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Virginia Tech News Guide

Jump to a section: General Information | News Publishing Process | Publishing Videos | Using Visual Assets in Articles

Virginia Tech News is the hub for digital Virginia Tech storytelling and the university’s news and record. Readers can dive deep into written and visual stories of academics, campus experience, culture, impact, and research to get a sense of how Hokies are a force for positive change in the world. University colleges and units can tap into their area-specific tags to create syndicated newsfeeds for their own websites and promotions.

The information below outlines how submitted content is published on Virginia Tech News, along with best practices for that content and who you can ask if you need help.

General information

Ensemble Content Management System

Virginia Tech News is built in Ensemble CMS, using the article page template. If your story is being told with a written article, you need to gain access to that space to build the story in the CMS by emailing vtnews@vt.edu. A web admin will give you access to the Virginia Tech News space to begin submitting articles.

Tags

The Virginia Tech News website uses tags to feature content, trigger effects, and manage content relationships. See the list of current tags and request new tags.

Category tags

Every piece of content published on Virginia Tech News must have only one appropriate category assigned. See the descriptions below to determine in which category your story best fits.

  • Academics: Stories related to colleges, departments, centers, and topics, such as data, music, and experiential learning.
  • Campus experience: Glimpses of life for students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and friends in Blacksburg, Roanoke, D.C. area, and the commonwealth; athletics and alumni events; administrative news; employee info; and what it's like to be on our campuses.
  • Culture: Service and Ut Prosim; arts, inclusion and diversity, history and traditions, and the corps; what it's like to be a part of Hokie Nation.  
  • Impact: Impact on Virginia and the world as a land-grant institution; stories on philanthropy, outreach, engagement, economic development, partnerships, and alumni impacting their communities.
  • Research: News from the colleges and research institutes; areas of specialty (drones, brain research, cybersecurity) where the university is leading the way; research in general; and solving complex problems.
  • News directly from around campus: Communicators posting content directly to their college or unit websites must include this category tag IN ADDITION to one of the five tags listed above.

Other tags

Pieces of content may have additional tags that relate to the topic of your story. Consult the tags list first before requesting a new tag.

Filenames

Filenames should have a common structure when articles are created in the CMS for publishing on Virginia Tech News. For example, a story of Professor John Smith being named professor emeritus from the College of Science should be named: science-smith-emeritus

Why? It makes it easier to track the number of stories published in a given month. It also makes it easier to identify in Google Analytics either by filename or (in Google Analytics 4) page path. 

Abbreviations and names

  • aad: College of Architecture, Arts, and Design
  • alumni: Alumni
  • bov: Board of Visitors
  • cals: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
  • clahs: College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
  • cm: Communications and Marketing
  • cnre: College of Natural Resources and Environment
  • corps: Corps of Cadets
  • emergency: Office of Emergency Management
  • eng: College of Engineering 
  • ext: Cooperative Extension
  • facilities: Facilities and campus planning
  • gradschool: Graduate School 
  • inclusive: InclusiveVT
  • innovation-campus: Innovation Campus
  • outreach: Outreach and International Affairs 
  • pamplin: Pamplin College of Business
  • police: Virginia Tech Police
  • president: Office of the President
  • provost: Executive Vice President and Provost
  • research: All research stories need to include this word, followed by the institute name:
    • isce: Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment
    • icat: Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology
    • ictas: Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science
    • flsi: Fralin Life Sciences Institute
    • fbri: Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
    • vtti: VIrginia Tech Transportation Institute
    • nsi: National Security Institute
    • cci: Commonwealth Cyber Initiative
  • science: College of Science
  • students: Student life
  • vetmed: Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine 
  • vtcsom: Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine

How a story gets published in Virginia Tech News

Step 1

Someone has an idea for a story and communicates that to a communications professional, such as their relevant college/unit communications team, a member of the Communications and Marketing writing team or visual team, etc. Stories may be envisioned as written articles, visual presentations, and/or interactive engagement opportunities.

BEFORE PROCEEDING: Communicators must brainstorm how a story will be deployed to their intended audiences. They should then engage subject-matter expert partners across campus to ensure the story can be told in the most successful way and missed opportunities are minimized. Use communications and project planning templates to help get the brainstorming started.

  • Example scenario: A faculty member shares a story idea with their college communications team about a research project their students are engaging in. The team members gather information about the project and determine that a video would be the best way to tell the story with an accompanying written piece that could be sent to relevant media outlets. They also think that the story would work well to engage alumni in their next annual giving campaign. At this point, a story lead is designated, and that person creates a communications plan that captures the desired audience, assets, and deployment channels. From that list, they can then brainstorm which campus partners can be engaged to assess collaboration needs. They then contact the University Relations visual team to ask for their expertise on whether a video would be the best way to tell the story and/or if personnel resources are available to assist in video production. They also discuss possible alumni outreach opportunities with the Advancement communications team.

Step 2

Story authors build articles in CMS in the appropriate Virginia Tech News folder; articles should include appropriate image(s), embedded video(s), notes (i.e. embargo information), related links, and news tags, as discovered during the story planning process. Once the articles are built, authors should request them to be published, sending it to the publishing team.

