Humanities eNews incorporates updates and developments from across the Faculty of Humanities, including key developments and messages from the Dean, in one single easy-to-access place. It aims to:

• provide you with a simple route for highlighting news and information from your department or school to the rest of the Faculty
• keep you up to date with strategic developments and other activities in the Faculty
• help improve communication and information sharing across the Faculty.

Humanities eNews is sent out every other Friday, apart from around holiday periods. For example, the Easter edition will be sent on the Thursday before Good Friday, and publication days may vary around the Christmas break.

Types of story

Contributions from staff across the Faculty are vital to the success of Humanities eNews. We want to ensure that every story we publish is genuinely newsworthy and relevant to staff across departments. Your story should meet at least two of the following criteria:

• it's unusual (it does not happen on a regular basis)
• people need to know about it
• people want to know about it
• it's of interest to lots of people (not just your team/department)
• it's important.

Your story may fit into one of the following categories:

• Charity and community work - Your colleagues may know what you do at work but do they know the positive things you do outside of work? Have you been involved in an unusual charity event or helped improve someone’s life through community work recently? By submitting your story to Humanities eNews this work can be highlighted across the Faculty and raises the profile of those charities involved. (This does not need to be work related).
• Grants and funding - Have you or a colleague received a grant or research funding? Tell us what it will be used for and how Humanities will benefit. Do you have funding opportunities you want to publicise?
• Operational updates - Do you have an operational update that will be useful to staff across the Faculty? This may be new information that will improve their working processes or a way of sharing best practice among colleagues.
• Policies and processes - Has a new policy or process been approved that could have an impact on other staff in the Faculty?
• Research - You may want to highlight key research projects and developments in the Faculty and show how you are contributing to the achievement of the University's goals. Submitted stories could include published work, new projects, recent funding, significant conferences, scholarships, fellowships and new appointments.
• Social responsibility - Do you want to highlight work/projects around social responsibility or environmental sustainability?
• 'Spotlight on' - This is a feature in which we interview a member of staff or a team about their work in the Faculty and their interests outside of work. We will focus on keeping you up to date with current topics of interest, as well as finding out more about the people behind the stories, whether that’s an individual or a team. Those taking part are asked to provide their responses to four or five set questions, as well as a photograph of themselves to accompany the interview. If you would like to be involved or if you can recommend a member of staff (academic or professional support staff) who would be willing to take part, please email us, with as much notice as possible if your involvement would be linked to a piece of upcoming work.
• Staff achievements and awards - Do you have a member of staff who has carried out a significant piece of work which you feel should be highlighted to others or who has received an award for a specific project? This section will highlight the successful work being undertaken across the Faculty.
• Teaching and learning - This is an opportunity to highlight both student and staff successes, such as awards, work with schools and other external organisations, new programmes and appointments.

If you are submitting a number of stories about the same area/topic (eg staff training or awards), you should group these together in a single item where possible.

Editorial policy and publishing restrictions

The University's IT Policies and Procedures provide detailed guidance on the restrictions that apply to the use of e-mail and electronic publication. For the purposes of Humanities eNews, the following will not be accepted for publication.

• Stories initiated by students.
• Stories of a personal nature, e.g. engagement, wedding or birth notices.
• Reminders relating to stories published previously.
• Commercial or advertising material unrelated to the business of the University, including items for sale, accommodation wanted or offered, property lost and found.
• Advertising of events booked into University venues by external organisations which are not affiliated with the University.
• Material that purports to come from an individual other than the user actually sending the message, or with forged addresses (spoofing).
• Material that is sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, pornographic, paedophilic or similarly discriminatory and/or offensive.
• Material that advocates or condones, directly or indirectly, criminal activity, or which may otherwise damage the University's reputation.
• Text or images to which a third party holds an intellectual property right, without the express written permission of the rightsholder.
• Material that is defamatory, libellous, harassing or threatening.
• Material that could be used in order to breach computer security, or to facilitate unauthorised entry into computer systems.
• Material that is likely to prejudice or seriously impede the course of justice in UK criminal or civil proceedings.
• Material containing personal data (as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998) about third parties, unless their permission has been given explicitly, in the case of sensitive personal data, that data is adequately protected and this use of the data has been formally notified to the Data Protection Commissioner by the University, or the information is covered by a relevant exemption under the Act.

