Press Release Submission

Utah State Today Specification Sheet

UTAH STATE TODAY is designed to tell the stories of the university. It is a reflection of the stories taking place at USU and a tool for communicating the university’s brand. The following guidelines are designed to assist with providing the highest quality materials to best represent the university.

Content Standards

When submitting stories, please include the following:

Required:

• Headline/title (required), 100 characters or fewer.
  Note: Because headlines will be in the URL for each story (enhancing SEO), those headlines should not be changed once published. Otherwise, a new link to the story will be created and any existing usage of the original link will discontinue.
• Introduction (required): 250 characters maximum.
• Story body (not required if the story is a video story).
• Story primary media (required): One image and captions, or one video and homepage placeholder image.
  Note: Primary images and placeholder images must be 1,600 pixels wide by 900 pixels tall when uploaded to Utah State Today, but as long as you send a strong horizontal, high-quality image, our editors should be able to crop and resize it.
• A writer and/or a contact must be listed:
  • Writer info (name, title, email, phone). Name and email are required if a writer is listed.
  • Contact (name, title, email, phone). This can be used as a media contact or general information contact. Name and email are required if a contact is listed.

Optional:

• Teaser (when appropriate), 450 characters or less.
• To enhance SEO within stories, look for opportunities to hyperlink words and phrases. Links could direct readers to college or department websites, USU’s degree finder, or other university pages.
• PDF: a PDF can be attached to a story (ex: a report).
• Suggested topic tags at the bottom of stories. The current list of Utah State Today topic tags is available at www.usu.edu/today/topics.

Story Multimedia (Video and Images) Standards

General Requirements:

• Provide photo captions in your email. Captions should describe what is happening in the photo: who is doing what, and when and where they’re doing it. This information about images we publish can be useful not only for Utah State Today’s audiences, but also for editors in the media and even for researchers, archivists and historians.
  • Provide photo credits at the end of captions in the format “(Photo Credit: USU/Levi Sim).”
    • If a university employee took the photo as part of their job duties, it’s considered work-for-hire and USU owns the copyright. This can help assure media outlets that the university owns the rights to the images we’re offering for their use.
    • If a researcher took the photo as part of their research or a university employee took the photo outside of their job description (as one of their hobbies, for example), they typically retain copyright to the photo and “USU” should not be included in the photo credit. Whenever possible, include the photographer as a media contact.
• Avoid embedding text or logos on the picture. Text contained in images is a barrier to accessibility, because it cannot be read by web browsers’ screen readers and often cannot fit within Utah State Today’s accessibility alt text field limits. Text and logos may not scale well and become unreadable on mobile devices.
• Avoid images of brochures or print materials (such as book or magazine covers) as an image. The text will not scale well, and the image may be difficult to make accessible. Consider submitting the images used to create those supplemental materials.
• Check for color correction and white balance before submission.
• Submit at least one image. Consider using USU stock photos, available at usu.photoshelter.com (make sure any images containing students are tagged “model release”). In rare cases where submitting an image is not possible, a default image of campus will be provided.
• Videos should be provided as URLs from a university YouTube account.

Primary Image:

Recommendation(s):

• The best primary images:
  • Are candid (not posed). Posed, professional-quality portrait shots of individuals or small groups are acceptable, but please avoid large group photos.
  • Contain action, ideally an action central to the story. (Ex.: a researcher conducting research or people at a previous event in the same series.)
  • Contain people’s faces. Please avoid photos of the backs of people’s heads, with the exception of professional-quality photo illustrations. (Ex.: An over-the-shoulder shot or a photo with a person’s face cropped out for a story about a sensitive topic where we want to be careful to avoid implying that the pictured individual is involved.)
• Avoid vertical images as the primary image. Vertical images can be used as secondary images. If horizontal images are not available, the minimum height for a vertical image is 900px. It will be altered to place it on a grey background to create an image 1,600 pixels wide by 900pixels tall.
  • Exceptions: A complex image such as a poster can be used as a primary image when it is relevant to the story. For example, the image of a poster that won a contest would work as a primary image. Please be mindful that images containing text can create barriers to accessibility.

Video:

Requirements:

• If the video is part of a playlist and the playlist is not relevant to the story, send a link to the video, not to the entire playlist.
• If the video is used as the primary multimedia asset, a primary image is needed to create the story card. It’s often easier to extract a good image from the video, but any other image will work (following the requirements defined previously for primary images).

Secondary Image:

Requirements:

• Size: 800px minimum width for horizontal or vertical images, 1600px width preferred
• Format: JPEG.

Anatomy of a Utah State Today post

• Story: Story elements that create a story page include a headline/title, introduction, teaser, story body, writer, story contact, additional resources (links), and media (primary image, primary video, secondary images or videos).
• Story card: This is the format used to display/announce a story on various pages (example: www.usu.edu/today). A story card is made of the story primary image, the story title and the story introduction.
• Story multimedia: Story media are images and/or videos used in a story.
• Primary multimedia: Main image or video used in a story. The primary media is published at the top of the story page.
• Secondary multimedia: Additional images or video published on the right column of a story page.
• Video story: a story where the primary media is a video. The video is published in place of the primary image on the story page. Ex: https://www.usu.edu/today/story/usu-students-provide-food-to-aid-area-food-pantries. Video stories use a primary image when the story is published in a story card. Video stories may or may not have an actual story body.