It seemed odd to me that Opubco would want to push two entirely different packages of what is essentially the same news product, but having looked at Oklahoman.com, I definitely prefer it to the NewsOK offering, for three reasons:

• It’s organized more like the paper itself, without the necessity of dealing with the Replica, which is exactly like the paper, assuming you have a suitable vertical monitor, which I don’t.
• A more relaxed, or at least less busy, design.
• None of the idiot commenters who clutter up NewsOK.

It’s a premium product with an actual price tag, though it costs nothing extra to us old mossbacks who pay to have the dead-tree edition tossed onto our driveways.

Will this work? I have no idea. For now, though, I like it.

Darnell Mayberry, who pounds the Thunder beat for The Oklahoman, hasn’t been screaming about this, so I thought I’d mention it.

First, read this: Russell Westbrook’s journey from community center gyms to the NBA All-Star Game.

Did you like it?

It won last year’s Feature award by the Professional Basketball Writers of America, as announced by PBWA President Doug Smith during this year’s All-Star Weekend.

The one good thing about this Oklahoman editorial, which attempts to persuade supporters of Rick Santorum to cross over to the Mitt Side, is that it doesn’t actually use the word “electable,” a term I don’t ever want to hear again without a leading D: “Damn, that [name of entirely-too-cute female] is certainly delectable.”

Unfortunately, it does say this:

Mitt Romney doesn’t have Reagan’s cache. No one does.

I’m reasonably certain that anything Ronnie had cached away, Nancy inherited.

And if they meant to say “cachet,” well, it’s a funny thing about editorials: they never seem to have actual editors.

Usually an Oklahoman editorial flows off the front page of NewsOK.com after a day or two. (Hey, at least they’re not putting them on the front page of the actual paper, the way they used to.) But their preposterously early Presidential endorsement — what, do they think they have some clout in Des Moines? — has hung around for the better part of a week; in fact, they’ve built a whole subsection around it in the hopes of luring some of those social-media types.

Given the usual quality of reader commentary at NewsOK — you have to wonder how these people have time to respond to every single item on the site and still meet their meth-delivery deadlines — this has the potential for truly epic, possibly even biblical, fail. It wouldn’t matter so much were the centerpiece stately and timeless. But, as Clark Matthews points out, it falls a bit short of that mark:

Look, I don’t mind that the paper endorsed Mitt Romney. As far as Republicans go, he’s my second favorite (after Jon Huntsman) of the field. I don’t even mind that they pretend President Obama is some all powerful divisive force instead of a middle-of-the-road pragmatist who pisses off the liberals in his party. What bothers me is they are journalists — purveyors of the truth — and the entire article reads like idiotic rantings of ill-informed internet trolls.

Especially compared with the Romney endorsement by the Washington Examiner, Opubco’s corporate sister. Perhaps the Black Tower believes — or has been instructed to believe — that a lack of coherent style will be perceived as honest and homespun. Surely nothing else explains a piece of hackwork like this:

Oklahomans knew Obama was a poor choice for president in 2008. Now the rest of the country knows it. But on Election Day next November, we won’t be checking “yes” or “no” beside the name of the incumbent. It is not a recall election. We will either check Obama’s name or that of another candidate. Romney is the name we must check.

That’s high-school level stuff, and not in the advanced-placement classes either.

We may not have an NBA season this season, and in announcing that unpleasant fact yesterday, the Oklahoman gave us fair warning:

Your assignment, should you decide to accept it, is to determine which is worse:

• The harsh realities of the big leagues
• More coverage

I mean, that’s a lot to hit us with, doncha think?

Whoever writes these top-of-the-front-page blurbs for the Oklahoman must be relying on a Random Phrase Generator of some sort:

A “fact-based person”? The official position of Hollywood, spiritual home of community-based reality, is that J. Edgar was a couple of electrets short of a microphone, IYKWIMAITYD.

Then again, as Ernestine once said, “There’s nothing like a Hoover when you’re dealing with dirt.” Or something like that.

