First, New York Times TV reporter Brian Stelter kicked off his “Top of the Morning” book tour recently. He stopped in at several publications and TV stations last week to talk about the book, which he describes as “a gripping look at the most competitive time slot in television, complete with Machiavellian booking wars and manic behavior by the producers, executives, and stars.”

The book also reveals more details on “Operation Bambi,” a plot to kick Ann Curry off the “Today” show. Stelter writes that the plan consisted of convincing Matt Lauer to extend his contract, getting rid of Curry and replacing her with Savannah Guthrie. A source told Stelter that the plot was named “Operation Bambi” because ousting Curry would be akin to “killing bambi.”

Since the book hit shelves, Stelter has received criticism for the amount of anonymous sources, but he defends his work by saying that sources had to remain that way to keep their jobs.

Even though he has received negative press, he told MediaBistro that he’s received positive reviews from people in the industry.

Next, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog is shutting down. Instead of the blog, the paper has announced that all media news will be shifting to the Media & Advertising section front.

“This change in presentation will provide readers with a single destination for all important and timely media news,” the company wrote on the blog. “No changes have been made in the reporting, editing and other resources devoted to media coverage. Thank you for reading.”

I’m a little bummed about this because Media Decoder is one of my favorite blogs. Plus, I like the presentation of the content. On the blog, I’m not bombarded with all types of multimedia and links. Instead, I can scroll down and choose the news I want to read.

However, I am glad The New York Times is continuing its coverage of the media and digital world. Now, I just have to bring myself to delete the blog from my feed reader.

As a journalist, I love the news and studying it, but I was quite troubled to read about a survey that lists a newspaper reporter as the worst job of the year. Oh, and behind the No. 2 position of a lumberjack.

The survey was conducted by CareerCast and ranked 200 jobs from best to worst based on five criteria: physical demands, work environment, income, stress and hiring outlook, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Stress, shrinking newsrooms and instability were all cited as justifications for a newspaper reporter’s low ranking; however, some argue that the industry is improving.

Media blogger Jim Romenesko also notes the survey was strictly referring to a newspaper reporter. All digital jobs are exempt from the survey.

After reading this, I have to agree. The survey didn’t make sense to me at first because I love my job and being able to connect with people on multiple platforms. But for those who are strictly newspaper reporters, I can understand the fear and stress they might be under.

Printing costs are high, and advertising revenue is declining. It all makes sense why this might seem like the worst job of the year, but it doesn’t have to be.

Whether you call yourself a “print” or “web” journalist, you should at least be well-versed in digital reporting. It’s important to keep up with technology and new platforms your readers are using.

This brings me to my final topic about media outlets ignoring technology trends.

Val Hoeppner, a digital media specialist, recently held a mobile reporting workshop at The Oklahoman and showed a commercial for the first mobile tablet. It was from 1994. The first iPad wasn’t released until 2010.

Sixteen years later, media outlets finally jumped on the tablet bandwagon. Sixteen. It seems a little unbelievable that it took the industry that long, and I have to wonder if we would be in the same predicament we’re in with free content if we would have been early adopters of technology.

On the flip side, most media outlets are now completely obsessed with new technology and engage with their audience on the Internet. Many newspapers have tech reporters and media desks now because journalists and their readers can’t get enough of digital news.

Why are we so obsessed with covering every new smartphone app and device that comes along? Is it because we’re trying to make up for ignoring technology early on? Is it too late to save the industry now?

I don’t think it is, but I think the way we tell stories will continue to evolve and change, as well as our business models. If we’ve learned our lessons from the past, then we’ll be more focused on technology and how it shapes our stories, community and daily lives.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.

And for fun, watch this video of the most cringeworthy tech ads of the ’90s via HuffingtonPost.com.

Outlook 2013 is hitting your doorsteps, driveways and newsstands on Sunday. Your edition of The Oklahoman in print will be much thicker than normal as five special sections are added.

This year’s edition focuses on Oklahoma in 2033. What will our city and state look like in the future?

Our night news director, Yvette Walker, serves as the Outlook Editor. She plans, assigns, edits and organizes for months — all while doing her normal everyday job of putting out The Oklahoman and Oklahoman.com while also caring for NewsOK.com every evening.

So here’s a six-second Vine update that signifies her relief that the entire project is complete.

