The Digital Desk

Everything you ever wanted to know about NewsOK.com

Branding articles on NewsOK March 01, 2010 | Comment on this article

We launched some functionality in the last week or so that we hope draws more attention to some of our deep coverage. On many of our articles you might notice some images above the headlines that draw attention to pages deep within our site. They look something like this: We call then ‘article branding.’ We... Read More

Change of Heart – the story of Dr. Nazih Zuhdi

February 17, 2010 I hope you didn’t miss our latest installment of our nDepth series this week. We featured Dr. Nazih Zuhdi, who is a world-renowned heart surgeon famous for his 1985 procedure — the first heart transplant in Oklahoma. Reporter Susan Simpson told the story from many different angles. My favorite line in the... Read More

Stepping inside (virtually) the round barn for the first time

February 09, 2010 I’ve driven past the round barn in Arcadia a few times. I’ve heard people talk about it as a landmark. I know seemingly everybody who has spent a decent amount of time in Oklahoma knows about it. But I’ve never been inside the round barn. Until now. In the latest installment of NewsOK’s Places... Read More

Berry Tramel offers wise advice for multitasking with laptop February 08, 2010 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.... Read More

Take a tour of the state capitol building

February 05, 2010 I blogged about the new page for Political coverage earlier this week. It’s called NewsOK Politics: Your News for Your Governement. But I failed to mentioned the most fun piece of the project – An interactive map of the Oklahoma State Capitol. It was produced by Todd Pendleton and Brian Mays with the... Read More

Signing Day 2010 – NewsOK covers the stars of tomorrow

February 04, 2010 From the in-case-you-missed-it department, I present the NewsOK coverage of Signing Day 2010. The funny thing is, I realized the impact of our signing day coverage when I looked back at the coverage we put together in 2009. As I looked at our 2009 coverage, I saw the page and the video interview with had with... Read More

NewsOK Politics: Your news for your government

February 03, 2010 We launched a new enhanced section front this week. What’s an ‘enhanced section front,’ you ask? Basically, it’s our way of telling our audience that we’re focusing on certain areas of coverage. It’s our way of guaranteeing the best coverage of certain topic. Let’s just take a look at the... Read More

A note about weather closings and changing habits

January 29, 2010 On Wednesday night, the NewsOK WeatherWatch iPhone application was live on the app store. It was perfect timing, too, since Winter Storm 2010 was bearing down on the state. Now, I don’t use an iPhone on a daily basis. I use my OPUBCO-issued Blackberry Curve (and I like it). My lovely wife Jenny, however, uses... Read More

Something is going on with Apple January 27, 2010 Yesterday, I saw this post on Twitter – only because someone I follow re-tweeted it: OK, the newborn next door and my dead grandfather have finally released their Apple Tablet Speculation articles. Phew, that’s everyone ever. This post came from Jason Santa Maria from Brooklyn, N.Y. It was one of many... Read More

Screwdrivers, condoms and Penguin Boy — just another NewsOK feature January 26, 2010 I read this paragraph last week on NewsOK.com: Penguin Boy makes the most of it. He moves around the stage, letting people see that he does, in fact, have a common household tool buried in his nasal cavity. Then he pulls the screwdriver out, and the condom remains in his nose. It’s an interesting excerpt –... Read More

Jenni Carlson – Listening to the audience; defending the city January 21, 2010 I posted a couple weeks ago about Oklahoma City Thunder reporter Darnell Mayberry’s impact on his audience — Thunder fans and Thunder players. Today, I’ll post about another star sports reporter that continues to supply our audience with opinions, features and reports on all mediums. I heard yesterday... Read More

MLK page, video worth seeing on NewsOK

January 19, 2010 Photographer Sarah Phipps spent some time last week getting content organized for a special presentation on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. The holiday was yesterday, and we unveiled the project for our typically high audience on Monday morning. The centerpiece of the project is Sarah’s video of students... Read More

Replay the breaking news chat about morning earthquakes January 15, 2010 Earthquakes in Oklahoma startled much of the Oklahoma City area this morning. I was pulled out of a meeting to discuss how to cover the updated news we were getting on NewsOK. After discussing with News Director Robby Trammell and reporters on our breaking news team, we quickly started a live chat to share the... Read More

I’m a C student of NewsOK

January 11, 2010 I took the weekly NewsOK quiz this morning. I thought I was doing pretty well. I knew a bunch of answers. Then I finished and received the news. Your score is 72 out of 100 I’m average. It’s kind of embarrassing. I spend my days looking at the news and responsible for the news on NewsOK. But when I’m... Read More

Some great thoughts on remembering Jim Chastain

January 08, 2010 On Dec. 23, 2009, Jim Chastain died. From the NewsOK obit: Jim Chastain, whose fight for survival was chronicled in The Oklahoman and on NewsOK.com, died Wednesday night after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 46. You can read much more on our “Life is Real” page on NewsOK, which we began in early of... Read More

Review 2009 before January is over

January 07, 2010 It’s not too late to take a close look at the news that shaped our coverage in 2009. At NewsOK, we took a close look at the stories that our audience read and the news that we think made an impact. We voted within our newsroom and we tallied the votes (via page views) from our audience. We ended with 40 stories... Read More

Learning things on the Twitter neighborhood

January 04, 2010 I use Twitter. And when I say use, I mean use. I probably don’t interact enough to be a real part of the Twitter community. So the way I interact with my Twitter community is kind of like the way I interact with my real-life neighborhood — I’m there and seem nice enough, but what do they really know about... Read More

Additions to multimedia navigation December 21, 2009 We’ve added a few more items to the sub-navigation under the Multimedia page on NewsOK. The reason is very simple: We have some cool pages we’ve built in past few months, and we needed a place to call home. Since they are all ‘multimedia’ projects, the Multimedia tab seems like a nice place to park them.... Read More

‘Air Thunder’ on NewsOK December 18, 2009 Periodically, I’ll take a break and post a cool video that was produced on the seventh floor of our fine building here on Britton and Broadway. We call that space OPUBCO Studios. Today seems like a good day to take that break, because this yesterday we posted the “Air Thunder” weekly show, which is now... Read More

An update from Jim Chastain’s blog December 17, 2009 Jim Chastain hasn’t been posting to his blog as much as he did earlier this year. And if you follow his blog regularly, you know why … I’m still alive, but my health has really been slipping in the last two months. That came from a post on Sunday. His previous post before that came on Nov. 17, a funny... Read More