NewsOK couldn’t be the site it is today without the awesome video, outstanding photos and editorial content. Combined this with a premier development team and you have a multi platform newspaper site unmatched by the industry.
This is the tenth time I’ve redesigned NewsOK in twelve years. Read more about the thought process behind the new user experience. ( …to be continued soon.)
Breaking news online often covers up print headlines – making it hard for readers to find referenced multimedia, so we developed a system that pitches the reader to a consistent home base. Referred to as the “pitcher-catcher,” this helps readers to not only find videos, podcasts and photo galleries, but headlines as they appeared in that day’s printed edition.
“The Oklahoman, takes a bold step forward, rethinking itself to become a product that fits into today’s multimedia, multi platform world of news, while retaining those elements that have made it Oklahoma’s newspaper of record,” says Maria Garcia.
For over thirty years, Garcia, an industry expert, has created compelling designs for publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Miami Herald and most recently The Oklahoman.
Take a tour of the new Oklahoman.
Watch our new TV spots.
Watch School of Rock video 1 | 2
Just one week after its launch, Kelly Dyer-Fry, VP of the News and Information Center, leads a tour of Executive Women International through our new audio podcast studio on Tuesday, June 12, 2008. This is the last of the five studios I was asked to design and launched for The Oklahoman.
EWI has over 3,000 firms represented in over 75 chapters located in major cities across the United States, Canada and Europe. Photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman.
Sports writer John Rohde and Mike Sherman during a practice run of the new Oklahoman sports set. A graphics package was also used to pitch a sponsorship to Budweiser.
Edmund Pickens: First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times was written by Juanita Tate – a ninety-eight year-old Chickasaw elder. As a great-granddaughter of Edmund Pickens, Tate has devoted the last forty-seven years of her life to the research of her great-grandfather.
Edmund Pickens traveled with his wife and children on the Trail of Tears. Once established in the new Oklahoma territory, Pickens negotiated important treaties in Washington D.C., helped to develop the Chickasaw Constitution and served in the Chickasaw senate in the mid-eighteen hundreds. He lived through the tumultuous period of the Civil War and signed the treaty of alliance with the Confederate States. He was the first elected Chief of the Chickasaw Nation and was respected for his devotion and trustworthiness to the Chickasaw people.
This hard bound book is the ninth book I’ve designed and published in the last five years. Others who contributed to this project include Jeannie Barbour, Matt Bradbury, Brian Cooke, Dr. Amanda Cobb-Greetham, Mike Larsen, Sarah Thornburg-Horton and Jennifer Armstrong-Zink.
The control room of our newest and largest video studio.
Along with the Naples Daily News, and the Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, The Oklahoman is featured by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in a recent online video content report about current industry practices.
In less than two years, The Oklahoman went from producing very few online videos to producing more than 100 original pieces each week. Read more about The Oklahoman in the NAA online report: In Focus: The Oklahoman, The Oklahoman: Behind the Scenes and Live from the Newsroom: Set Building 101. You can also read about my personal experience with the Podcast Studio Project in my blog.
Returning from the Thomson-Shore press this week, the story of Ralph Mason illustrates a person who has made millions in real estate and fast food while always focusing on people, relationships, God, family, and friends. This book chronicles some of his struggles and how even the dark moments played an important role in his journey to success. With over 350 Sonic Drive-Ins, Ralph is the 7th largest franchiser behind all other nationally known chains.
Written, designed and published by my wife Sarah and I, this hard bound book is a Father’s Day gift from his three daughters – Myrna, Sherry and Carol. Ralph Mason is the eighth book I’ve designed and published in the last five years. Others who contributed to this project include Marcy Williams, Myrna Lightfoot, Helen Mason, Ann Yount, Suzanne Green, Jen Basford, Derek and Gina England.
Take a closer look at our new weather beta site.
Before our official split with NEWS 9 back in January, we needed to find a weather solution to replace the popular Gary England, so we made a visit to the National Weather Center (NOAA) located in Norman. What we found was that most, if not all, national weathermen use radar images and feeds from the National Weather Center. They repackage the radar with their graphics, and in some cases, rename the radar to their liking. The National Weather Center was gracious to offer us any thing we wanted for free.
Looking at all the possibilities, we decided to go with Accuweather for a temporary weather solution. Among the different packages they offered, was the ability to brand our clients to an Oklahoma City and Tulsa daily video forecast.
Now that our storm has passed, it was time to look at our stats and see how users navigated parts of the site. As a result, a new weather beta site was born. Thanks to Billy Davis, lead designer-developer, this new site is a dandy. Other contributors include Chris Logan, Eric Johnson, Alan Herzberger, Tommy Yi, Kelly Dyer Fry, Rob Wescott and myself.
