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Brief submission guidelines

Brief is the official University of Minnesota staff and faculty weekly news digest, featuring human resource, employee benefit, administrative, legislative, budgetary, event, and other pertinent information. Publication is every Wednesday during academic terms. The deadline for submissions is at noon on the Friday before the date of publication.

Brief relies on the content provider to be the expert in determining the "value" of the submission; however, the editor retains the final decision on publication. Submissions should be regarded as "high-level" information. Because of this, Brief prefers having a single individual contributor designated per campus/college/department. Generally, this person is your communications professional. For the coordinate campuses, those individuals are: Elizabeth Tollefson (UMC); Christiana Kapsner (UMD); Melissa Weber (UMM); and Julie Sawyer (UMR).

Criteria for inclusion in Brief
--Brief is generally limited to fewer than 2,500 words total, after which entries may be held over for publication in the order in which they were submitted.
 
--Submissions should be 75 words or less and include only relevant, factual information. Because Brief entries are succinct, events should offer a link to more information. Those with links will be favored over those without more information.
 
--Entries will not be included more than once per quarter unless there is significant justification to do so from an administrative perspective. Entries will never appear in repeated (back-to-back) issues.

--The Brief editor retains the right to edit content according to Brief style and at the editor’s discretion. When making modifications to an entry, the editor will make every effort to notify the contributor of those changes before publication, but it may not always be possible to do so; Brief is on a strict publication timeline. We ask for your understanding in this.

A word on content
--The news is “need-to-know” administrative news.

--The news should be of broad appeal to faculty and staff. Esoteric events should first seek out a more targeted University publication.

--The news helps to make the University more accessible to, and create connections (build relationships) among faculty and staff.

--The news promotes healthy lives for faculty and staff.

--The news includes components of the U’s mission of outreach, research, teaching and education.

--Brief will not include calls for research participants or course advertisements.

--For information on feature stories that appear in Brief, see criteria for selecting a homepage story, or attend one of the monthly story sharing meetings.

A word on events
--Events that are sponsored by or directly involve faculty/staff and/or that appeal to faculty/staff will be preferred.

--Events should take place on the respective campus. Events held off-campus are in most cases considered only after on-campus events have been included.

--Brief will in general not include multiple events from the same unit/college/department within the same issue in order to give equal opportunity for space to the many contributors, and to focus on high priority events.

--Events should appear in Brief with some advance notice prior to the event. Events submitted that occur on the day of publication will receive a lower priority and, depending on the volume of submissions, may be excluded.

--Free events will be favored over fee-required events.

Criteria for inclusion in the People section of Brief
The People section of Brief is for those announcements/awards heavily focused on an individual. Most important are those individuals who are on the payroll—faculty and staff. (The main category left out is alumni). People featured usually include faculty, dean designation or above, executive administration, or an administrative appointment that touches all colleges/departments in its function—for example, a director of equity and diversity. In general, the awards featured are of major significance. For more information, see U awards. For more information, see People submission guidelines.

Other U of M publications
Brief is the U-wide publication for faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota. For other publications at the U (list is not all-inclusive), please see U of M Publications.