Students and faculty members went to the L.A. Pittinger Student Center Ballroom Tuesday night to hear from two journalistic pioneers from NewsOK.com, the award winning online segment of The Oklahoman newspaper.
Joe Hight and Yvette Walker spoke to journalism students as part of The David Letterman Distinguished Professional Lecture and Workshop Series. Their presentation focused on the changes NewsOK.com has made in becoming what they call a "news and information center".
In 2009, NewsOK.com won the Innovator of the Year award for their use of multimedia. Since then, they have brought their daily newspaper to the web in everyway from blogs to iPad applications.
"It's all about the story," Walker said, "just telling it in a different way."
At the beginning of the presentation Christy Gaylord Everest, chair and chief executive officer of Oklahoma Publishing Company, announced that The Oklahoman will use the $10,000 stipend given to lecture series speakers to create a partnership with the university so students may participate in internships with the news outlet.
Hight and Walker went into detail about the success NewsOK.com had with online innovations, which according to Hight gave The Oklahoman the chance to compete with all news gathering organizations, not just daily newspapers.
The speakers also gave students advice on how to generate user content and attract all types of audiences while sharing stories on the website. They also shared stories about their personal careers, tips on the best ways to cover stories and the best media platforms for specific stories.
"I like that they talked about how things are constantly evolving. I think the more skills you have, the better off you are," Lori Byers, associate dean of the College of Communication, Information and Media said.
"Because of the effort that we are trying to make [in the College of Communication, Information and Media] to incorporate convergence into our curriculum, we thought they were a good model for newspapers today," she said.
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