At a conference not long ago, someone asked me if I was a news person or a marketing person. I said, “Both.”

Let me explain. Gone are the days when sending a press release to reporters hoping they would cover the latest news was enough to get our story told to the masses. 

Today, the news media is just a piece of the pie, the rest involves an initiative that we call Marketing the News. As the media landscape continues to evolve, we must target audiences directly where they live from Reddit to Substack, YouTube to Spotify and everywhere in between. 

At Michigan News, the external media relations unit in the Office of the Vice President for Communications, we are storytellers. Many of us are former journalists from outlets including The Associated Press, Crain’s Detroit, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Detroit Free Press, TV Globo in Brazil and more. 

Step into our bustling newsroom where we are producing stories about impactful research, pitching experts on timely topics, connecting with communities across the state and reaching out to audiences around the world every day.

Of course, we celebrate our frequent coverage in top-tier media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, MS NOW, ABC News, to name a few — along with local and regional news outlets. And we market the hits in the In The News sections in the Record and on the U-M homepage. But we don’t stop there.

Our ramped-up effort kicked off a few years ago in an office retreat where we used neon sticky notes to post our ideas on what can be done with a story from beginning to end. We reinforced the need to strategize early in the communications process as we came up with options ranging from a single social media post all the way to a story package with written content, photos, videos, audio, social media animated graphics, a long-form web design, a podcast and ultimately, media interviews.

But producing compelling content has never been a problem at such a remarkable research university. The bigger challenge: Who is the audience and how do we reach them? If we neglect to use all of our creativity and resources to reach the audience, it’s like shouting into an empty room, isn’t it? We are all relying more on digital. (Are you looking at your phone right now?)

We post on Reddit, where science stories have received incredible attention from people who are most interested. For instance: 1 million views on a post about a SEAS study on energy use in clothes dryers. We also engage on LinkedIn, Substack, YouTube, Instagram stories and more. Our global communications team often uses WhatsApp to reach audiences overseas. 

We post news and experts videos on YouTube. We manage our membership with The Conversation U.S. where faculty write articles. Our Michigan Minds podcast that features faculty and leaders on important topics is available on Spotify and Apple.

Marketing the News means we are also constantly exploring options for internal reach. We work closely with our communications colleagues in the schools and colleges and rely on them for excellent content and cross promoting. We share highlights of clips in a daily report sent to 800-plus communicators and leaders on campus.

Our news team works within our own VP unit, including MSocial, which posts our short animation graphics on Instagram to tease longer versions of videos and stories. That account has 550,000 followers. We produce email newsletters to reach specific stakeholders, including one geared for a Detroit audience. 

We also produce a weekly in-case-you-missed-it email newsletter that features a handful of news release highlights specifically for media who cover higher education and we post it on Substack. Our Michigan Today digital newsletter reaches more than 400,000 alumni and friends every month.

We don’t stop there. We post stories on our news site with intentional efforts to ensure the university will be highly visible to search engines, keeping our world-class reputation in the forefront. We are evolving our SEO strategy to ensure our content is understood by AI systems and stays ahead of changing algorithms. Our stories are also featured on the U-M homepage, which has 500,000 visits a month.

Reaching specific audiences directly is most effective when we can show why something matters and how it is relatable to our lives. When news that federal research funding was in jeopardy last year, our news office tapped into the Look to Michigan campaign theme to reinforce the impact and importance of our research. 

A large part of our strategy is to ensure that faculty and leaders are prepared to be in the public eye to share their insights and combat misinformation for the public good. We expanded our media training efforts by reaching out to new faculty members across many disciplines, doubling the number trained to more than 150 in 2025. 

We will continue to evolve as the information world expands even beyond our predictions. We are open to new ideas, methods and platforms. And if you have read this far, then we have successfully marketed the news.

— Laura Lessnau is the assistant vice president for news in the Office of the Vice President for Communications. She leads the Michigan News enterprise of primarily former journalists dedicated to telling meaningful stories about the university to the world. Lessnau is a former bureau chief, editor and reporter at The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Detroit Free Press.