About four years ago — right about the time Newspaper Death Watch went online — I started pondering the question of whether The Oklahoman could actually survive as an independent entity: Opubco had lots of presumably-profitable non-newspaper interests, but if the economy ever went south, they couldn’t necessarily prop up the paper with revenues from, say, the Broadmoor.

Shortly thereafter, the economy did in fact head for Tierra del Fuego, and I decided that the most likely suitor would be Freedom Communications, owner of the Orange County Register and several dozen smaller papers, on the basis of both financials and editorial philosophy. The financials did not in fact work out: in the fall of ’09, Freedom reorganized under Chapter 11, emerging eight months later with various private-equity firms calling the shots. So I wrote off that possibility and put the subject out of my mind.

Needless to say, the out-of-right-field acquisition of Opubco by Philip Anschutz took me totally by surprise: up to now, his hyperlocal model of several dozen Examiner-branded sites and three actual newspapers hasn’t exactly made waves. (Here’s the Oklahoma City version if you haven’t seen it, and chances are you haven’t.)

Generally, two things are widely known about Mr Anschutz: he’s a shrewd dealmaker, and he occupies a spot on the political continuum about where old E. K. Gaylord used to be, which is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. I don’t have a particular problem with this, not being the sort of person who reads a paper for the editorials, though I suppose I might feel differently if we had competing dailies in town. (During my New England sojourn, I picked up the Globe about as often as I bought the Herald Traveler Record American Whatever; at the time, their editorial philosophies weren’t as far apart as they are now.) I know some locals who are disappointed that the new ownership won’t push the paper several steps in the direction of The New York Times, but I’m thinking, if your model is the Times, why not just buy the Times? Their national edition could use the circulation boost.

Ultimately, I suppose, the major benefit of this takeover is that Anschutz can afford to spend some money on the paper. Whether he’ll actually do it or not remains to be seen, but I’m pretty sure it won’t bleed him to death.

With Mr. Kelley going to Washington, the editor’s desk at the Oklahoman will be filled by seventeen-year OPUBCO veteran Kelly Dyer Fry. This is not exactly a controversial choice — you have to figure that she’s pretty well steeped in Gaylordia (not necessarily to be confused with Gaillardia) by now — but it does stand out in one way, since she spent the bulk of those seventeen years on the digital side of the news operation, following up with integration of the paper’s virtual and dead-tree offerings. Few other papers of any size have threaded their way that far into the dark scary cave that is, or is supposed to be, Future News.

So no boats are likely to to be rocked. Still, there’s at least a sense of continuity, and given NewsOK’s heavy video presence, she does seem at ease in front of the camera.

Will the Black Tower ever be the same again?

Ed Kelley, a veteran journalist and award-winning editor and reporter, has been named the new editor of The Washington Times.

Mr. Kelley, who is leaving his post as editor of The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, will oversee both news and opinion content for Washington Times Media, a multi-platform news organization focused on exclusive reporting and compelling conservative opinion. He assumes his duties July 1.

I tweeted the Oklahoman article on Kelley’s impending departure to Robert Stacy McCain, who spent about a decade at the Times; McCain deemed it “a good ‘heartland’ choice,” presumably suggesting that the last thing the #2 D.C. daily needed was Yet Another Beltway Insider in charge of the newsroom.

What I’m not clear on is what the #1 OKC daily needs. My initial thought was “Where is Stan Tiner when you need him?” (Answer: He’s running the Sun Herald down in Biloxi.) Tiner was named Executive Editor of the Oklahoman in 1999, prompting this remark from me:

From the looks of things, Tiner has issued two commands: “Make this paper look less like a throwback to the 1950s,” and “Get this paper’s perceived politics out of the 1850s.”

Those things eventually became the rule, but not on Tiner’s watch; Edward L. Gaylord, after all, was still alive. And maybe that was the problem: for most of its existence, the Oklahoman has been run by someone named Ed, and Stan Tiner, through no fault of his own, was not named Ed.

