:30 p.m.. Whew! Then, my 10-year-old asks the question as he headed to his night-lit room: “What did people do before there was electricity?” All I could muster for an answer was, “Read.” I had no better answer. I had the same question, but it wasn’t about electricity. My question … “What did people do before smart phones and tablets?” I can’t remember.
New faces in the sports section
Sports Editor Mike Sherman has brought on three new faces in our sports department in the past week or so. We had already announced that Jason Kersey would moving to cover the help high school scene along with Ryan Aber. Replacing him on the sports desk is Jacob Unruh, who comes to us from Lawton. The new reporter that will be covering OU football is Travis Haney, who comes to us from South Carolina. Gina Mizell is moving from Beumont, Texas, to join the OSU football coverage team. Sherman was careful to find the best fits for our audience, and we’re very confident that these additions will help us continue as the undisputed leader in OU, OSU and high school football coverage.
LOOKatOKC navigation change
We launched the new LOOKatOKC website a few months ago, and we’re happy with our we’ve managed to merge all our entertainment content in one nice and well-presented online brand. We even started experimenting with Facebook commenting on LOOKatOKC, and we’ve been pretty happy with what we’ve seen from our audience there. Our latest addition to the site is our Photo Gallery page, where you can see all the LOOKatOKC photos in one place. We’ve added that page to he main LOOKatOKC navigation. It’s there in the nav before the Swimsuit page, where we have three years worth of LOOKatOKC swimsuit edition photos.
The Oklahoman on your Kindle app
Since I bought my iPad a few months ago, I stopped using the Kindle in my possession. The Kindle app on my iPad actually served me very well, and I began reading and buying more books than I had before. But Amazon had previously decided to not allow periodicals to be available on the app. Those periodicals were only available to those with the Kindle hardware. So, I was disappointed that I couldn’t read The Oklahoman’s Kindle edition on my iPad. But about two weeks ago, that changed. Amazon, as part of their strategy to not allow in-app purchases, is now allowing periodicals to be downloaded through the app. It’s hard to follow, I know. It’s all part of a war between two digital giants — Amazon and Apple (and many others). But the bottom line is that it’s just one more way for readers to read and subscribe to our product.
User photos
The photos we have on our user-submitted gallery for August show the wide variety of weather we’ve had in recent weeks. We have photos of droughts, photos of storm damage, photos of lightning strikes, photos or happy people swimming and photos of extreme temperatures. Our process for automatically adding photos from NewsOK users is starting to work better with each month, and it’s always fun to take a look at a month’s worth of photos as a snapshot of life in Oklahoma. Add your photo for August by attaching an image in an email to pics@newsok.com.
Kevin Wilson and the radio rant
Jenni Carlson had my favorite blog post of the week when she detailed the exchange between Indiana head football coach Kevin Wilson and a couple or sports radio talk show hosts. Wilson, was the offensive coordinator for OU in recent years, was angry at how the hosts poked fun at his struggling program. Jenni’s take: “…when Zack and Jack decided to hang up on him, then tear him down, it turned them from unknowing buffoons to shady bullies.” Great stuff. And it was a great example of Jenni Carlson knowing what the NewsOK audience will be interested in.
Most-viewed article
We published an article from Carrie Coppernoll last Friday, but it really took off over the weekend and early this week, eventually leading the charge for all NewsOK articles in the past week. It was the story about the naked woman and the charity golf tournament at a city-owned course in Woodward. The story was picked up and linked to on fark.com, which gave the story more views than a normal top story on NewsOK. But the help from fark.com didn’t matter in the end. Let’s face it … a story that combines nudity, sports and politics is a guaranteed top story in any given week.
Most-viewed video
Most-viewed blog post
Jenni Carlson’s post on Wednesday about Texas A&M possibly leaving for the SEC led the blog charge this week. From Jenni: “I have just one question for Texas A&M: do you like winning or losing?” It’s been a good week for Jenni and her blog.
Most viewed photo gallery
We created a gallery of all the Oklahomans we know in the NFL, and it became the most-viewed gallery. Our users like to look at photos.
Enjoy the weekend. And thanks for reading.
