How the U of M Media Relations Process Actually Works
If you're a researcher or staff member at the University of Minnesota and a reporter contacts you, you don't just answer the phone and start talking. There's a chain of approvals you need to run through, and if you skip even one step, you can create real problems for the department. The system is designed around the Press Intervention Manual University Of Mn document, which outlines exactly who needs to sign off and in what order before any information leaves your mouth to the press. I ran into this head-on during my second year working in research communications. A local TV station called me out of the blue about a study we'd published on water quality. My first instinct was to be helpful and just talk to them. That would have been a mistake. The manual requires that any external media inquiry related to university research first go through the university's communications office, not the department's own staff. I called our campus PR team, and they fielded the rest of the call. It felt like bureaucracy at the time, but two weeks later another department at the Twin Cities campus gave an off-the-cuff interview on the same topic and got quoted out of context. The story ran with a misleading headline. It was a good reminder that the manual exists for a reason. The process breaks down into a few concrete steps. When a journalist reaches out, you log the request within 24 hours. You provide the journalist's name, outlet, deadline, and the specific questions they want answered. Then the communications office does a risk assessment — they're checking whether the topic is sensitive, whether there are pending publications, whether institutional statements already exist on the subject. This part usually takes one to two business days for straightforward requests. For anything involving health data, legal matters, or student information, it can take up to five days.
Here's something most people don't realize: the manual covers far more than just press releases. It also applies to informal conversations. If a reporter says they're "just gathering background" over coffee, that still counts as an on-the-record intervention under the policy. I learned that one the hard way when a colleague mentioned to a blogger that our lab was considering a partnership. The blog post went up before the licensing review team had finished their check. It wasn't published news, but it was searchable, and it triggered an internal investigation into whether the manual had been followed. After that, I started logging every single media interaction, even the casual ones. The biggest bottleneck I see people hit is timing. If you get a time-sensitive request and the communications office is backed up, there's an escalation path, but not everyone knows about it. You can request expedited review if the journalist's deadline is within 48 hours. You need to state the deadline clearly in your original log entry and flag it as urgent. Without that flag, your request sits in the regular queue. I've watched multiple opportunities get lost because someone wrote "journalist called re: our study" without mentioning that the deadline was Thursday morning and it was already Tuesday afternoon. Another thing worth noting: the manual differentiates between spokesperson-approved statements and individual faculty comments. For broad institutional messaging, you need a designated spokesperson. But for technical details from your own research, you can often speak directly after getting a clear approval on what can and cannot be shared. The approvals tend to focus on three things — accuracy of the data being discussed, whether any proprietary or confidential information would leak, and whether the framing aligns with the university's existing public position on the topic. Those are reasonable filters, but they do add friction when you're dealing with breaking news cycles.
If you want to access the manual itself, it's hosted on the university's internal communications portal. You'll need your university credentials to view it. The document gets updated annually, so make sure you're looking at the current version. Last year's edition had a section on social media engagement that this year's version expanded significantly, partly because so many journalists now reach out through Twitter or LinkedIn instead of traditional channels. The revised version clarifies that direct messages on professional networks count as media inquiries under the same rules. The manual isn't perfect. It tends to favor caution over speed, which means legitimate stories sometimes lose momentum waiting for sign-off. There have been repeated internal calls to streamline the process for low-risk requests — things like basic science explanations or community event coverage. As of now, those requests still go through the full review pipeline, which adds roughly another day compared to higher-priority inquiries. If you know your request is straightforward, you can note that in your submission and ask the communications office to apply the simplified review track. They don't always advertise that option, but it exists in the procedures. For anyone who deals with this regularly, the most useful thing is probably keeping a running contact list of the right people in the communications office. Having a direct line to the person who handles your college's media requests saves more time than anything else in the process. Generic inbox submissions move slower than emails from someone who knows your name and your typical request patterns.
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