Step 3

Virginia Tech News publishers on the digital communications team do the following:

  • Review the publishing request queue and add the articles to the editorial planning calendar based on the suggested publish date indicated in the internal notes section. 
  • Proofread and edit, as needed; contact authors if any information is missing or unclear; and add or change news tags and images or videos, if necessary.
  • Queue up finalized articles for publishing; if only a link is needed (i.e. A research story needs to go out for EurekAlert distribution), they send it to the author directly.

Step 4

  • Various platform publishers (social media, media relations, etc.) distribute Virginia Tech News content across owned, paid, and earned channels, digital and print, dependent on the needs of those platforms and their respective audiences.
  • Email publishers build daily and student-focused emails with the articles published on Virginia Tech News, as outlined in the editorial calendar, in Adobe Campaign; email proofs are sent to stakeholders for review and feedback; and the emails are scheduled and deployed to predetermined audiences.

Editorial best practices for publishing Virginia Tech News articles and notices

There are two daily emails that send Monday through Friday, one for employees and one for the public. Additionally, there are two emails sent to students a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The publishing date for stories will be at least one day prior to them appearing in one of the emails unless otherwise noted in a communications plan and the internal notes (i.e. for media embargos, advanced notices, etc.).

  • Include a suggested publish date in the internal notes section of the article as you're building it in the CMS. A member of the Virginia Tech News publishing team will add your story to the editorial calendar. If you think your story should have lead placement in the daily email, discuss this with a member of the publishing team. 
  • If the story will be pitched to the media, you will want to have an available contact the day the story is sent to the media. Do not request a story to go out on a day you will be on planned leave without having a backup media contact in your college or unit. 
  • If you have information that could be best used as a Campus Notice (strictly informational, time-bound, event-based, etc.) and you have author permissions in the Virginia Tech News CMS, build it inside the "Notices" folder the same way you'd build an article. Do this instead of submitting the Campus Notice form, as it will expedite the process. Non-CMS users should use the form. 
  • The publishing team will add Campus Notices to the editorial calendar in the section marked for notices, based on the suggested publishing date included in the internal notes section. The Virginia Tech News publishing team will make the determination about how often it should appear in the email. 

When uploading a story, remember:

  1. Filename: Unitname-something-descriptive
  2. Title: This is your headline. Be concise (“Brevity is the soul of wit.”)
  3. Tags: Add your college, unit, department tag, relevant topical tags, and one of the category tags; see the full Virginia Tech News guide for more tag guidance
  4. Subtitle: Optional. Appears on the page. Could be the description.
  5. Description: This appears in the metadata, auto-generated social media link previews, and also in the Daily Email feed. Can be the subtitle. No more than two sentences.
  6. Internal notes: Very important. Who should get this as a release? Is there an embargo date? Is there a “This must run before xx date”? Also include information on which media list you'd like to use when the Media Relations team promotes your story. If you don't have a list in mind, include media outlets you'd like to be pitched, and the Media Relations team will help figure out the best list. Email mediarelations@vt.edu for questions. Include any other notes relative to the story that would be helpful for the production team. “Karla is spelled with ‘K’” or “Please let me know when this runs so I can tell my dean (or department head or faculty profiled).”
  7. On Time: You must enter a date for publishing, even if it's flexible. Most of the indexers and feeds we use throughout the Virginia Tech website rely on sorting by publish date. If you don't add a date and the item publishes, it will be placed at the very end of the feed, not the beginning and thus will never be seen on a website. Add a date. The team reserves the right to change it if it’s not time-sensitive. 
  8. Page Image: Located in the story properties. This appears on auto-generated social media link previews.
  9. Bio: Add a contact and a byline. This appears as the media contact at the bottom of all the articles.

Using visual assets in Virginia Tech News articles

Photos

  1. To upload an image, click My Assets in the left menu from the My Sites interface. For reference: A basic user primer of how to navigate Ensemble CMS
  2. Choose the Virginia Tech News folder.
  3. Choose Articles > Year > Month for the asset location
  4. Once in the folder, click Upload Assets and navigate to the location where the assets you want to upload are located. You can also drag and drop.
  5. Images don’t have to be optimized or sized to particular dimensions. We do ask, however, that the images be cropped to an aspect ratio of 2:3 for consistency. Try to keep the file size below 8 MB, however.
  6. Give a title and ALT text to your image by accessing the properties. Include a caption and photo credit information, following the style found in Using Photography.
  7. Within an article, the image needs to be added in two locations. First, it must be placed within the image component on the article page. In edit mode, click the Assets tab and drag and drop the image from the library to the image component box. When the box turns blue, click off the mouse or trackpad to place your image. Add a caption and ALT text by clicking on the wrench icon that appears when the component is clicked.
  8. The image also needs to be placed within the page properties. In the editor mode, click on the Page Information icon (it looks like a waffle iron) and choose Open Properties. Click on the Page Image tab. Click and drag the image from the Assets tab and place it over the “Upload Assets (or Drag from Assets)” button that appears beneath the article image icon. DO NOT place the image over the icon itself. If the Upload Assets button turns to “Clear” then you know the image is in place. Click the checkmark icon in the upper right of the properties window to save changes and close the properties window.

For more information about photography at Virginia Tech, including how to find and submit photos to the photo library, visit Using Photography.

Videos

Videos are an integral part of Virginia Tech stories, as they can offer different perspectives and create moods to enhance storytelling. Videos used in Virginia Tech News articles must first be uploaded to video.vt.edu and then embedded within a Virginia Tech News article using the Media-External component.