One of the toughest things I’ve done was travel around campus in the past year and listen to a common refrain: folks said they didn’t get enough of the good news about UTMB; that we were never in the media; that they never read/saw anything but bad stories. I had the benefit of seeing daily media clips in our office, so I knew there was lots of good news. There was a disconnect, however, and an important question: how best to widely share the good news and media highlights?
For several years we’ve been offering a subscription-based service. About 1200 people had signed up to get the daily UTMB news clips electronically, sent to them via mail. That was working OK, for the few people who knew about it. We knew we had to do something else with a broader reach. We started talking about a weekly summary, and ended up with what you saw yesterday and today: UTMB in the News, delivered daily via email.
I went into this with mixed feelings, concerned about burdening people with yet another daily email. I joked with my colleagues about their “spam.” But one of the newest members of the Public Affairs team, Mike Cooper, came up with a great, low impact design (and he’s also working hard on our new web home pages). The media relations folks keep plugging away, pitching great stories and people. A process was worked out. Information Services provided their usual great support, and the message was born. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think I learned something: people want to feel good about where they work, what they do, why we matter. So, at the end of the day, the option of being “plugged in” to good UTMB news is worth the few extra keystrokes it takes to delete a message.
If you have a question or comment about UTMB in the News, please send it to public.affairs@utmb.edu.