The Oklahoman: Great example of using the online medium

Friend sent me this link earlier from the The Oklahoman. I love seeing newspaper outlets do stuff like this, giving the reader a hands-on approach.

It's for the new Oklahoma State football uniforms:

http://newsok.com/richmedia/osuuniforms

 

Not many papers have an online presence like The Oklahoman. For its size, it's the best.

 

Toured The Oklahoman's web studio — yes, they have a full studio for their online video stuff — during a workshop there last summer, and it is amazing. If I had a few hundred grand laying around, I'd love to do it with our office.

 

Until they lay off more people from the newsroom.

It's good that they're attacking this whole innertubes stuff and all, but really, I'd rather have those five, six, eight, 10 bodies, whatever, back on my staff.

 

"here are some interpretations for you pleasure."

Looks pretty. Editing still matters.

 

I was gonna mention that but didn't want to pile on.

 

yes, that's some fun stuff...nice work.
What is up with all of this Nike change the uni every week stuff though...c'mon.
Scared to see what Phil Knight is going to do with the NFL unis. Ughh

 

Big deal. Target's website also lets me change the colors when I shop for my big men's Hanes T-shirts, and they spell more words correctly.

Seriously. A "Nice work" when it's basically just a Colorforms deal showing different jersey/pants/helmet/cleats combos? No wonder we're a dead business.

How about some fucking insight on why Nike is doing this? How much is the school getting paid to guinea-pig this idea? How much is the coach getting? Do local souvenir shops expect to quadruple their sales? Are other athletic departments watching closely with dollar signs in their eyes, too? What do opposing coaches think about not knowing the color of the OSU jerseys their D-backs will be grabbing hold of?

 

There's room for depth, and there's room for bells and whistles. I wouldn't be knocking them for trying something that readers might enjoy, even if it's paint-by-numbers.

 

In fairness we don't know if they attacked it in-depth, baddecision, because it's not linked. They could have done it and just are going for the ADD eyeballs.

Now why would you want to promote some strong reporting? Oh, I don't know. As Moddy's said repeatedly, "Give me something to read!"

 

And that's something that can easily be done in print. The point of this is something only an electronic medium can do, and The Oklahoman took full advantage. Not so much in sports (that I've seen), but in news, The New York Times and USA Today do a lot of reader-interactive things like this. It's something that will drive traffic to your site and viewers will spend time on it. It hits the nail on head.

 

I loved seeing this. The Oregonian has something like this that they did for the Ducks for at least last season. They'd put it on their Oregon blog each week and ask fans to submit ideas for what the Ducks should wear that week and update it with what the team actually wore after the game. Pretty cool stuff.