[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, 12/16/03

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from December 16, 2003*

Topics at today's meeting ranged from maintaining mailing lists to 
older eyes. But Most Importantly: Susan Curran of i/s (you know, 
Susan the spotlight lady!) gave us a primer on STOPPING SPAM.

*New Publication*
Alexandra Kahn of the Media Lab told us about that lab's latest 
publication, a magazine/brochure dubbed Momentum that features little 
bios of some 30 Media Lab researchers. The idea is to give a window 
into the people behind the lab. To that end, the bios describe each 
prof's ideas and vision and, in a wonderfully light touch, the 
childhood toys that inspired them in their professions.

Momentum was created for sponsors, potential sponsors, prospective 
students, UROPS and anyone else interested in the lab. It's available 
in print and on the web at http://momentum.media.mit.edu/.

*Sci/Eng Mailing List*
I've been slowly updating the science and engineering media contacts 
on the News Office mailing list, and wanted to share some highlights 
from that endeavor that should remind us all of this university's 
reputation around the world.

Over the last three weeks I've sent out 400-plus e-mail queries 
asking reporters if they'd like to remain on the News Office mailing 
list for press releases about MIT research. I also ask them what 
topics they're most interested in hearing about (e.g., neuroscience, 
robotics, EVERYTHING).

Here's the cool part: I've received a 70 percent response rate. Of 
those, only a handful asked to be taken off the list (because they're 
no longer on the sci/eng beat). Plus, 42 percent of the respondents 
asked me to send them EVERYTHING. And the EVERYTHING folks include 
reporters from places like the Wall Street Journal and USNews &World 
Report. One NYTimes reporter simply wrote back: "the works. thanks."

*Working with the News Office*
An hour or so before this meeting I got a call from an Editors' Club 
member who wondered who to contact at the News Office with a story 
idea. She suggested that it might also make a nice topic for this 
meeting....and she's right! So here goes:

If you have any questions/story ideas related to RESEARCH, call me. 
Questions/story ideas about anything ELSE should go to Bob Sales AND 
Alice Waugh at rjsales at mit.edu and awaugh at mit.edu. Their numbers are: 
x3-1682 (Bob) and x8-5401 (Alice).

Alice reminded me that lots of cool resources/tips for working with 
the News Office will soon be on the web. Our web site is going 
through a nifty redesign that should be available at the end of 
January. Of special interest to MIT Editors  Club members, it will 
include sections on "how to submit story ideas to the News Office for 
Tech Talk and press releases," "A quick new-writing primer," "getting 
your news covered by the media," and "how to prepare for an interview 
with a reporter."

*Older Eyes*
Debbie Levey, editor of the newsletter for Civil and Environmental 
Engineering, told us of a call she received recently from a Professor 
Emeritus who took her to task for reducing the newsletter's print 
size. Thing is, she hadn't. Which led to a nice conversation, she 
said, about getting one's eyes checked. Anyway, Debbie's anecdote led 
to a tip from Susan Curran that's applicable to all MIT 
communicators: Make sure that the type on your web site is 
*resizeable.*


*SPAM, SPAM GO AWAY*
And now for the part of the minutes you were all waiting for: how to 
stop spam. Spam Assassin is a service available at  
http://web.mit.edu/is/services/email/nospam/index.html. Essentially 
it deposits suspected spam in a separate e-mail box that you can then 
review every day to make sure something "good" didn't get picked up 
as well.

A tip from me: I *thought* I'd already been using Spam Assassin, and 
wasn't that impressed because I was still getting a lot of junk mail. 
It turns out, however, that I was using just one tiny aspect of the 
program. Yesterday, immediately after the meeting, I got the entire 
program working (thanks to the web site above), and came in this 
morning to find that it had caught 75 spam messages. Yay!

*Next Meeting*
I'll be in touch in the New Year with dates for the next Editors' 
Club meetings.

Happy Holidays,

Elizabeth
-- 
===================================
Elizabeth A. Thomson
Assistant Director, Science & Engineering News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
===================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/editors/attachments/20031218/c3e372e5/attachment.htm