Next week, I’ll post the live Google Hangout that Yvette hosted with special guests who participated in the Outlook Instagram photo contest. You can also find links to the Outlook 2013: Cities of the Future section on NewsOK.com on Monday.

Meet Anthony Slater

If you like sports, you’ll be seeing more and more of Anthony Slater.

I hired Anthony as the sports web editor for NewsOK.com, which means he’ll be blogging, reporting, editing and, well, doing pretty much everything on the NewsOK Sports web pages. He started just in time for the NBA Playoffs and was sitting court-side this week at Chesapeake Energy Arena editing NewsOK’s live coverage, running our live chats, posting updated blogs and managing our live Twitter coverage during the first two games of the Thunder’s first-round series against the Houston Rockets.

If you are thinking that you already know Anthony, it’s because he was previously an intern for The Oklahoman’s sports department, serving primarily as a blogger. So it’s a natural progression for him to move into the role as the sports web editor for NewsOK.

Get used to Anthony. He’ll be all over our site in the months to come.

Live coverage articles

Speaking of Anthony and our sports coverage, I invite you to see our live coverage of Thunder games. See our live analysis inside a NewsOK article (usually reported through Twitter posts) from reporters at the game which allows you to see immediate professional analysis.

Here’s the recap from Game 1.

Sometimes, we even pull in analysis from reporters from other markets. In the current example, you can see updates from Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle alongside Darnell Mayberry, Anthony Slater, John Rohde, Mike Sherman and others. You can also see a live box score or participate in a live chat if you want your voice to be heard.

Our live game coverage is really pretty cool. If you have a laptop, an iPad or a smart phone near you as you sit in your recliner and watch the Thunder, you really need to log onto NewsOK.com or NewsOK Sports. It’s a great way to entertain yourself during the timeouts and between the fouls.

Norman Music Festival

Speaking of live coverage articles … George Lang and his music posse (that’s the name of George’s make-believe band, I think) are covering the Norman Music Festival this weekend using the same live coverage techniques. It started on Thursday night and will continue through the weekend.

There’s really no better way to follow an event that you are not able to attend. The article is full of pictures, updates, videos, etc. Keep an eye on this coverage today and Saturday. It will be available on NewsOK’s home page and on NewsOK Mobile.

nDepth

This week was full of 1913. It started on Sunday when Matt Patterson’s nDepth – Stories of the Ages piece about the Century Chest was unveiled on NewsOK. The chest has been in the basement at the First Lutheran Church of Oklahoma City for more than 100 years, when it was called the First English Lutheran Church.

The nDepth piece whet our users’ appetites. Then came Monday, when the chest was opened:

As the patent leather shoes were removed from their box at the First Lutheran Church of Oklahoma City on Monday, members of the assembled crowd let out a collective gasp.

That story was our most-viewed story of the week. And the gallery and video told the story almost as well as the words.

The gallery ….

And the video …

SPJ Awards

On Saturday night, the Oklahoma chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists had its annual awards banquet. NewsOK.com and The Oklahoman ended the night with 16 first-place awards and 41 total honors.

Said editor Kelly Fry:

Being honored by SPJ validates the hard work I see being done by the men and women at The Oklahoman.

The biggest honors came in the categories of best news website (that’s NewsOK) and best newspaper (that’s The Oklahoman). Both placed first.

But a bunch of reporter and editors took home honors in a bunch of categories. Really, the only way to properly honor each individual is to see the story we ran over the weekend.

Congratulations to the hard-working reporters and editors.

Last Friday, my name appeared on Steve Lackmeyer’s weekly live chat. Steve is a good veteran reporter. And through his career, he’s covered and broken so many big stories that seeing your name in one his reports is not always a good sign.

Thankfully for me, it turned out OK.

The question …

Dennis Wells 10:05 a.m. What are some of the changes the Oklahoman will be making to maintain vitality during the transition to digital media?

Steve’s answer …

Steve Lackmeyer 10:08 a.m. I think that Digital Managing Editor Alan Herzberger and his crew are among the best in the country. NewsOK is recognized nationwide for its innovation and constant effort to adapt and respond to the rapidly changing medium. Look at the site today – it features some great new “widgets” you weren’t seeing last week. As a reporter, I’m doing many things I didn’t do 20 years ago; social media, blogging, photos, video, and yes, this live chat.

