The Digital Desk

Everything you ever wanted to know about NewsOK.com

A show for Static, a blog for Turkey and vote for Tubby Smith March 25, 2011 | Comment on this article

Another week has passed, and NewsOK users have picked a new OU coach, seen the highlights from SXSW in Austin and learned a little history about Anita Bryant. Read more about our week below. Static goes to Austin George Lang and Kyle Roberts spent some of last week in Austin for the SXSW Festival. They... Read More

NewsOK’s spring break highlighted by Jeff Capel and Sunshine

March 18, 2011 A lot of people take it slow during spring break. Many families are on vacation. Extra-curricular activities are postponed. Plus, we have the St. Patrick’s Day and the NCAA Tournament. In general, the world takes a breather (except for wars and natural disasters). But we didn’t take a break on NewsOK. See below... Read More

Before-and-after images from Japan

March 14, 2011 The horrible news coming out of Japan in the aftermath of Friday’s earthquake and tsunami is nothing less than depressing. We’ve been following it on NewsOK with updates to news stories as we see them on the wires. We even created a massive photo gallery on Friday that drove a lot of page views the day of the... Read More

Wildfires, Bob Stoops, Justin Bieber and the OKC skyline

March 11, 2011 Oklahoma wildfires I must start this week’s review with our intense coverage on Friday of all the grass fires in Oklahoma. Reporters, photographers and editors did what they love on Friday — they delivered important information that the community needed and wanted. We saw a huge spike in traffic Friday... Read More

A week well spent on NewsOK

March 04, 2011 See below for another week of news and notes as NewsOK navigated another week in 2011. Darnell just a little off his prediction Thunder beat writer Darnell Mayberry held his weekly live chat on NewsOK on Monday. Shortly after the chat, we posted an article with the highlights from the chat. The headline?... Read More

Deaths, Trades and Oscars — a guaranteed week on NewsOK

February 25, 2011 It’s been a really busy week. But, really, they’re all busy these days.This week seemed especially long for me because we made a change that irked some of our users. But in the end, I had an opportunity to speak with dozens of customers who use our website every day. That makes for a busy, but very good... Read More

A week where NewsOK and Oklahoma returned to normal operations (there was no snow)

February 18, 2011 This week will forever be known as the week after two straight weeks of snowstorms that shut down our state. Our weather returned to normal. Our site layout returned to normal. And the traffic on NewsOK returned to normal daily numbers. Apple makes it official This is big news in our circles, no matter how you... Read More

Greyson Chance, Bryan Painter, comments on Catholics … and NASCAR — just another week on NewsOK

February 11, 2011 This week has been a big week for traffic on NewsOK. With the two weeks of snow, we’ve pretty much guaranteed that our traffic on NewsOK in February will top the traffic for Feb. 2010. That said, we always grow our monthly traffic as compared the same month the previous year. It’s happened every month since... Read More

NewsOK – the week of the winter storm

February 04, 2011 This has been a wild week on NewsOK. We braved the weather (many of us from our kitchen table or home offices). We covered another massive blizzard (by Oklahoma standards). And we informed hundreds of thousands interested customers (yes — we had a bunch of page views, too). Time-lapse video Web editor Dane... Read More

Around the NewsOK world — the week of Jan. 23

January 28, 2011 It’s been another great week on NewsOK. It’s been rife with controversy, which is always good for out web traffic numbers. So … thank you controversy. But the real thanks goes to our team of journalists that brings this stuff to you. LOOKatOKC and Olivia Munn Olivia Munn is kind of a big deal. That’s what... Read More

A week on NewsOK: Charles Barkley, Wanda Jackson, Martin Luther King Day … and more

January 21, 2011 It was a busy week on NewsOK. We covered a lot of stories that are just bad news, but we also told a lot of uplifting tales, shared some great stuff from the past and talked to some of our best customers. Sonya Colberg has been quite the star reporter this week. She kicked off last weekend with a terrific feature... Read More

This week: Remembering 2010, wimgo, slideshows and new personalities

January 14, 2011 Another roundup of NewsOK.com and the happenings on our site this week. We’re almost all the way to mid-January (and we might be all the way there, depending on when you read this), so this is my last opportunity to encourage you to visit our 2010 Year in Review page. This page is simple. It’s the top 25... Read More

Weather preparation, sports page success and Huey Lewis highlight a week on NewsOK

January 07, 2011 I haven’t blogged recently. I’ve been saving it up for posts like this. Frankly, I’ve been so inspired by Darnell Mayberry’s thoughts about each Thunder game he covers (or even watches when he’s off duty) that I thought I’d try a similar approach with NewsOK.com. Enjoy. Our sports section received... Read More

Photo galleries and comics added to The Oklahoman’s iPad edition

December 22, 2010 Is Santa bringing you an iPad this week? Are you browsing the app store to see what you want to add to your new gift? If you have a new iPad or you’ve had one for a while, let me offer two more reasons to download The Oklahoman’s iPad application: Photo galleriesDaily comics Beginning with tomorrow’s... Read More

OKC airport holiday travel tips — video edition December 20, 2010 Read More

Oklahoma Watch’s impact journalism launches with women in prison series

December 14, 2010 I will write much more about this in weeks to come, but I’d like to introduce it now … What is this? Well …. Oklahoma Watch is a non-profit, investigative and in-depth reporting team that collaborates with other news organizations and higher education to produce journalism that makes a difference in... Read More

It’s Christmas time on NewsOK

December 07, 2010 Every year, we have one. Christmas. It’s on Dec. 25. I memorized that. So every year, NewsOK has one. The NewsOK Christmas page. It on our list of things to do around Thanksgiving. On the NewsOK Christmas page we have every: Article about ChristmasNews video related to ChristmasShopping video for holiday... Read More

Elections, lingerie and Bedlam football — a record-breaking combination December 02, 2010 First, we had the 2010 Elections. Then, we had the Lingerie Football League story. Finally, we finished with Bedlam. In the end, NewsOK broke another record for page views, unique visitors and blog views in November. It’s the second consecutive record-breaking month. I knew we’d have a big push with our... Read More

Another nDepth — we could all use a little more grace November 30, 2010 Lost in all the Bedlam 2010 commotion this last week was our most recent nDepth: Stories of the Ages presentation. This week, we featured the story of Oklahoma’s most famous ballerinas. That’s right. It’s a story that’s much different than Bedlam. But it is a story that’s just as unique for Oklahoma.... Read More

Bedlam 2010 … told in the form of a Story Wall

November 29, 2010 Two days after the wild Bedlam football game on Saturday, I could write about a bunch of things we did on NewsOK to cover the event. But today, I’m going to focus on the Bedlam Story Wall we put together. It’s a great way to get a feel for the entire day in Stillwater, from the pregame festivities to the... Read More