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.