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The Division of Marketing and Communications is pleased to announce the ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now newsletter, the long-awaited replacement for ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Dailyand the Beak.

We launch on Monday, October 5. Information sessions for web maintainers and other interested employees will be held throughout this week. (Details are at the end of this news item.)

For most people in the ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ community, no action is needed. You'll start receiving the new newsletter on Monday. You can stop reading now!

However, if you're a regular contributor to ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Daily or theBeak or just curious—read on for all the details.

A New ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Publication

Unlike ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Daily and theBeak—which for the most part just aggregated what was in our website news feeds and calendars—ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now has been conceived from the ground up as an online publication. Elaine Jacobs Smith, editor in chief, and our ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now team will be working to plan, build, and edit each issue for maximum impact and readability.

The ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now newsletter is the first phase of a revised news, events, and communications presence for ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ. The second phase, a thoroughly revised ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now website, will be built after we've completed our migration to a new website back end.

What's Different?

A lot. Here's a rundown of some of the biggest changes.

• ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now is the newsletter forallof ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ.It will be delivered to students and employees.

• A new, more visual, less busy design. Visually, ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now is much easier to read. We're also cutting down the size of the newsletter by only including each news item once.

• Works better on mobile devices. The newsletter is responsive and easy to read on phones and tablets.

• Only four issues per week. Between theBeakandºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Daily, we had been sending out ten newsletters per week.

• Employees will receive all student-oriented news items. As a student-focused institution, it's important that all employees know and understand what's happening with and for our students.

• Continuous improvements. Our new email software will provide us with quantitative data on how many people at ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ are reading ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now. We'll use those insights, along with comments from our readers, to improve the newsletter over time.

• Deadlines for content are earlier. See below for full details.

Say Less, Communicate More

Ever have trouble figuring out what's actually new in ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Daily or the Beak? Us, too.

One of the major issues with our current newsletters is that they look substantially the same from day to day. That's partly because the design is the same from day to day and partly because the content is substantially the same, if not identical, from day to day.

To fight against this sea of sameness, ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now presents different types of content each day of the week:

• Monday: A feature story and achievements from throughout the ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ community.

• Wednesday: News and announcements.

• Thursday: Central calendar. Everything happening at ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ for the next seven days.

• Friday: "Catch-up day": news, announcements, success tips for students, bulletin board for employees.

Deadlines

In order to make ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now the publication that ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ needs, MarCom needs everyone's contributions a day earlier. This change will require some additional planning ahead, but it will also result in a substantially better newsletter.

In brief: make sure your contributions are in two business days before the next newsletter. Here's the full schedule.

[2/17/23 Update: See the current ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now publication schedule.]

What's the Same? No Unsubscribes.

Without a doubt, the number one newsletter request we've gotten over the years is "Please unsubscribe me." We have always turned down those requests for students and employees—and we'll have the same policy for ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now.

Here's why: ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now, like its predecessors, will be the university's primary, official communication to students and employees. If the university community needs to know it, it'll be in ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now. Any students or employees who unsubscribed would be missing vital information that they need to be successful at ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ.

That said, if what you're getting is ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now isn't what you need, or you see ways to make ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now better, let us know. We are dedicated to making this newsletter the best it can be.

What's Coming Next?

There will be many changes along the way for ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now, but we'd like to call out two important ones:

• Our transition to our new email software will temporarily prevent us from sending ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now to off-campus subscribers. Once we've restored that functionality, we'll take all current off-campusºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Dailysubscriptions and turn them into ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Nowsubscriptions.

• We plan to give student organizations easier access to post their news and events on the website and ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ Now. This will require updating our website back end, currently scheduled for spring 2021. Once that's accomplished, we should have the ability to import events from Crimson Connect and other platforms.

Information Sessions

If you have questions not answered above—and here you are at the bottom of this very long post, so maybe you do—we have four information sessions coming up. They are oriented toward our web maintainers but are open to all:

• Tuesday, Sept. 29, 9:00 a.m. 

• Wednesday, Sept. 30, 1:00 p.m. 

• Thursday, Oct. 1, 1:30 p.m. 

• Friday, Oct. 2, 9:30 a.m.