Inside JCU Guidelines

About:
Inside JCU is one of John Carroll’s official sources for University-wide news, including significant University announcements, information that broadly affects the JCU community, and major campus events.

Inside JCU (both the website at inside.jcu.edu and the weekday emails) was established in 2011 to be the electronic news, events, and key links hub for the John Carroll campus community and is mostly targeted to reach current faculty, staff, administrators, and students. The Inside JCU website and emails replaced the University’s RootMail system, which provided JCU information on the web and via email for more than 10 years (and was in need of an upgrade).

What is posted:
The Inside JCU system was designed to raise awareness about University-related news, announcements, and events that broadly affect the greater JCU community. Those submitting content for Inside JCU should be aware of this when submitting their items. Surveys (particularly related to class projects) are generally not posted unless it has IRB approval and is sponsored by an official University organization or academic department.  Submitting does not guarantee items will be posted to Inside JCU.

What is not posted:
News, announcements, and events that are not related to the University or a University department are generally not posted. For example, weddings, births, personal items for sale, and any solicitations by non-University personnel will not be posted.

Items submitted by students or officially sanctioned student organizations must be approved by the Director of Student Activities Office. There is a button students can select on the “Submit an Item” online form, which automatically routes submissions to Student Activities for approval.

Inside JCU is not a good communications tool for information targeting only select groups of faculty, staff, administrators, and students.

Items that promote political opinions or views are generally not posted. Announcements of on-campus speakers with political backgrounds will be considered, but such announcements should not be used to advocate a specific political position. Inside JCU will not be used to promote specific political candidates. In addition, information promoting companies and/or their products will generally not be posted.

Information about most professional notes, presentations, awards, and papers generally are publicized in Faculty Notes (both in print and in Faculty Notes online).

Student publications and projects are generally not posted. Inside JCU generally does not accept submissions that are exclusively for students.

Submitting news, announcements, or events:
At the top of the Inside JCU website (inside.jcu.edu) there is a link labeled “Submit an Item.” Simply click the link and complete the form to submit your item.

Some submission tips:

• In your submission, please use complete sentences.
• Please include all degree/religious abbreviations (M.D., Ph.D., S.J., etc) as applicable.
• If you are submitting news about an event, please include the time, day, date, and location, including specific building and room number. Do not use abbreviations or informal building names. Please include whether the event is open to faculty/staff only, faculty/staff/students, faculty/staff/students/alumni, or the public at-large.

The “behind the scenes” info:
Once your item is submitted, it will be reviewed by the Integrated Marketing and Communications (IMC) team for consistent formatting and fact-checking. In addition, the team selects the news that most broadly affects the campus community to be highlighted in the top “Featured” area and in the graphic billboard space on the right-hand side.

One key change from RootMail is that Inside JCU contributors that want their content to appear on multiple days will no longer have to submit the same news or event item more than once. When your item is posted to Inside JCU, it will stay on the website. (For guidelines on repetitive events, please see below.)

Submission posting dates:
Please allow 48 hours before your news item or event is posted. Be sure to plan ahead for potential questions. It is recommended that you submit your information three to five days before your desired posting date so that questions may be addressed, or in case of a rare technological difficulty.

Please also be mindful of any breaks in the University schedule, e.g., holidays and major campus events, when submitting information. If your information needs to be posted during one of these breaks, please submit it seven to 10 days in advance.

In order to ensure that each posting is correct, each submission is checked by the Inside JCU Team during regular University business hours. Submissions are not checked on weekends. If you have an event or posting that needs to go up on a Monday, we recommend submitting the information the Thursday before.

Repetitive events:
To be fair to all news submitters, Inside JCU generally does not run particular items multiple times without special circumstance and prior approval from the Executive Director of Marketing and Creative Services. If approval is given, the following guidelines will be used:

• If the item is a weekly event, it will be emailed out once per week at the beginning of the week.
• If it is a monthly event, it will be emailed out once per month at the beginning of the month.
• If it is a large-scale campus event, we recommend posting two weeks before the event date. A “reminder” posting the day of the event (e.g., a Town Hall sponsored by leadership, or a campus-wide event like Celebrate the Spirit) will automatically be posted (without you having to re-submit).
• In addition to the ability to appear on the website permanently, Inside JCU has the ability to send a reminder posting on the date(s) of events. If you are submitting an event that is taking place on multiple days (for example, Masses for the observance of a Holy Day, a two-day conference), we recommend submitting each day separately. This will allow us to program a specific date to the event, which will make it appear in the “Inside JCU Events” calendar, and will automatically generate a reminder posting on the date of the event (these postings appear as “Today:….” entries in that morning’s email).

It is also recommended that events should not exceed these four guidelines, simply because repeated messages become diluted and readers ignore and disregard them. Over time, this will cause users to ignore Inside JCU emails and defeat the purpose. If you have an extraordinary announcement or event that you think should be posted more, please contact insidejcu@jcu.edu.

Other:

• Inside JCU will only accept items and information submitted via the online form; this includes photos for Photo of the Week (POTW), which are generally published on Fridays.
• Please allow extra time to process lengthy information or information that requires research, fact checking, or special HTML coding.
• The IMC department is the final arbiter in determining Inside JCU content and posting dates.
• These are general guidelines. Other conditions may apply. For more information about Inside JCU, email insidejcu@jcu.edu.

• University Style: For consistency among all University publications, the IMC team generally follows the writing style of the Associated Press (AP). In addition, the team also consults the Catholic News Service Stylebook where consistency with religious style is needed.
• The IMC team is not responsible for lost, late, misdirected, or incomplete news suggestions.
• The IMC team recommends that departments and organizations post calendars, events, news updates (particularly niche audience and lengthy information) on their own websites, to which Inside JCU may link.