As the principal point of contact between reporters and the college, the Media Relations Manager responds to media inquiries, coordinates interviews, pitchs stories to reporters and editors, and works with faculty, staff, and students in getting the word out about Lawrence activities and accomplishments.
Along with the Sports Information Director, the Media Relations Manager is part of a Communications team that seeks to expand the coverage of Lawrence in local, regional, and national media.
Getting the Word Out
Communications staff members pursue a number of avenues for placing stories in the media and increasing the college's visibility. Among these are
- Serving as a resource for editors and reporters, helping them to understand the context of developing stories involving higher education and the college itself, providing background information for their investigations, and arranging interviews with appropriate Lawrence administrators or faculty.
- Issuing press releases on major activities at Lawrence and the newsworthy achievements of faculty, staff, and students.
- Pitching story ideas to editors and reporters by telephone, fax, and e-mail, suggesting topics of interest and drawing attention to upcoming events and newsworthy aspects of the college's involvement in a wide variety of subject areas.
- Monitoring media services such as Profnet and trends in press coverage, looking for targets of opportunity for Lawrence coverage or commentary by faculty and administrators.
- Keeping local and state-wide media informed of campus lectures, performances, and other events and alerting them to the appearance on campus of prominent individuals and performing artists.
- Routinely submitting "hometowners" to community newspapers on student honors, awards, athletic achievements, and involvement in noteworthy extracurricular activities such as participating in a Habitat for Humanity project during spring break.
- Promoting faculty expertise to reporters and editors and encouraging faculty availability for commentary on unfolding local, state, and national events and major issues of the day.
- Maintaining an online Media Resource Guide that highlights faculty research interests and specializations and provides editors and reporters with a handy reference of expert sources at Lawrence.
Extending the Reach of Lawrence's Media Relations
The Office of Communications subscribes to several media services that help extend the reach of the media relations effort beyond the Upper Midwest and works collaboratively with national organizations to promote the visibility of liberal arts colleges as a sector of higher education.
1. Profnet
A subsidiary of PR Newswire, ProfNet is a collaborative effort of public relations professionals linked by the Internet to provide journalists and authors convenient access to expert sources. Profnet delivers over 600 media queries by reporters, editors, and authors to its members each week.
Profnet alerts describe stories reporters are working on and what information they are looking for from expert sources. The Media Relations Manager monitors the Profnet alerts and tries to match reporters' interests with Lawrence faculty members who can serve as expert sources and be interviewed for upcoming articles. Active "mining" of Profnet has resulted in radio interviews nationally and Lawrence faculty being quoted in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Herald, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and other major newspapers across the country.
Profnet also maintains a database of 4,200 expert sources for reporters, which includes members of the Lawrence faculty.
2. The AScribe Public Interest Newswire
The Office of Communications also subscribes to the AScribe wire service. AScribe, the first national public interest, digital news network, feeds news from colleges and universities, medical centers, research labs, public-policy organizations, social-service groups, and foundations to the nation's print and electronic media. Each day, AScribe transmits news releases from its members directly into newsroom computers of major media organizations. At the same time, AScribe makes news from its public-interest members available over the Internet for use on Web sites, portals, intranets and other online services.
Through AScribe, the Office of Communications is literally able to have Lawrence press releases viewed by countless reporters across the country on their own computer screens.
3. The Annapolis Group Media Effort
The Annapolis Group is a coalition of more than 100 of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges. The mission of the Annapolis Group is to promote greater public understanding of the distinctive value of a liberal arts college education and to raise the visibility of nationally ranked residential liberal arts colleges such as Lawrence.
The Annapolis Group hosts a comprehensive Web site, Collegenews.org, that serves as a major resource for journalists from across the country. Collegenews publishes member school press releases, op eds and commentaries by Annapolis Group presidents, and recent studies on liberal education, and houses an extensive online faculty expert database.
In addition to contributing to Collegenews, the Office of Communications collaborates with other Annapolis Group members on collective media projects, such as developing and pitching op eds on science education at liberal arts colleges.
