What is the Daily Bulletin?
Established in May 1993, the Daily Bulletin is an electronic news bulletin issued daily for people at the University of Waterloo, available on the World Wide Web directly or through the Current Students, Faculty, and Staff pathway pages. The Daily Bulletin is also active on Twitter.The Daily Bulletin’s RSS feed is available here. A text version is posted each day to the newsgroups uw.general and uw.campus-news.
The Daily Bulletin has been described as "a combination of breaking news, facts, highlights and a modest amount of literary comment".
Who creates it?
The internal communications staff in the office of Marketing and Strategic Communications, (formerly Communications and Public Affairs) who also produced the weekly UW Gazette until it ceased publication in 2004. The editor and usual author of the Bulletin is Brandon Sweet, associate director of internal communications.Except where otherwise specified, the Daily Bulletin is written in the voice of its editor.
When does it appear?
At 9:00 a.m. each working day, 12 months of the year.What does it include?
Whatever the editor thinks people should hear about on a weekday morning:- Announcements and news of campus-wide importance.
- Brief mentions of events taking place in the next day or two.
- Information that will be of widespread use to people on campus.
- Links to Web pages both at UW and elsewhere that provide more information about whatever's being reported -- such as the full texts of reports, or the home pages of departments that are mentioned.
What does it not include?
- Advertising.
- Long texts reproduced word for word. (Sometimes there are excerpts and quotations to give the flavour of the original.)
- Announcements that will be of interest to only a few people.
What other communication vehicles might be more suitable for some information?
- The university’s events calendar
- The university’s Facebook page, or other social media sites
- Calls to Action (CTAs) on the pathways pages for students, faculty, and staff
- The newsgroup uw.general, to which anybody can post pretty much anything.
How do I get information onto the Daily Bulletin?
Send photos, links, announcements, suggestions, event notices and general information to the editor. E-mail to bulletin@uwaterloo.ca is the preferred way. The editor will consider your material and handle as seems appropriate.Information from other sources, such as campus newsletters and the proceedings of open meetings, will also find its way into the Bulletin, at the editor's discretion.
The primary place to announce activities (meetings, lectures, performances) happening at the university is through the Waterloo Events calendar. If you think it also deserves Daily Bulletin attention, you can e-mail separately to the editor of the Bulletin.
What's the deadline?
Preparation of the Bulletin is a continuous process. Usually only the last details are added to a day's Bulletin in the hour before it appears at 9 a.m.Please send all information for the Bulletin as far ahead of time as possible -- a month, if you know a month ahead of time that you've got something going. Twenty-four hours, if that's all you have -- but be prepared for the editor to grumble that it should have come sooner, so that it could receive better attention.
If you have last-minute information, please get in touch with the editor anyway; he'll get it into the Bulletin if possible. The editor is particularly grateful for e-mail received before 8 a.m. with news about important things that happened overnight.
Brandon Sweet
Updated September 23, 2014