Thanks Steve. And it’s true that Steve has been a leader among The Oklahoman’s reporters in entering the new age of journalism in the last decade or so.

But in the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to answer Dennis Wells’ question in a little more detail.

Though I’ll preface everything with a simple truth: We are evolving on a daily basis, meaning no strategy.

The Oklahoman

In 2013, you can expect to see more of Oklahoman.com and the rest of The Oklahoman’s presence in the digital space.

Oklahoman.com is just now about one year old. We launched it as another digital product among our suite of options for print subscribers who are moving their subscription to digital. We already had …

• two different iPad applications (a print replica app and a custom interactive app)
• an iPhone app
• an Android app
• print replica experience on the desktop computer

Oklahoman.com is a full web experience for users who want their traditional newspaper content and organization on a website.

It’s not NewsOK.com.

Instead, Oklahoman.com is a true representative of The Oklahoman’s brand on a website. If you want the type of high quality journalism without a lot of noise and other type of content, you should use Oklahoman.com.

In 2013, we will expand even more on Oklahoman.com (in fact, we’ve already started with more news and opinion content). We’ll continue to add more content in each section, more organization of the long list of articles, and a clearer separation of the difference of content on The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com

NewsOK

NewsOK.com will continue to grow in a direction that focuses on a wider variety of news and information in Oklahoma and around the world.

As I mentioned last week, we recently unveiled the ‘Around the Web’ section down the right side of our home page. And we will be rolling out a series of design changes in the next couple of months that will enhance the experience and allow us to increase the number of stories on the home page.

NewsOK will give the reader more — just more volume in general.

NewsOK will focus on the ‘talkers’ and what’s trending on the web.

NewsOK will follow its audience, generally featuring the most popular and talked-about items at the top of the home page as the days progress.

And just as I said above about The Oklahoman … we’ve already started with more volume and more trending articles. We’ll continue down that path as we evolve.

We’ve got the East Coast storm covered, the breaking news on the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the personhood initiative covered and deep investigative coverage of Oklahoma’s open carry law.

And then you scroll down and see the Oklahoma City Thunder coverage on the home page:

Just don’t ever believe it if you ever hear that any news outlet covers the Oklahoma City Thunder as thoroughly as NewsOK and The Oklahoman.Those links aren’t all we have. It’s just all we could put on the home page today.

Flashback to Saturday evening. I was just as surprised as everyone else Saturday night when ABC’s Brent Musberger shared the breaking news of the James Harden trade during the OU-Notre Dame telecast. But I wasn’t surprised when I checked my phone and looked at my iPad. NewsOK already had text alerts, email alerts, and breaking news at the top of the site.

The sports coverage team was all over it. This was about the only sports news that could upstage the historic OU-Notre Dame game (the fact that OU didn’t win helped in the ‘upstaging.’)

The coverage got better as the weekend went on.

This video …

And this video …

And all the coverage you saw on the home page this morning, including Berry Tramel’s analysis that is driving traffic today.

This is all at the same time as an extensive season preview about OKC’s season — stories about Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and Kendrick Perkins and Serge Ibaka. Plus predictions, analysis and tons of videos.

I’m officially ready for the 2012-13 season.

Reporters Juliana Keeping and Jaclyn Cosgrove hosted the live video hangout and interacted with five guests from around the state.

This was the result:

The hangout was the culmination of weeks of reporting and planning.

Juliana and Jaclyn teamed up to gather all the information they could about the current state of domestic violence in Oklahoma. They spoke with victims, family members of victims, experts and more. The result was a series of articles that appeared in The Oklahoman on Sunday and in a special presentation on NewsOK this week.

They told some great stories. I casually began reading the front-page story Sunday afternoon on my Print Replica iPad app for The Oklahoman. I thought I’d quickly skim through the content as I began the first story …

“If you are hanging on for that baby, you don’t have to hang on any more,” Ashleigh Lindsey’s mother whispered into her daughter’s ear.

The baby Lindsey had carried for four months no longer had a heartbeat.

“Mommy will be OK. It’s OK for you to go if this is too hard,” Tara Woodlee told her daughter.

Within 15 seconds, Lindsey died in a Plano, Texas, emergency room.

