To improve communications both on campus and with the outside world, Duke University on Thursday launched a daily online newspaper and unveiled a new look for its main homepage, which attracts approximately one million monthly visitors.
The new design is currently being previewed on Duke's homepage and will replace the existing version later this month. It features a search box in the center and navigation links along the sides. The bottom third of the page displays a collage of photos highlighting university priorities, such as financial aid, the arts, student life and global health care.
"We spent the last two years surveying our audiences and now we're responding to that feedback," said David Jarmul, Duke's associate vice president of news and communications, whose office is leading the initiative. "Most people who come to the Duke homepage are looking for something specific or for a general introduction to the university. Our new homepage reflects that while also highlighting some of the things that make Duke special."
The new homepage is part of a larger initiative to revamp how the university communicates with employees, Durham residents and people who explore Duke online. Employees will be mailed a new monthly Working@Duke newsletter with information on benefits, policies and administrative services, as well as profiles of colleagues.
In addition, a new monthly print publication, This Month at Duke, is providing Durham residents, as well as students, faculty and employees, with a calendar of campus cultural and intellectual activities. The first two issues of This Month at Duke featured previews of an address by activist Harry Belafonte, a Valentine's Day concert by a combined Duke-UNC-NCCU jazz band and a modern dance production based on Shakespeare's Othello. This Month at Duke is distributed on campus and at locations near Duke.
And to better provide information important to Duke employees, the Office of News and Communications has launched a daily online newspaper called Duke Today, which features campus news, university announcements, employment updates, media reports involving Duke and stories about faculty and staff. A preview of Duke Today is also available from the Duke homepage.
One publication -- Dialogue -- has ceased publication as part of the communications initiative. For 20 years, the weekly newspaper provided faculty and staff with a forum for debate, institutional announcements and reports on campus events.
Writing in its final issue, Dialogue editor Geoffrey Mock explained the transition from a weekly print publication to the daily online Duke Today site.
"Over the past two or three years, Dialogue has increasingly come to depend on the web as a source for photo essays and stories, material that usually ends up looking better and more readable on the web than in print," said Mock, manager of internal communications, who will edit both Duke Today and This Month at Duke. The new publications, he said, will "provide the stories that you liked reading in Dialogue plus easy access to the most important information for your work and lives."