[Editors] MIT Editors' Club minutes, 3/14/05

[Elizabeth Thomson]

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

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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>
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