Working with Public Affairs on Press Releases

How our writers work

To publicize the university, the Public Affairs Office works with faculty, students, and staff to develop press releases that highlight interesting and newsworthy people and information. Most press release fall into one or more of these categories:

• Teaching and Research
• Profiles
• News Topics
• Events, Speakers, Seminars
• Hometown News Releases

The instructions for requesting press releases for two of these categories — Events, Speakers and Seminars and Hometown News Releases — are detailed in individual sections.

To cover other areas, writers in our office have adopted a beat system to cover specific colleges and areas of interest. If you have a story idea or news item to share, please contact the beat writer who routinely covers that beat. If you’re not sure which writer to call, contact Public Affairs at 372-3214 for assistance.

Requesting press releases for Events, Programs and Speakers

Details on an event should reach our office two to four weeks prior to the event. We often publicize events regionally as well as locally, and many newspapers in this area publish weekly, which means we have to prepare information ahead of time in order to meet their publication deadlines.

You may request specific publications and distribution dates for publicity about your event, but our office cannot guarantee that it will run on specified dates in specified publications. Unlike paid advertising, the news releases and photos we send out on a regular basis are free services available to the media to use as they see fit. We cannot guarantee that any press releases we prepare and distribute will run.

Graduating and Dean’s List students

• If you would like our office to send your information to a county different from the one listed as your permanent address, or if your family has recently moved, please provide us written notification of that information as soon as possible.

• Send your request to Tracey LeFevre, Campus P.O. Box 5056 or e-mail tlefevre@tntech.edu.

• If the Graduates and Dean’s List press releases have already been sent at the time of your request, you will be asked to provide your personal information directly to the newspaper of your choice. We can provide the contact information to you.

• The staff of each individual newspaper will determine if and when the information will be published. If you call our office, we can only provide you with the date the release was distributed.

• Please try to be patient and keep in mind the volume of Graduates and Dean’s List press releases our office must process each semester.

• If you discover, after a reasonable amount of time after graduation ceremonies, that your hometown newspaper still has not received TTU’s Graduates and Dean’s List information, please let us know and we will contact your hometown paper with your information.