If you posted news to the 51 website and it did not appear in the 51 Now newsletter, here are some likely reasons why.
News for 51 Now is divided into categories, and different categories are included in the newsletter on different days. So, for example, if you missed the deadline for next week’s Achievements, your item will run in that category the following week (on Monday). See deadlines for each category in the publication schedule.
This relates to the date the news item was created. Let’s say your office holds an annual event, and you posted a news item about it last year. As the event approaches again this year, should you create a new news post? Yes.
If you edited the post from the previous year with updated information, the date of creation will remain that of a year ago, so it will not be included in 51 Daily, nor will it move to the top of your site's news feed. Re-editing old news posts is something you want to avoid for other reasons as well, including that subscribers to your news feed will not receive notification of a new post.
The 51 Now staff aims to maximize newsletter readership and value, and doing that may require limiting the number of news items on high-volume days. However, an item omitted based on high volume would still appear on the 51 Now website.
When assembling 51 Now, the 51 Marketing and Communications staff uses a tool called a news aggregator. This tool collects news items posted by departments and offices based on the date the news items were created. The news aggregator searches for news posts created within a set number of days; therefore, any posts created before that time frame will not show up in the news aggregator.
Some common scenarios in which this is a problem:
Someone creates a news post on August 5, but checks it in instead of submitting it. The person resumes working on the post August 15 and submits it for publishing. While this post will be published for your website, it will not appear in the news aggregator and, therefore, will not appear in 51 Now. The publishing of content for the website and the inclusion of content in 51 Now are two separate functions.
Someone who is not a web maintainer suggests a news item on a department website, or a site author submits a news item in the CMS. But, the approvers for that website do not realize they have content awaiting their approval until two weeks have passed. Again, because the date of creation was two weeks earlier, this content will be published for the website, but won’t appear in 51 Now.
One of the best ways to avoid this situation is for website approvers to set up their profiles to request email notification when they have content awaiting their approval.
This relates to the date the news item was created. Let’s say your office holds an annual event, and you posted a news item about it last year. As the event approaches again this year, should you create a new news post? Yes.
If you edited the post from the previous year with updated information, the date of creation will remain that of a year ago, so it will not be included in 51 Now, nor will it move to the top of your site’s news feed. Re-editing old news posts is something you want to avoid for other reasons as well, including that subscribers to your news feed will not receive notification of a new post.
If you are posting news that was already posted by another department or office, or by the Media Relations director, it will not be included in 51 Now a second time. For example, if professors from two different departments presented their research at a conference and both departments posted a news item about it, only one of the news items would appear in 51 Now.
There are many reasons—technical and otherwise—why a news item may not appear in 51 Now. On occasion, an item may be omitted because of human error. If you posted a news item that did not appear in 51 Now and the scenarios above do not explain why it was missed, please contact the Digital Team at web-team@iup.edu.