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The Division of Marketing and Communications is pleased to announce the IUP Now newsletter, the long-awaited replacement for IUP Dailyand the Beak.

We launch on Monday, October 5. Information sessions for web maintainers and other interested employees will be held throughout this week. (Details are at the end of this news item.)

For most people in the IUP community, no action is needed. You'll start receiving the new newsletter on Monday. You can stop reading now!

However, if you're a regular contributor to IUP Daily or theBeak or just curious—read on for all the details.

A New IUP Publication

Unlike IUP Daily and theBeak—which for the most part just aggregated what was in our website news feeds and calendars—IUP Now has been conceived from the ground up as an online publication. Elaine Jacobs Smith, editor in chief, and our IUP Now team will be working to plan, build, and edit each issue for maximum impact and readability.

The IUP Now newsletter is the first phase of a revised news, events, and communications presence for IUP. The second phase, a thoroughly revised IUP Now website, will be built after we've completed our migration to a new website back end.

What's Different?

A lot. Here's a rundown of some of the biggest changes.

• IUP Now is the newsletter forallof IUP.It will be delivered to students and employees.

• A new, more visual, less busy design. Visually, IUP Now is much easier to read. We're also cutting down the size of the newsletter by only including each news item once.

• Works better on mobile devices. The newsletter is responsive and easy to read on phones and tablets.

• Only four issues per week. Between theBeakandIUP Daily, we had been sending out ten newsletters per week.

• Employees will receive all student-oriented news items. As a student-focused institution, it's important that all employees know and understand what's happening with and for our students.

• Continuous improvements. Our new email software will provide us with quantitative data on how many people at IUP are reading IUP Now. We'll use those insights, along with comments from our readers, to improve the newsletter over time.

• Deadlines for content are earlier. See below for full details.

Say Less, Communicate More

Ever have trouble figuring out what's actually new in IUP Daily or the Beak? Us, too.

One of the major issues with our current newsletters is that they look substantially the same from day to day. That's partly because the design is the same from day to day and partly because the content is substantially the same, if not identical, from day to day.

To fight against this sea of sameness, IUP Now presents different types of content each day of the week:

• Monday: A feature story and achievements from throughout the IUP community.

• Wednesday: News and announcements.

• Thursday: Central calendar. Everything happening at IUP for the next seven days.

• Friday: "Catch-up day": news, announcements, success tips for students, bulletin board for employees.

Deadlines

In order to make IUP Now the publication that IUP needs, MarCom needs everyone's contributions a day earlier. This change will require some additional planning ahead, but it will also result in a substantially better newsletter.

In brief: make sure your contributions are in two business days before the next newsletter. Here's the full schedule.

[2/17/23 Update: See the current IUP Now publication schedule.]

What's the Same? No Unsubscribes.

Without a doubt, the number one newsletter request we've gotten over the years is "Please unsubscribe me." We have always turned down those requests for students and employees—and we'll have the same policy for IUP Now.

Here's why: IUP Now, like its predecessors, will be the university's primary, official communication to students and employees. If the university community needs to know it, it'll be in IUP Now. Any students or employees who unsubscribed would be missing vital information that they need to be successful at IUP.

That said, if what you're getting is IUP Now isn't what you need, or you see ways to make IUP Now better, let us know. We are dedicated to making this newsletter the best it can be.

What's Coming Next?

There will be many changes along the way for IUP Now, but we'd like to call out two important ones:

• Our transition to our new email software will temporarily prevent us from sending IUP Now to off-campus subscribers. Once we've restored that functionality, we'll take all current off-campusIUP Dailysubscriptions and turn them into IUP Nowsubscriptions.

• We plan to give student organizations easier access to post their news and events on the website and IUP Now. This will require updating our website back end, currently scheduled for spring 2021. Once that's accomplished, we should have the ability to import events from Crimson Connect and other platforms.

Information Sessions

If you have questions not answered above—and here you are at the bottom of this very long post, so maybe you do—we have four information sessions coming up. They are oriented toward our web maintainers but are open to all:

• Tuesday, Sept. 29, 9:00 a.m. 

• Wednesday, Sept. 30, 1:00 p.m. 

• Thursday, Oct. 1, 1:30 p.m. 

• Friday, Oct. 2, 9:30 a.m.