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I missed last week. Thanks to everyone for all the messages of concern when my weekly blog didn’t appear on NewsOK. Wait, let me count all the messages of concern I received … hang on … carry the zero … yes, that’s right … Zero. That’s how many concerned messages I received. It doesn’t matter now, because I have two weeks worth of highlights from NewsOK.com. Enjoy.

 

‘A Thousand Hail Marys’

All notes about the great things to see on NewsOK in the past couple weeks have to start with Kelly Fry’s nDepth piece about her son’s fight with addiction. We’ve done some excellent nDepth pieces in the past three years, but this is undoubtedly the best. I urge you to read it and watch the video. But it doesn’t take much urging. If you start, you’ll finish.

A special PDF presentation

We also took the opportunity to put together a special PDF version of this story that we marketed to our iPad subscribers. The PDF is best viewed in the iBooks application on iPads, but it’s also viewable on any computer. The design from Art Director Todd Pendleton is outstanding.

 

Drug deaths covered this week

On the same day that we released the “A Thousand Hail Marys to Florida” piece, a story broke about a woman’s death after ingesting a designer drug. Several others were hospitalized. On Friday afternoon, we learned that a second man died after spending days in the hospital.  It’s a sad story that we developed throughout the week. Then, on Wednesday night, we posted the 911 call from the night on May 7. It’s just further proof about how drug abuse and drug addiction affects every community.

 

An official iPad convert

I spent an hour Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and The Oklahoman, as I do on most every weekend morning. But this weekend was a bit different. It was just my second weekend as an iPad owner. Before I bought my own iPad, I used one of OPUBCO’s devices during the week. That convinced me to buy my own. In the weeks since I received my iPad, I’ve tossed my large portfolio notebook in the trash and I stopped dragging my laptop home every night. I’ve even stopped using the family iMac we bought earlier this year. Almost everything is easier on the iPad. And yes … I now spend my weekend mornings with a cup coffee and my iPad edition of The Oklahoman. But here’s the kicker … after I had set it down and moved along, I wanted to look something up about the Oklahoma City Thunder game against Memphis on Saturday. I picked up my iPad and started moving to the quickest way to find a story about it. Did I choose NewsOK.com on my Safari browser? Nope. I launched The Oklahoman app again. I found my story, read it and moved along. That’s was my ‘aha’ moment. There is indeed a future for packaged reading experiences like we have with The Oklahoman on the iPad. It’s easy, quick and already downloaded to my device. That’s not to say there’s not a future for NewsOK (I love NewsOK), but I understand why I pay to subscribe to The Oklahoman’s reading experience.

 

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