Show Historical Note
Purpose/Scope:
The primary duty of the Public Relations Department is to generate and distribute information about programs, people and events at the university to people in media, such as television, radio, newspapers and special interest groups. The goal of this information is to spread awareness about the university and its activities, encourage accurate news coverage about NLU’s initiatives and special projects, promote the prestige of NLU to people inside and outside the university.
The Public Relations Department work is not directed at bringing in new students or revenue. While work in the communications department may increase revenue, it is a secondary benefit and not primary.
Examples of items produced by the Public Relations department are: press releases, news clippings that are the result of press releases, news reports that are the result of press releases, interviews with reporters, official statements to the press, media/expert directories, information tools for people in the media, press kits for members of the press attending an NLU event, graduation information, Inside NLU newsletter, white papers, information/photographs from special events and other photographs of NLU.
Development, Growth (Past):
For the past several decades, the Public Relations Department was a sub-division of Public Affairs along with Government Relations and Publications. Recently these departments became part of the larger department of Marketing and Communications, which includes Public Relations, Government Relations, Publications and Marketing.
Structure (Present):
See NLU_PublicRelations_OrganizationChart.pdf in administrative histories folder.
Special considerations for organization of records:
Press releases are often compiled by an outside company and should be kept in their original order. The news clippings that result from these press releases should be kept with or near their corresponding press releases. Clippings are often assembled into binders by a clipping service. Cision is our clipping service as of 2008-10-30. These two items are part of the same process and together tell a story about NLU’s interaction
While Public Relations/Communications and Marketing are separate departments, some of their activities overlap. In addition now they are both sub-departments of the Marketing and Communications Department. Because of these connections, Communications/Public Relations and Marketing should each be their own series, but should be both physically adjacent and linked in the metadata file if need be.Sources:
Interview with Tracy Kremer on 2008-12-15
