The Media Team and You
I hope you’ve been noticing some of the improvements in the many ways (and areas) the SSEC Media Team interacts with you and people outside our building. In this month’s column, I’d like to share our progress on communicating our science through news.
At the core, we are here to help build relationships with our audiences, sharing messages about our (your) science. With that in mind, the team has drafted a communications plan for the Center, which is now on Hank’s desk. We’ve outlined our communications mission and vision to encompass these key points:
- Provide information about SSEC research, goals, plans and progress, including the importance and impact of our research
- Develop and maintain support and trust for SSEC and the work that we do
- Increase and improve understanding of our scientific and educational endeavors.
Over the past few months, the media team has renewed its focus on developing professional news content for the SSEC news channel on the homepage. We felt it important to concentrate on our external communications – what the world was seeing about us – in order to bring more consistent messaging about our science.
We now have a process in place for making sure that we have regularly changing and interesting stories on our homepage, emphasizing the value, range and impact of SSEC’s – your – research and educational programs. As you already know, good writing is a product of solid research, good interviewing, good editing – none of which can happen without interesting topics. Fortunately for us, you provide an unlimited supply.
For example, among the stories we have published since February are an interview with Dr. Louis Uccellini on his promotion to NWS director, Jim Kossin on his IPCC involvement, Tim Schmit on the SRSOR, graduate student Bill Line’s near-casting work with Ralph Petersen, Jun Li on his dust research, and Elisabeth Weisz and Nadia Smith on their dual regression retrieval developments.
As a result of these efforts, we are collaborating more with UW Communications, an important step in broadening our reach. We’re also just beginning to implement some metrics so that we can gather data for informed decision-making.
We’d like to do more scientist profiles and more writing in general about the work that you are doing – always with a clear message that our science is solid, of clear benefit to all, and that we are good stewards of the funds the public entrusts to us. Within this framework, we’d like to include more stories about the work of our international scientists, women scientists, students and up-and-coming scientists. All of this will take time.
How can you help? There is lots we know, but lots we don’t know about your science and education activities. If your funding agency is going to publish a press release based on publication of a recent paper, let us know. If you are participating in a field campaign, let us know. If you have a unique collaboration or novel use of data, let us know. We would like to have an ongoing conversation about your work.
Our goal? Over time, we’ll get around to writing about all of you.
With a good system now in place, and a continuous flow of interesting story lines, we’re evaluating other areas for possible improvements.
The team has been discussing ways to optimize our internal communications – specifically, the employee newsletter, From Orbit. As part of that discussion we decided that if we were to make changes to the newsletter format or content, those changes needed to be based on reader feedback.
We’ve developed a very brief survey of nine questions to gather information and help us in decision-making. Survey responses are anonymized and you can only take the survey once. The survey will remain open until September 20, 2013.
Please take the From Orbit Survey.
We hope that everyone will provide feedback so that we can make this internal news vehicle a more effective means of communication.
In future columns, I’ll elaborate on other ways the media team promotes and facilitates awareness of SSEC. In the meantime, your comments and suggestions are always welcome.
by Jean Phillips
