2016 President’s Fall Retreat

Table 9 (two afternoon sessions), “Telling Our Story: Better and More Often”

Co-facilitators:

Matt Cecil (Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities) and Dan Benson (Director of Media Relations)

Overview:

After introductions, a handout was provided that included a web link to the Office of Integrated Marketing, which includes staff members who work in the areas of media relations, publications & content and electronic media.

Those attending the session were encouraged to submit information or story ideas for potential news releases, campus newsletter and TODAY magazine stories and social media posts. Faculty and staff were also encouraged to submit their information to include in the campus “experts list,” a database used to help reporters looking for someone with a particular area of professional expertise to provide background and/or opinion for stories.

Attendees of the table topic were then invited to ask questions or make comments about the topic.

Questions/comments from the two sessions included (and were followed by brief discussions at the table):

·How is information collected for news releases, the campus newsletter, etc.?

·Recruitment, retention, fundraising is all of our responsibility.

·This subject involves sharing of stories and building relationships.

·Readers of the campus newspaper (the Reporter) and the campus newsletter are different audiences.

·The university needs to create a culture of telling our story.

·Many in the university community are modest, and we don’t always share our accomplishments.

·There are many great things happening at the university.

·How can we share stories between offices and departments better?

·Is there video capability on campus? (Mav Visual Productions was discussed.)

·There is no official campus photographer.

Ideas from those attending this table topic:

·For the campus newsletter, create a calendar of dates for campus departments to be featured, and invite the departments to submit information for their featured dates.

·For the campus newsletter, create a competition that encourages departments to submit information.

·Possible story pitch: the university’s student government leadership is unique this year in that the president and vice president are both international students and the speaker of the house has dual citizenship. (We later learned that the student body president and vice president in 2004-05 were also both international students.)

Summary:

We had productive discussions during our two sessions. It seemed that some individuals attending the sessions may have been unfamiliar with how stories were gathered and then shared externally (to the general public and alumni) and internally (campus community). We hope that the handout and discussions helped explain those processes.

In general, it was explained that the Integrated Marketing staff collects stories through interaction with the campus community and then determines how to disseminate the information based on news values. Some submissions may result in news releases, while others become TODAY Magazine stories and still others are most appropriate for the campus newsletter or social media mentions, etc.

We tried to emphasized that all submissions are welcome, and that we do our best to share as much of the information as possible through the appropriate channels.

Media Relations is planning to pitch a story on student government leaders to the Mankato Free Press, and the other ideas for the campus newsletter will be considered.