How do I write my story?

When writing your story, you should observe the following guidance:

• provide the "five Ws" (who, what, why, when and where)
• use the inverted pyramid style of writing (ie begin your story with the most striking feature(s), perhaps the outcome, and then follow up with the detail)
• keep your language simple and clear (avoiding jargon and clichés), and your sentences short
• always spell out acronyms on first use
• present key information as bullets to make it stand out
• don’t assume people know what you are talking about
• ensure the story is current.

As a general rule, you should restrict the length of your story to 250-300 words. If you write a story that exceeds this limit, the Editor will reduce it to the required length.

You can provide a link to additional information on a separate website or page by including the URL in the story. If you do include a link, please ensure it is live before you submit your story.

Do I need to provide a photograph?

We include an image for any story that is selected for Humanities eNews. Images should be:

• submitted as .jpg or .gif files
• colour images, high quality and capable of being resized to 218x150 pixels landscape
• reflective of either the subject of the article or the person/people involved.

If you're unable to provide a photograph, we can arrange to take a photograph on campus or we will attempt to do our best to source appropriate images from the University's image library.

Please follow the process outlined at the top of this page to submit a story to us.

All news stories submitted for publication will go to the Faculty Communications and Marketing Team, who will consider whether the item is suitable for publication. If the story is not suitable for Humanities eNews, we will consider if other internal communications channels are more appropriate. These channels include:

• the Director of Faculty Operations Team Brief video
• eUpdate
• Humanities StaffNet
• the media
• Message from the Dean
• news web pages
• social media channels
• staff and student eNewsletters and messages
• the University Magazine
• University StaffNet.

All stories sent up to the day before publication will be considered. Those selected will be added to Humanities StaffNet as soon as possible, and a summary included in the weekly eNews on Friday.

The Editor will decide what submitted news is published and reserves the right to edit any information received. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we will not be able to return the final article to you for approval so please ensure you include all relevant details when you submit your story. The Editor's decision is final.

If we decide that the item is suitable for Humanities eNews, the Editor will write a brief summary of the content (strapline) which will enable the reader to decide whether they wish to see the full story, and will reserve the right to edit the story as necessary, especially those exceeding the 250-300 word limit.

We will continue to regularly monitor the usefulness and popularity of Humanities eNews through detailed analytics and feedback. Information gathered will be used to inform improvements and developments to the eNewsletter to ensure it remains relevant to staff.

Subscribing to eNews

As a member of staff in the Faculty of Humanities, you should automatically be added to the distribution list for eNews.

If, for some reason, this has not happened please contact imogen.fan@manchester.ac.uk.

Unsubscribing from eNews

If you are leaving the Faculty, you should automatically be removed from the eNews distribution list. However, this may take a month or so to happen.

If you would like to be removed from the eNews distribution list immediately, please contact imogen.fan@manchester.ac.uk.

Humanities eNews is used as a key channel of communication from the Dean and Faculty Leadership Team, therefore all Humanities staff are expected to remain on the distribution list.

The Humanities listserv is only used to send out all-staff emails from the Dean’s Office. This is to ensure that any important/key messages from the Faculty Leadership Team are recognised as such and your inboxes are not filled with less strategic/urgent /important messages.

Please send any staff changes to humsnews@manchester.ac.uk and we will include them in a regular staff update in the weekly Humanities eNews.

If you have a message to communicate (for example, a call for papers or calls for funding application collaborators) and you are not sure how to contact the relevant people, please contact the Communications and Content Team.

• Exclusive interviews
• Finding expert commentary
• Informal media briefings
• Photocalls
• Press conferences
• Producing statements on difficult stories
• Traditional press releases

• You have a story that passes the ‘So what?’ test
• You have research or news that you think will interest the public
• Your area of expertise is in the news
• You have heard about a student that has done something extraordinary

If a journalist contacts you directly and you are not confident with dealing with them, take some details: the name, contact details, name of media outlet, nature of the inquiry and deadline. Tell them that someone from the Media Relations team will call them shortly, and contact Joe Paxton for advice and support.