Fayetteville Policies and Procedures  325.0 

Materials for Media Dissemination, Campus Publications and Mass E-Mail

It is the general policy of the Office of University Relations that all material submitted for inclusion in news releases and campus publications, including official news and information-oriented Web sites, be submitted in writing and must include a name and telephone number for a "contact person." No anonymous news tips, letters or news releases will be accepted.

The official medium for university information is Arkansas Newswire, an electronic multimedia news service delivered daily via e-mail to the entire campus community and posted online at http://newswire.uark.edu/. Arkansas Newswire is compiled, edited and produced exclusively by the Office of University Relations, is available to both internal and external audiences, and should be considered the primary source of current university news and information.

The Office of University Relations also produces print publications for an array of audiences in the university community. All publications produced with university funds must comply with the university’s editorial style and graphic identity standards, and be approved by University Relations before being issued publicly. Publications produced by individual campus units that do not meet or comply with university standards will be pulled and reproduced at the expense of the unit.

E-mail messages requiring timely notification for mass campus distribution must be determined to have a considerable impact upon the vast majority of the university community. This impact may pertain to public safety, university operating status, or other information deemed to hold significant and/or dire importance to students, faculty, and staff as a whole. The value of such email use must be balanced against the risk of diluting the attention given to such messages as well as the desire to avoid contributing to what is considered spam by some recipients.

As such, the use of mass e-mail is limited to exceptionally rare instances. Messages of a noncritical nature or having alternative forms of delivery – to include promotional announcements for events and meetings, news-of-record, and routine procedural or administrative updates – are not approved for mass e-mail delivery and should be conveyed via other means, such as Arkansas Newswire. Requests for campus-wide e-mail must be directed to the Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations.

Submission of information for any type of dissemination, including mass e-mail, will be subject to the editorial approval of the Office of University Relations, which further reserves the right to edit all content in accordance with the university’s editorial style, graphic identity and Web standards before being published.

Reformatted for Web May 15, 2014
Revised January 22, 2010
Revised April 1, 2008
Revised March 1, 2008
Revised November, 1998
March 14, 1990