Californian e-book highlights 'Unbeaten' season

The Bakersfield Californian has just released "Unbeaten," its third e-book this year, an iPad-only celebration of Bakersfield High School's unbeaten 2011 football season. 

The Drillers' 13-0 season was the latest in a long string of titles for the state's most consistently successful prep-football program. 

Louis Amestoy, The Californian's Digital Convergence Manager, used Apple's iBooks Author program to produce the 150-page book that's stuffed with multimedia by repackaging a variety of staff-produced stories and photos with video highlights recorded Game-by-game summaries include detailed stats. by BHS staff. 

All told, "Unbeaten" includes:

• 132 photos, most never-before-published.
• 41 videos of game highlights. 
• Game stories, stats and  Californian prep reporter Zach Ewing's richly reported live-blog posts.
• Features on head coach Paul Golla and Drillers legend Frank Gifford, and more.

The 41 videos feature key plays from throughout the season.And all this for only $3.99 in the iBookstore. 

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Adding a rich layer atop of 'Californian Radio'

The Californian recently launched live video streams of "Californian Radio," and Tuesday's episode is a good example of how a traditional radio show can take on a new dimension. 

Host Robert Price talked with reporter Steven Mayer about this past weekend's excellent series on the 1952 earthquakes that damaged Bakersfield and Tehachapi. Mayer is a great storyteller on his own, but the video layer of the show allowed Louis Amestoy, The Californian's digital convergence manager, to layer historic audio clips, photos and videos into the conversation. 

Outside of a few instances in the first segment where the audio cuts out, the production is slick and the segments move quickly. A few interesting calls from survivors rounded out a nice complement to an already great bit of journalism. 

Recalling the massive quakes that changed the face of Bakersfield

Here's a nice bit of video storytelling from The Californian's Louis Amestoy that's part of a two-day Californian series marking the 60th anniversary of the massive earthquakes that forever changed Bakersfield and Tehachapi. 

I'm sharing the video here to highlight some of the increasing video we're doing, but recommend you read Day 1 of reporter Steven Mayer's series. 

I've always thought Bakersfield had a cool downtown before the quakes hit in 1952. Sadly, the interesting architecture damaged in the quake was replaced by visual blight, saddling the city with a lack of character at its core.

The city's downtown is undergoing a nice transformation as nice restaurants, galleries and botiques spread downtown but watching this video makes you wonder what coulda been.