Making Headlines
The Bond University newsroom team received a gold Circle of Excellence Award in 2023 for their work to develop a strategy to increase the breadth of researchers providing expert commentary in the media. The goal was to boost the profiles of new and early-career academics, Ph.D. students, and experienced researchers. Here, Ken Robinson, Director, Media and Public Relations, for the Queensland, Australia, university shares his thoughts and advice for a strong media relations program.
What factors led you to rethink the media strategy at Bond University?
We are a smaller university—established in 1989, we are Australia’s first private university. We have less than 5,000 students, depending on the time of year. While we have top-notch researchers, we don’t have the sheer volume of research that often forms the media footprint of larger universities.
We overcome this by casting our net wider to include our students, alumni, and sportspeople. This turns out to be quite easy because Bond regularly ranks No. 1 in Australia for student experience; our alumni are also highly rated in terms of entrepreneurship; and we have a quite a few Olympians and championship teams.
But we didn’t overlook our academics. How do we get them out there without a daily supply of research? We decided to focus on providing expert commentary in the form of op-eds. Academics like op-eds because they can get their message across in full rather than being selectively quoted, and the media likes them because they have access to bona fide experts on the topics of the day.
You had a lot of success with placement in The Conversation. Tell us about that.
Because we have a small communications team, an effective way of producing op-eds and distributing them to a national and worldwide audience is via The Conversation website.
The Conversation was founded in Australia but has since spread to many other countries. Its articles are often republished by outlets like CNN and The Guardian, so it can be an effective way of getting your researchers out there.
Because of The Conversation’s success—they now have something like 40 million page views per month, including by republication—it became increasingly hard to have pitches accepted. Some of our academics were getting frustrated and telling us, “This is not a good use of our time.” We also had some early career researchers who wanted to boost their profile but weren’t ready for national or international exposure.
We decided to set up a “Conversation-lite” that could be a feeder system to the real thing. We have a good relationship with our local News Corp paper/website, The Gold Coast Bulletin, and they agreed to take one op-ed a week from our academics.
These are quite varied in nature. For instance, in the week that Australian Year 12 students graduated, we had a clinical psychologist talking about how students might deal with the disappointment of not getting into their preferred university. During a recent bushfire crisis, we had an arson expert talking about the types of people who light fires. Another op-ed was by a professor of construction management talking about problems in the delivery of infrastructure for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Often these opinion pieces are picked up by other News Corp websites, so they get exposure far beyond the local market. Our op-ed slot isn’t guaranteed, and if the subject matter isn’t right for the editors, they say, “no thanks,” and we try something else.
It seems like the timing of the topics is crucial to placement.
There are situations when the story almost places itself. We have one of the world’s foremost experts on sharks on our faculty. Whenever there is a shark attack, everyone wants to work with him. And the best-performing pieces affect the most people. One of our top articles included advice on best sleep positions, and of course everyone is trying to have better sleep. Another piece answered the question, “I had COVID months ago, why am I still coughing?”
We spend a lot of time on those obvious ones. But we don’t overlook the weird, niche topics. Two surprising top articles included “Meet the penis worm: don't look away, these widespread yet understudied sea creatures deserve your love.” And another addressed “What is love? In pop culture, love is often depicted as a willingness to sacrifice, but ancient philosophers took a different view.”
Like the researchers you are pitching, you’ve had some impressive measurable outcomes.
In the 12 months [leading] to November 2022, The Conversation published 58 articles by Bond academics. Of 39 Australian universities using The Conversation, these Bond articles had the 10th best total readership figure of more than seven million (double the previous year). In terms of average reads per article, Bond topped all universities. Considering that Bond is Australia's smallest in terms of staff and student numbers, this is a significant achievement. A lot of these academics were early career, first-time authors who had engaged with us through training. Five Bond researchers who had never been published on The Conversation have become regular authors due to our strategy.
The best-read article, by Assistant Professor Natasha Yates, was the one that addressed persistent coughing after COVID with 2.2 million views.
