[Editors] MIT Editors' Club minutes, 3/14/05
Elizabeth Thomson
thomson at MIT.EDU
Tue Mar 15 11:48:49 EST 2005
MIT EDITORS' CLUB
*Meeting Notes from March 14, 2005*
A warm welcome to Emily Kearney and Kathryn O'Neill, two new members
of Editors' Club. Emily is the new communications officer for the
Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, while
Kathryn is the new News Office news manager (try to say that 10 times
fast :)
*Key Contact*
MANY of you will get to know Kathryn O'Neill well. As the News
Office's news manager, " basically I'm in charge of all words going
out of the office," she said. As a result, she's the person to
contact about upcoming events, story ideas, etc. My other colleagues
and I are still quite happy to hear from you as well, but Kathryn is
now the primary contact. She can be reached at kathryno at mit.edu,
x8-5401.
*Newsaggregators/Real Simple Syndication*
At an Editors' Club meeting just about a year ago Robyn Fizz of
Information Systems and Technology introduced us (well, certainly
me!) to these computer "thingies" (my word) called newsaggregators or
Real Simple Syndication (RSS). At the time, she said that RSS could
spell a new way for communications offices around the Institute to
share news with the rest of the MIT community.
RSS came up again at this meeting because more and more people at MIT
are using the technology, which is essentially a way for any one of
us to pick what publications we want to get news from every day, and
receive that news in the configuration we like best. "Think of it as
an online newswire," said Catherine Avril, director of Communications
for the School of Engineering. Next week the School of Engineering
hopes to initiate an RSS feed on its web site. The News Office
currently offers three RSS feeds from our web site at
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>. (Contact my colleague Lisa
Damtoft at damtoft at mit.edu, 3-3094 if you have questions about how
you can use the News Office feeds.)
Robyn notes that the April issue of her newsletter, i/s, will feature
an overview of RSS. In the meantime, you can also check out the RSS
Quickstart guide at
http://rss.lockergnome.com/resources/articles/quickstart.phtml.
*NSF Communications Update*
A few months ago I told this group about how the National Science
Foundation is eager to collaborate with universities on press
releases about NSF-funded research. (I still have extra copies of
their CD, the Communications Toolkit for Researchers, if any of you
would like one!)
Well, here's a giant success story about a recent MIT-NSF
collaboration. Perhaps you'll recall the recent News Office story on
RoboToddler (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/robotoddler.html ). A
few weeks ago Toddler (and its two "sisters" from other universities)
was the focus of a press conference in DC held in conjunction with
the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual
conference.
MIT, NSF, the two other universities, and the AAAS worked closely
together to make that press conference and the robots' debut a
success. Among other things, the NSF visited MIT last summer to film
our robot using MIT Video Productions.
Recently NSF sent me an *85 page* report on the media coverage that
resulted. Here's a summary:
Radio: (solely from National Science Foundation satellite feed --
others may exist): 455 radio broadcasts reaching 3,316,950 people
(est.)
Television: Monitoring services currently show a total of 25
broadcasts with an audience of 3,825,000 people (est.)
Print: New York Times, Times (London), Washington Post, NPR, BBC,
AFP, AP and several dozen others (not including the multiple wire
service copies).
In sum: through this collaboration MIT not only received a great deal
of press, but NSF followed through with a media report AND the video,
which we can use, all on their nickle. Granted this is an extreme
example of the benefits of collaboration, but it sure makes me want
to keep the NSF apprised of any future MIT stories!
*News Clips*
Every day my News Office colleague Patti Foley compiles an electronic
"clip packet" of media stories about MIT or of general interest to
the Institute. If you would like to receive that packet, please send
Patti a note at pfoley at mit.edu. Nancy Stauffer of the Lab for
Energy and the Environment notes that she often forwards specific
stories from the packet to faculty who might be interested, which not
only reminds them of her presence (and interest in their news) but
generates goodwill.
*Next Meetings*
The next meetings of MIT Editors' Club are:
Thursday, APRIL 21
Tuesday, MAY 10
Thursday, JUNE 16
All meetings will be in the News Office (11-400) from 12-1.
Cheers!
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/20050315/eba9f39d/attachment.htm
More information about the Editors
mailing list