Columns::Headline news: National media coordinator secures favorable press coverage for the university

since 12/15/98

Columns::April 8, 2002

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Headline news
National media coordinator secures favorable press coverage for the university

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Kim Carlyle (left) has now been national media coordinator in UGA’s News Service for a year. She talked with Columns about her approach and her goals.

Columns: How do you describe your work?

Carlyle: The short version is national media relations. That means I secure favorable coverage--mostly for research but also for some institutional programs--in national print and Internet media. And I work closely with the person who is responsible for broadcast media.

Columns: And how do you do that?

Carlyle: I develop relationships with reporters and find out what their needs are--and fill those needs. I do that in a number of ways. I talk to them on the phone. I use an online database to find out who’s covering what, which reporters and which outlets cover a particular kind of story. In general interest publications or major newspapers I can pull up a list of editors by beat. If I have a story from the vet school, for instance, I can target veterinary magazines but also reporters at newspapers.

Columns: And for such a story you’d work with the person who does media relations in the vet school?

Carlyle: Yes, the majority of the stories that I hear about are from the public information officers at the schools, because it’s very hard for me to know what 2,000 faculty across the university are working on. That’s probably the biggest challenge in my job. I rely on those people to feed me stories. They are often so burdened with other responsibilities that they don’t have much time to focus on national media relations. We all know that there is a lot of good research going on at the University of Georgia that people need to hear about, so my job is to do the relationship building and to tell the reporters at the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal and other outlets.

Columns: I think many people who read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would be surprised at the idea that it’s not the reporter’s job to find these faculty members.

Carlyle: Yes, that’s a common misconception. A lot of people don’t realize there is a whole industry--public relations--that helps reporters find stories and find sources. Reporters organize and select the news--my job is to feed them tips and let them know what’s going on.

Columns: Do reporters contact you when they’re working on a story?

Carlyle: Absolutely--that’s the other half of my job. I also do full-blown press releases about significant research projects. We might do photos and illustrations and put them up on the Web site as an online press kit. If we can hear about nationally relevant research projects early enough, then we can do that.

Columns: How much do you work with faculty members? Do you help them deal with reporters?

Carlyle: I can. It depends how much experience they have and what their needs are. Part of the service that this office offers is training if a faculty or staff member has little experience or is uneasy talking to reporters. We can help manage expectations, help them to form answers that will be helpful to the reporters, to give the reporter what he or she needs.

Columns: Of course, many people are reluctant to talk to the press.

Carlyle: We can help them understand how a reporter works. Sometimes you talk for half an hour and get one sentence in coverage, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a value in being a good source for background information too.

Columns: What’s the advantage for a faculty member who talks to a reporter about his or her research?

Carlyle: That’s a very good question. One professor with whom I work gave me a good answer; he said, “Why am I doing this if nobody knows about it?” It helps to get recognition, which in turn may help to get funding. It also helps build the reputation of the department and the university.

Columns: Is this your first university position?

Carlyle: Yes, my background is non-academic--corporate and agency PR. I worked for two top-10 PR agencies and most recently I worked at a Fortune 500 company. Media relations is pretty much the same everywhere. If you have a story idea, you need to get it to the media and that’s pretty much the essence of my job no matter where I work.
The difference here is that academics have different objectives than the corporate world. It’s harder to get people to all talk to the same message points, and it’s also harder to get academics to understand the urgency of the media. Daily newspapers have a daily deadline; Internet media can have hourly deadlines--and academics think in terms of months.
I think it’s also a little bit harder to find stories in such a decentralized environment. In the corporate world, you have a CEO and everybody else follows in line, but there’s not the same kind of chain of command here. It’s sometimes hard to even know what’s going on. I’ve been meeting with the school public information officers and deans to let them know that there’s someone here to do this work for them--all I need is for them to call.
Because academics build their reputation through their career, reporters may already know them. They may give interviews and we don’t know about it, because the reporter didn’t begin with this office. That’s fine, of course, but we’d like to know. Every day Public Affairs puts out a clip report, called “Georgia Morning,” a collection of all the stories in which the University of Georgia appeared in print the day before. It’s very useful if people let us know when they give interviews, so we can track that coverage and see what’s being said about the university.

Carlyle can be reached at kosborne@uga.edu or 583-0913.

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Columns is produced by the UGA News Service, a unit of UGA Public Affairs.
Beth Roberts: Columns editor, Juliett Dinkins: Columns managing editor,
Janet Beckley: Columns art director. Peter Frey: Columns photo editor

Questions or comments should be directed to columns@uga.edu