News

With the sign of my pen I put an end to a few weeks of contract negotiations and officially began my 10th year in Oklahoma. Does that make me an…

I apparently do not post that often anymore. Well I have never been a very frequent blogger, but this post has been rolling around for a while in my head…

Phil’s Note:  This was written several weeks prior to posting when I decided to start blogging again…unfortunately it was written just before life got very crazy with the Oklahoma natural…

I’m not sure who said it, but I’ve heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes imitation is just insulting.  That is especially true…

The murders of Taylor Placker and Skyla Whitaker were really the first big story I ever reported on in my news career. Sure I had worked behind the scenes and coordinated coverage of other big events, but this was a case where I got to be on the scene.

If you watch the news, then you probably know the news lingo. They are those highly predictable phrases that seem to pop up in story after story. I had a news director who called it ‘Journalese’ and it was banned in his newsroom.

A friend of mine recently put out a call for people to talk about their college classes and what classes best prepared them for life in the media. The question got me thinking about my own college experience and how much my world and world view has changed since my time walking the halls at Missouri Southern State University.

I wanted to find a way to convey just how interesting and diverse a life in news is, so after doing a story about a guy who created a cool map…I decided to make my own. It’s a Google map that allows me to place markers at the locations I’ve found myself.

Eric and Jennifer Lotz have a heart for Haiti. From the first time I met them, they talked about the Haitians and their desire to return to the country and serve.

If you take a trip down almost any rural road in Oklahoma you’ll come across some of the most American stories. On this trip to a small farm north of Enid, Oklahoma I came across some men in love truly in love with the country, only they’re not from this country at all.