Faculty, staff encouraged to submit archone.update news items:
Because faculty and staff are privy to newsworthy information regarding activities in their respective units, they are advantageously positioned to provide invaluable contributions that will enchance and sustain the college's Inside Track e-newsletter. Without their earnest, sustain support, many newsworthy items would go unreported.
E-mail archone.update submissions to prollfing@archone.tamu.edu by noon Tuesday prior to Thursday distribution.
What kind of news goes into archone.update?
Items for archone.update may include, but aren’t limited to:
- Lectures,
- Special events sponsored by your unit or student groups,
- Student, faculty and staff achievement,
- Special guests and VIP visitors,
- Unit initiatives,
- Alumni news,
- Research grant awards,
- Gifts and scholarships,
- New organizational memberships and affiliations,
- Unique research and groundbreaking discoveries,
- Classroom innovation,
- Exhibits,
- Presentations featuring student or faculty work,
- Calendar items, and
- Administrative communiqués.
The latter category could include policy changes, revised forms or other administrative procedures, promotion of new Web sites, soliciting feedback on particular issues, reiterating policies that are not being adhered to, notes concerning information technology issues, new equipment, lost and found items, etc.
Tips for properly gathering and submitting news:
There are two major problems with news submittals to archone.update. First and foremost, many college units are not submitting news to share with the college. Secondly, submitted news items tend to omit critical details.
Below are a few tips to assist faculty and staff with identifying, gathering and reporting news for archone.update.
Work in advance: Submit items as they come to your attention. There is no need to wait until the week before an event is scheduled. If you don’t have time to gather all of the details, go ahead and submit an alert and follow-up with details as they become available.
Make no assumptions: Just because you know about something of interest to the college community, doesn’t mean it’s on the newsletter editor’s radar. Also, don’t assume something isn’t newsworthy. If you and your colleagues are talking about it, that’s a good sign it may interest others. Share what you know.
Be thorough: Answer the who-what-when-where-why questions related to the story you are submitting. It takes a lot of time and effort to follow-up on sketchy news leads. When gathering news, try to acquire all of the necessary information from your news source up front, on the first pass. Ask them for: reference documents like bios, a resume or curriculum vitae, supporting Web sites, project agreements, award letters, dates, times, locations, contact info, etc. Get all of the relevant information.
Be specific: What is the title of the lecture? What is the primary item on the meeting agenda? If possible, provide a summary of the agenda. Let the reader know why they should care about the event; why it is relevant; what do they stand to gain by participating. Who is the taget audience? Is the event open to the public or is participation limited to a certain group?
Provide supporting documents: As touched on above, these would include funding agreements, resumes or vitas, Web site links related to the news item, photographs, research papers, illustrations, spreadsheets and other documents that can be referenced to flesh out a story. Ask for this stuff up front to avoid a time consuming follow-up e-mail or phone call.
Avoid acronyms and jargon: This is especially problematic when referring to the alphabet soup of organizations we deal with and the credentials that often follow a learned person’s title. Please spell things out on first reference. If the speaker is “Maj. Gen. Sweeny Swan, FAIA, PE, LPC, DE, FPTB (Ret),” what does that gobbledygook mean?
Provide biographical information: In addition to a guest lecturer’s name, state her/his profession, their professional affiliation (where they are currently employed or what organization they are representing), mention degrees or experience that ties the speaker to the lecture topic. Student information should include their major or the program they are enrolled in, their class rank (frosh, soph, jr. sr. grad, etc). When possible, provide their hometown.
Avoid redundancy: If you are e-mailing a room scheduling request to Emily, submitting a PowerPoint presentation for the kiosk, or designing a poster promoting an event. Copy me on the initial e-mail or take a minute to cut, paste and e-mail me the text from the poster or PowerPoint.
Don’t fuss over narrative: While most submissions will be published in a narrative format, writing news stories takes a little experience and can be difficult for those not accustomed to journalistic reporting. Don’t waste a lot time trying to compose an eloquent news brief. Simply send the details. I can take it from there. If you want to write the piece and showcase your literary flair, that’s OK, but don’t spend a lot of time on it. Just make sure you provide all of the necessary details. A bulleted list or rough draft will be fine, but be thorough.
Include photos: Most people of note can provide you with a digital portrait, or “mug shot”. If someone is coming to lecture, when you are arranging for their visit ask for biographical info, details or a summary of their presentation and request a current photograph. Ask for these things during your initial contact and follow-up if they are slow to respond.
Alert a photographer: Certain events provide great photo opportunities. When you suspect a potential photo op, let me know about it. Also, great photo ops often happen spontaneously. When you spot a great photograph, call a photographer. Photos are desperately needed for Web and publication projects. Currently, the college has a number of people who can take pictures. John Peters is the college’s primary photographer. He is currently being assisted by Igor Kraguljac, a Viz student who is a very talented photographer. You can reach John and Igor at 845-7887 or jpeters@archone.tamu.edu. Also, you can contact Phillip Rollfing at 458-0442 or prollfing@archone.tamu.edu.
About
photos: Though low-resolution images can be used for Web, PowerPoint
presentations and in the archone.update e-newsletter, we need high resolution
(300 dpi) images for print publications. We can reduce high-res images
for Web use, but we cannot enlarge low-res images for print publications.
This is something to keep in mind if your news item might be featured
in the college’s external newsletter, archone.
To see online versions of the current and archived issues of archone.update,
visit http://archone.tamu.edu/archcom/archoneUpdate/.
About archone.update: http://archone.tamu.edu/archcom/archoneUpdate/about.htm
How to Submit News: http://archone.tamu.edu/archcom/archoneUpdate/submissions.htm