So OPUBCO can’t fill this slot in-house, unless Mike Shannon changes his name by deed poll. I’m pretty sure Ed Driscoll isn’t interested in the position, though it’s an even safer bet he won’t be asked.

Sunday, the world as we know it having ended the day before, the Oklahoman ran a six-page supplement to promote “the next generation” of the paper, with various and sundry goodies available at various levels.

The digital-only package, for those who’d just as soon not deal with the print version, runs $15 a month (which is, I note, cheaper than the actual print version on a daily basis), and it includes the Digital Replica, which duplicates, to the extent possible, the actual print version in a Web browser; the smartphone version (available for iThings and Droid so far — the Digital Replica is apparently about to be ported to the iPad); and access to the archives, all 110 years’ worth. The latter may be the best part of the deal.

This is, however, not the answer for those who subscribe via Kindle, Nook or whatever the hell that thing is that Sony has been pushing: those deals remain unchanged for now.

Interestingly, there’s a digital-plus-print deal for $12 a month; in addition to everything in the digital-only package, they throw you an actual Sunday paper. I’m guessing that the humongous number of advertising supplements involved was the deciding factor here. (And look at all the coupons!)

There’s a single-product a la carte deal for $9.99, which I assume was offered so they could say they had something under ten bucks.

Now I actually pay for the print edition, so all the digital stuff I get as a bonus, at least for now. (And frankly, I browse better in print than I do in a, um, browser.) I do think OPUBCO has learned something from watching other publishers fumble with paywalls and other clumsy constructions, and is trying to insure some revenue streams without actually ticking off the readership.

Someone on the Oklahoman’s editorial board has evidently been beaned with an industrial-strength snowball:

Any number of schools could have held classes last week, except that the roads where the buses would have had to travel to pick up students were still snowpacked and treacherous. So schools stayed closed and now superintendents and principals are trying to figure out how to make up so much lost time.

Wait, what? It’s the fault of the buses? Students could have just walked through the record cold, or their parents could have run into one another on the way out of the neighborhood?

We’ve made the argument before — the Oklahoma Constitution requires the state to provide children an education, but says nothing about providing them transportation to and from school. Even so, this practice has continued for generations.

Also continuing for generations: the calls by the Oklahoman for school consolidation, which would almost certainly require transportation for students nearest the schools to be closed.

Two possibilities present themselves:

• Somebody’s vacation plans got messed up by snow days;
• Someone at the Black Tower has a friend with an independent bus business.

Take your pick.

(Via Brittany Novotny.)

What comes after “shit happens”? This morning’s Oklahoman tells us in very large type:

Suggestions for Phase 3 are encouraged.

The Oklahoman has ditched its hideous Sunday TV supplement, replacing it with a marginally-shiny syndicated product called TV Weekly, which is actually available by individual subscription even if you don’t take the paper. In fact, if I’m reading the fine print correctly, getting it with the paper will actually cost you a few bucks; we’re talking 68 cents a week for a two-year subscription, and presumably it won’t be bundled in newsstand copies.

The Oregonian adopted this model last fall, and published a related FAQ section a month in advance. The Q we all want to ask:

Q: Why do I have to pay extra for the TV section?

A: The growth of on-screen listings has dramatically reduced the volume of advertising and readership of TV sections. Contracting with TV Weekly to provide our TV book allows us to provide a better TV book for those who want it. Many major newspapers have gone to some form of “opt in and pay” TV sections (rather than dropping the sections) and have found only about 10 percent to 20 percent of subscribers use the sections. By making this move, those readers who want a section can still get a good section for little cost.

And it’s a decent little tabloid for all that, though as Meredith Willson might say, it doesn’t know the territory: state broadcast listings are consolidated into Oklahoma City and Tulsa subgroups, though the Tulsa subgroup inexplicably includes stations in Lawton, Ada, and north Texas.

The bloody dismemberment of TV Guide makes me somewhat less than optimistic about the future of this arrangement. And I’d hate to be the guy who stands near the entrance to Crest Foods on weekends hawking Oklahoman subscriptions.