Leading the charge to train their Washington Post print journalists to shoot video for the washingtonpost.com, Chet Rhodes recently conducted a similar training session for The Oklahoman newsroom. We first met Chet the weekend we launched our Washington D.C. studio and found his process to be extremely helpful and in-line with our next natural step for growing online traffic and getting more video onto our site. By embedding short 30 second video clips, shot by reporters and placed into our online articles, the Senator Inhofe graphic to the right illustrates one way The Oklahoman plans to launch Chet’s practices in the immediate future.
View our new media article template model.
Rhodes is deputy multimedia editor of The Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, where he oversees the production and editing of daily news videos. Before joining washingtonpost.com Rhodes taught for 10 years as an instructor of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism. He also worked as a radio news director in local radio and as an editor and chief engineer with the UPI radio network.
View images of the iPhone beta user interface (UI) in detail.
From breaking news headlines, movie times, audio podcasts, 24 hour weather outlook, searchable classifieds and The Oklahoman Archives, this new iPhone UI beta has everything you’ll need on the go. Version 1.0, now in development, will include the ability to buy movie tickets, watch movie trailers, detailed weather with live local radar, NewsOK.tv news video and more.
At last weeks Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, the buzz was how Apple had blown the doors off the user experience with their iPhone interface and opened the box, so we could look into the future. The current iPhone development team includes Jake Behrens (lead developer), James Duncan, Ethan Cairns, Ryan Marshall, Billy Davis and myself. Great job guys! You make us proud.
This Web based application is part of Apple’s recent open source iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and can be found at iphone.newsok.com, or watch Steve Jobs presentation to see what’s ahead.
Don Curtis works in a wheat field north of Guymon. Photo by Bryan Terry.
The high cost of gasoline is making it almost impossible to produce and deliver The Oklahoman to the furthest parts of the state. As part of a test to develop future audience in these distant locations, The Oklahoman soft-launched MainstreetOK.com this week. An electronic version of Oklahoma small town news, this blog like site will focus around the town of Guymond, Oklahoma.
Giving it a local flavor and a true hometown read, this version of Panhandle news will be edited and maintained by a local resident of Guymond. With social networking built-in, this site includes local news, sports, movie times, photo galleries, classifieds and weather. In the near future and currently in final development, this project will include a New York Times style reader, which is a down-loadable software version of The Oklahoman that lives on your computer. This version of the newspaper will update itself on a continual basis. I’ll have more on that the day it launches.
Commissioned by The Oklahoman circulation department, project contributors include Jennifer Armstrong-Zink, Billy Mabray, Amy Mitchell, Andy Fugate, Jake Behrens, Jay Spear, Tommy Yi, Alan Herzberger, Pat Dennis, Joe Hopper, Rob Wescott and a small part of myself.
View images from the Web 2.0 Expo 2008.
Featuring some of the most successful Internet figures in the industry, the Web 2.0 Expo is a world-wide gathering of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation Internet model.
Working hard over the last year to build four media studios, my focus on Internet technology had dwindled to nothing. In technology, a year is a long time, so what a wonderful way to baptize myself back into what is relevant.
Traveling on the Design and User Experience track, I placed 5 stars beside the items that interested me the most or made reference to the newspaper and media industry. Read the rest of this entry to follow my four day journey.
With Angi, Marilu Henner and Gunnar Peterson stopped by our studio to promote their new books on health and fitness.
Marilu Henner is a well-known actress who recently starred in The Celebrity Apprentice. She is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, Marilu Henner’s Total Health Makeover and Healthy Life Kitchen, as well as, several other titles. For more than twenty years she has championed a vigorous, healthy lifestyle and has inspired countless friends and readers along the way.
Gunnar Peterson is a Beverly Hills–based personal trainer whose clients include film and television celebrities as well as professional athletes. Gunnar has been a personal trainer for more than sixteen years and is often sought out by television and print media for his fitness expertise. He lives in Beverly Hills.
Susie McEntire Luchsinger, younger sister to Reba McEntire, will sing the national anthem to kick off the rodeo this weekend before taping an episode of her television show, “Cowboy Church.”
Luchsinger is regarded as one of the most renowned and respected country gospel singers in the business and in addition to numerous awards and nominations from TNN, GMA and CCMA, She holds the title “Christian Country Artist of the Year.”
Susie stopped by NewsOK.tv to promote her show and sing a song from her latest album “Count It All Joy.”
Be sure to watch the wimgo video project. These are GREAT!
Today, OPUBCO Communications Group launched wimgo.com. This new Web site offers Oklahomans a one-stop, full-service, all-inclusive, comprehensive collection of things to do and places to go, served with a side of opinions, photos, video, maps, “communities of interest” and whatever else develops.
Spearheading the project, Rob Wescott, vice president of audience development, said “wimgo came out of the fact that there wasn’t really any place online where you could find everything that’s going on in Oklahoma.”
After slogging away for years to beat the next deadline, it's nice to have a place to quickly record my professional experiences. I started this blog, as we were finishing the design and launch of the second of four media studios on the 7th floor of The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City and one studio east of the White House in the National Press Building. Below are a set of links reflecting our dreams, our challenges and the products and services we chose.
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