How have you followed the success of 2022?
So 2023 must have been even better, right? No!
A lot of our star performers in 2022 were early career academics, and early career academics tend to move around. We’re down to about 40 Conversation articles this year, and we’re on the hunt for the next batch of new authors.
We also put a lot of energy into pushing our people through podcasts this year, and there’s only so much you can do.
What is the biggest roadblock when it comes to highlighting your faculty in the media?
Lack of confidence. Some people need a bit of encouragement and support. One of our best performing op-ed writers, a medical professor, sent us a piece of writing and asked if we could do anything with it. We told her it was pitch-perfect. She just needed to hear that.
Many have a fear of misspeaking. Some academics have been burnt in the media, were misquoted, and then become anti-media. For them, we might say, “You don’t need to go on live TV.” Instead, we’ll find options where a journalist will send questions in advance so the professor can spend time thinking about their answers.
We hosted in-house Media 101 training sessions for our academics to provide support and reassurance. We brought a Conversation editor to campus to coach pitching and writing. We conducted mock interviews and provided insights into how the media works, as well as writing support. We basically created a safe space for our academics to get comfortable, gain confidence, and explore different mediums.
Something else that worked for us was to find some torch bearers – academics who want to increase their profile and that of the university, and who are having good results. I find that will rub off on other faculty members. It’s one thing for me to say, “This will be good for your career and funding.” But it’s so much better if a fellow academic says that.
There are times when, despite your best efforts, a faculty member is just not going to invest the time in this work. I’ve had that happen even with some academics in extremely interesting fields. That can be frustrating, but there are times when it is just best not to go down that rabbit hole. Invest your time in those who are willing and will accept the help. I often find the most receptive can be early career faculty members who need to build their profiles. They are usually quite adept on social media, so they are comfortable putting themselves out there.
What is your best tip for helping academics share their research with the public?
Find the medium they are comfortable with. Not everyone is confident going on live TV or radio. Maybe they want to write, maybe they’re a TikTok natural but just don’t know it yet.
For some academics, a podcast with a highly engaged, highly educated listenership of 100 people could be perfect for what they’re trying to achieve, be that research funding or connecting with government. For others, a mass market website with millions of readers will do the trick—but remember that in Australia at least, 40 to 50 percent of adults have literacy levels below the international standard required for participation in work, education, and society. To reach these people, we help professors avoid science-speak.
You came to Bond with a news background. Has that served as an advantage in your current position?
It has. I’m pretty good at predicting what stories will resonate and how to present them to outlets. I’ve worked with a lot of people over the decades, some at high levels around the world. I’ll send an email and ask them to look at something. It’s not a given. Not all will take me up on that.
How did you get into higher education media relations, and what do you find rewarding about it?
I was a mainstream working journalist and editor for almost 30 years. I was Managing Editor at the Gold Coast Bulletin. In the past decade there has been downsizing of newsrooms all over the world. I felt it was a good time to try something new, but I still wanted to do something where I could look at myself in the mirror every morning and still feel proud of what I was doing. I was approached by Bond and we went from there. Initially it was just me doing the writing and pitching. Over the last five or so years, our newsroom has grown to about 10 people, six of us full-time and then part-time help covering sports and clubs. My role has moved more to PR for the university, and communications, but I still love the news.
At first, I found the university setting quite slow to get things done compared to what I was used to. That was the biggest shock for me. But as I’ve settled in, I’ve come to embrace the pace and I do think Bond moves quickly for higher education.
It never ceases to amaze me how bright our students are and what they’ve already achieved so young in their lives. And the academics are so brilliant in their fields. It’s humbling to be on my end [helping] to tell their stories. That’s where the true reward comes in.
And, of course, I’m grateful to have such a talented team. Our full-timers include a news manager, PR manager, broadcast manager, videographer, and photographer. They are all at the top of their game. I’ve led newsrooms, and the talent in university communications can easily match them.
About the author(s)
Ellen N. Woods is Writer/Editor at CASE.
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