The NewsOK guys probably didn’t think this Oklahoman headline was all that funny, so they fixed it in the Web version, meaning I had to dust off the scanner. Then again, I’m of the opinion that knowing what a word means doesn’t kill the joke:

Especially, you know, if you read it out loud.

Whether that’s his name or not:

Tulsan Brian Bates is hoping the Admiral Twin Drive-in, which was destroyed in a recent fire, isn’t gone forever. “I hope it is rebuilt,” Bates writes. “I remember seeing my first PG movie there — Young Frankenstein — making myself nauseous by getting that free refill on the 32 oz. 7up, and I remember Mom saying something to Dad about the risque jokes going over my head. We’ve taken our kids to the Admiral Twin, too … The Admiral Twin was the last Tulsa theater from my childhood and youth still operating. The Continental, Will Rogers, Brook, Delman, Park Lane, Spectrum, Forum, Fox, Fontana, Annex 3/7, Southroads, Plaza 3, Village, Eleventh Street Drive In, 51 Drive In, Boman Twin, Williams Center, Woodland Hills — all closed, many of them demolished.”

Um, the Tulsan in question was Michael Bates. Brian Bates runs JohnTV.com in Oklahoma City. Whoever is running the op-ed page in the Oklahoman needs to get with the program.

(Why, yes, this is a repeat from July — and also from March.)

Whether that’s his name or not:

News stories noted U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin’s absence from some campaign events where her gubernatorial opponents were appearing, and Tulsan Brian Bates is concerned that the day after one missed event, an opponent claimed she was meeting with lobbyists. “Fallin may feel she has to avoid head-to-head comparisons between herself and (Randy) Brogdon to hold on to her lead and win the primary. Brogdon comes across as knowledgeable, passionate, positive, and personable. Fallin seems distant, detached, almost robotic at times,” Bates wrote. “We’ve had to fight against special interests influencing Republican local officials, trying to raise our taxes and cut special deals. Thanks to his tax problems, we were able to dump Lance Cargill before he could do too much damage to the Republican brand, with accusations of a pay-to-play operation being run out of the speaker’s office. A state government run by the lobbyists and special interests is no better with Republicans in charge than with Democrats. As a matter of fact, it’s worse, because Republicans ought to know better than to sacrifice the general welfare of the people they were elected to serve in favor of the interests of a favored few.”

Um, the Tulsan in question was Michael Bates. Brian Bates runs JohnTV.com in Oklahoma City. Whoever is running the op-ed page in the Oklahoman needs to get with the program.

And yes, this is a repeat from March.

Somewhere on staff there’s a friend
   ’Cause the Monday op-ed
   Points to something I said
And I wonder when all this will end.

Steve Lackmeyer spends part of his Oklahoman column today giving a shout-out to two of the guys you need to be reading to keep track of what’s going on downtown: Doug Loudenback and Nick Roberts. They’re both seriously opinionated, and they do their homework before they take a stand. Of course, they’ve both been blogrolled here for rather a long time, in case I need to poach an idea from them.

Worth quoting:

The Oklahoman itself is no stranger to new media, and for the past couple of years my own reporting efforts have included blogging and use of Twitter. And if there’s anything to draw out of this, regardless of one’s thoughts about new media, it’s clear that because of it downtown development is being discussed by far more than just a few insiders at City Hall.

Just in case you were readying an Edwin Starr-like grunt and the complaint, “Blogs! What are they good for?”

Whether that’s his name or not:

Tulsa blogger Brian Bates has some 21st-century advice for local law enforcement: Get with the social media program. “The Tulsa Police Department could be making better use of the Internet and social media tools to communicate with the public, particularly in emergency situations,” Bates writes. “TPD has a blog, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account … but they aren’t using them in an effective and timely fashion.”

Um, that Tulsa blogger was Michael Bates. Brian Bates runs JohnTV.com in Oklahoma City. Whoever is running the op-ed page in the Oklahoman needs to get with the program.

Marching in lockstep? Not these two guys at the same newspaper:

(Cut and pasted right off of TweetDeck.)