Research Papers and Conferences

News hook

First question of research papers and conferences: Is the (online) publication/presentation date in the future? If not, it might make a good web story, but it's not useful for press outreach.

The exception to this rule is journals that upload papers as soon as they are accepted. Then, we try to get our materials together as quickly as possible, because that web publication date is the news hook as far as editors are concerned.

Importance

What journal is the study (to be) published in? What's the impact factor? Impact factor does not rule out a paper from being covered, but it is does rule papers in. Most of the time, if the impact factor is above 18, we end up doing it. But there are many other journals that are important in their fields that have much lower impact factors, and we do write-ups of these too.

Interest

What are the applications? How close are they, how impactful are they, or how cool are they? 

Is this of interest to national news outlets or general science and technology publications? Is this of interest to publications serving specific fields? Local news?

Is this of interest to a field that is not well covered by any of the above?

Methods stories: Often in engineering, we get stories that are about a new device or technique that is really useful in a research setting. These are really difficult to get picked up.

How we reach out

Full press release - National news, or likely to do well with the sci/tech publications

Pitch - Could be picked up by a sci/tech pub or pub serving a specific field

Press release (Eurekalert only) - Likely not to receive legitimate coverage, but could get web exposure via press release regurgitators such as PhysOrg or ScienceDaily. 

Why

In our perfect world, reporters and editors look at our headline, at least, every time we send a press release or pitch. If we send too many that aren't useful, they stop looking at our stuff. So we have to be careful.

That said, there are gaps in the news outlets. Sometimes, researchers in fields that aren't well served end up getting news about their fields through the sites that just repost press releases.

Have a story for us?

Send an email to engineeringpitch@umich.edu

Come to the pitch meeting, 1 pm Mondays, 3214 SI North.