Inside Iowa State readers who responded to a short survey in April generally expressed satisfaction with the news they read and how they receive it. Just over 1,500 of you participated, roughly 20 percent of ISU employees (including graduate assistants) who receive an email each Thursday morning inviting them into the latest edition. At 900 respondents, professional and scientific employees were the majority group.
You told us you're interested in reading about employee benefits and other human resources news, campus building projects, IT innovations that help you do your jobs better, state Board of Regents decisions and leadership changes at all levels of the university.
You told us you're busy and appreciate concise, tight writing (though some of you chastised us for not providing more detail). You asked us to pay more attention to the third leg of the land-grant stool, ISU Extension and Outreach. You also told us once a week is about as often as you want to hear from us (some universities distribute a daily news email). And while we received suggestions for every day of the week, about 95 percent of you said Thursday morning is a good time to grab your attention for a few minutes, so that won't change.
Here are a few changes we will make, with the intent of serving our readers better:
- When it's relevant, we'll include links at the end of a story to earlier, related articles.
- The Thursday email will include a new section that provides links to several of our news archives such as all editions of Inside Iowa State and a searchable index of several years' worth of regents meeting coverage. Soon, we'll have similar indexes for Faculty Senate and P&S Council coverage.
- We'll look into options for sharing snapshots about what different units, departments and offices on campus do and who they serve. Stay tuned.
Thank you to everyone who made time last spring for our readers' survey. While there likely won't be another formal survey in the next two years, we always appreciate hearing from readers. Send us your story suggestions, announcements, reception or groundbreaking dates. Let us know when we missed the boat. It all can be emailed to inside@iastate.edu.
Inside Iowa State staff,
Anne Krapfl, 294-7065
Diana Pounds, 294-4845
Erin Rosacker, 294-8870
Paula Van Brocklin, 294-5952
Internal Communications, Office of University Relations