After reading Juliana’s lead, I wasn’t casually reading anymore. I wasn’t skimming. I was fully invested and read every word of each of the stories in the Sunday paper.

Then I was lucky enough to sit in the control room at OPUBCO Studios as Dave Morris’ multimedia team seamlessly pulled off the Google hangout with a variety of experts that allowed our users to learn even more about the complex problems surrounding domestic violence.

I really enjoyed this series, because we brought together the great aspects of traditional newspaper story-telling with digital special presentations and a new form of engagement with our audience.

We are excited about the possibilities of using live video and perhaps much more of the Google hangout technology as we move forward. In our first attempt, we know that we were able to reach an audience on iPhone and Android devices with our live video. (Reaching that mobile audience is important to us, of course.)

We even pushed the live video through notifications in our NewsOK.tv iPhone application. And in the future, we plan to incorporate more interactive elements for users while they are watching live.

If you missed it, you can still check it all our on our special coverage page for the Domestic Violence series.

It’s the page we set up to help cover the Olympics, which begins on July 27.

The new page in the mobile navigation is easy to see, too, because we included a red “NEW” icon next to the new page (see the screen capture to the right). Find it, tap it and scroll away. It went live earlier today.

I keep talking about the mobile site because it’s such a good experience for our growing number of users on smart devices. But don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about our massive audience on desktop computers or iPads.

We have an Olympics coverage page for the full site, also, for our user who would rather browse the coverage on your desktop.

We plan to use both of these pages to give complete coverage of the Olympics — everything from our locally produced stories to all the national coverage to the official medal counts.

It’s on your desktop and on your mobile device.

He was a fan of news. He wants to read the news every day. He generally accesses most of his news digitally, but he had previously been an avid reader of The Oklahoman and was happy with our recent coverage enhancements. As a result, he had been purchasing the printed Oklahoman each day in recent weeks and wanted to transfer that daily reading to a digital platform.

That’s when he landed on NewsOK.

And that’s what triggered his email. He was offering some feedback about NewsOK.com. He was looking for articles that he had read in the newspaper the previous day and had problems finding the articles on NewsOK.

He explained his issues, then said …

I am astonished at how complicated, cluttered, and generally hard to navigate your website is.

Sounds like a great plug for NewsOK, right? Well, it’s not the first time we’d heard that. The truth is that NewsOK is not built, nor has it ever been built, to replicate the experience of The Oklahoman newspaper product.

So … “complicated and generally hard to navigate?” Well … if you’re looking for a newspaper site, yes, that might be true. I don’t hear that same complaint from users who start their news consumption on NewsOK.

Back to the customer …

He had tried a couple of different methods, but had no luck finding the articles. After short correspondence and helping him locate the articles, I introduced him to Oklahoman.com and the rest of the digital products we have created in the last 18 months for The Oklahoman.

Here’s part of what I said:

We do consider our digital products for The Oklahoman to be the best way for readers of The Oklahoman to browse the content they expect to see online.

A screen shot from today's Oklahoman.com

After some more dialogue, he became a subscriber to The Oklahoman. He has the printed newspaper delivered to him on Wednesdays and Sundays, and he has access to The Oklahoman’s digital products every day.

Of the digital products, he says he’ll use Oklahoman.com more than the others.

The Oklahoman.com looks very nice.  Much easier to read than either newsok.com OR the NY Times online.

Yeah … it was a little bit of a shot at our NewsOK product, but I take no offense at all. I am well aware that NewsOK is a fast-paced site targeted for breaking news and a multitude of options for readers. But it’s not for everybody.

That’s why we built Oklahoman.com and the iOS and Android apps for The Oklahoman. Some people want the The Oklahoman and the newspaper experience that goes with it.

The customer I described above is the precise customer we’re targeting with those digital news experiences. So it was nice to see that work pay off for him.

And I’m just happy to have a happy customer.

To review these are the products we have in the digital space for The Oklahoman:

•  Oklahoman.com
• The Oklahoman iPhone app
• The Oklahoman iPad custom app
• The Oklahoman iPad Print Replica app
• The Oklahoman Print Replica website
• The Oklahoman Android smartphone/tablet app

It’s fitting that it appeared in The Oklahoman, because it was about The Oklahoman.

It’s new website, to be precise.

Oklahoman.com officially launched about a week ago. It was promoted as a stand-alone product in the newspaper on Sunday. And now it’s being featured on The Digital Desk today.

If you’re wondering why we have this new site, it might be best to visit the FAQ page to understand more. The FAQ page covers everything from how the site is different from NewsOK to how a subscriber can access the site to how we are treating visitors who get a link through a Facebook share.

But I also covered quite a bit in my story on Sunday, including this quote from Chris Reen, publisher of The Oklahoman and president of OPUBCO Communications Group.

It’s a premium reading experience. We carefully designed it for our print and digital subscribers who like the way The Oklahoman is organized every day.

I look at The Oklahoman’s website along the same lines as The Oklahoman’s iPad app and iPhone app. It extends the digital arm for The Oklahoman, offering digital options for subscribers who are ready for a digital transition with their subscription.

But NewsOK? While it has a lot of the same content, it’s not the same product. It doesn’t always have the same voice or reflect the same news decisions. That’s what Kelly Dyer Fry, editor of The Oklahoman and vice president of news for OPUBCO Communications Group,  was saying with this quote:

NewsOK is a fast-paced site that’s always changing and updating. That meets the needs of a large digital audience. But The Oklahoman’s site is a quieter reading experience with fewer moving parts. It’s consistent with the experience a reader of The Oklahoman would expect.

Again, there’s plenty more to understand by reading the FAQ page on the site. Then you can decide how you would like to consume what our newsroom produces on a daily basis.

It’s not like we don’t have options:

• NewsOK.com
• NewsOK iPhone app
• NewsOK Android app
• NewsOK Blackberry app
• NewsOK.TV iPhone app for videos
• NewsOK Weather Watch iPhone app
• Oklahoman.com
• The Oklahoman iPhone app
• The Oklahoman iPad custom app
• The Oklahoman iPad Print Replica app
• The Oklahoman Print Replica website
• The Oklahoman Android smartphone/tablet app

It’s the absolute truth that this device has changed my day-to-day life as much as any device or tool I’ve purchased in years (the fancy washer and dryer from about five years ago is a close second). I mean, the washer and dryer didn’t effectively replace my heavy laptop or my large portfolio notebook I always carried around.

So we know I like my iPad. That much is clear.

Azon Meyers presses on the screen to show he understand the letter “D” is for dolphin. Special education teachers at the Children’s Center in Bethany are using iPads in therapy sessions with children. PHOTO BY JIM BECKEL, THE OKLAHOMAN

But then I read Sonya Colberg’s story on Sunday about how iPads are being used to help improve the communication skills of children with disabilities at The Children’s Center in Bethany.

It was a great story that helps us see how people in all aspects of our community are using technological tools to make their lives and other lives around them better.

Scribbling helps children learn to communicate, she explained. But that early step is often lost to children like Abbagale who can’t hold a crayon or tap a keyboard.

Yet with her wrists in slings, Abbagale can draw or “turn” the pages of an alphabet book by lightly sliding a fingertip across the iPad screen.

Her teacher asked if she wanted to draw. The child turned those big eyes upward, meaning yes.

I shared those three paragraphs because it made me stop and shake my head. … And I thought my iPad changed my life.

Local Editor Rick Green (and resident Buckles reader)

No, even though he has one of the toughest jobs in the OPUBCO building, Rick apparently still finds time to read the paper cover to cover — literally — every day. I know this because the comics are on the back page of our Life section or Classifieds section each day, and Rick is a a reader of those comics.

How do I know he reads the comics? I know this, because he shared a series that was in Buckles last week. It was all about the newspaper transition to digital. Some of the conversations in the panels are similar to conversations I’ve had with friends and family members in recent years as OPUBCO has begun to offer enhanced digital subscriptions while continuing to offer an outstanding printed product. Buckles creator David Gilbert did a fine job capturing the challenges of the digital transition.

It’s always interesting to listen to the passion that people have about the way they like to read our news. The six-day series was fun to follow. Check out the Buckles for those six days below (click on the images to go to LOOKatOKC’s Comics Kingdom page, where you can see these images larger).

By the way, it shouldn’t go without noting that Rick showed me these comics by handing me a stack of newspapers.

Oh, and to be perfectly clear … there’s no shame in reading the comics. I read some every day in The Oklahoman, as well. I just happen to read them on The Oklahoman’s iPad edition instead of the printed newspaper.