In the News Post Type

The In the News custom post type allows colleges, units, and divisions to curate and display instances where NC State appears in external news coverage. This is most commonly used to highlight subject matter experts who have been quoted or featured in media outlets.

A long-standing example of this feature in use is on news.ncsu.edu, where media mentions are actively maintained and displayed for visitors.

Overview

Each “In the News” entry represents a single media mention — a story, article, or segment from an external publication or outlet that references NC State faculty, staff, research, or programs. Site administrators and editors manage these entries through the WordPress dashboard, and they can be surfaced on the front end in a dedicated archive listing or within a News Frontpage template.

Adding a Media Mention

To add a new media mention, navigate to In the News Stories → Add New in the WordPress dashboard. Each entry includes the following fields:

Field	Description
Title	The headline or descriptive title of the media mention
Publication	The name of the news outlet or publication (e.g., The New York Times, NPR)
Publication Date	The date the mention was published by the outlet
URL	A direct link to the media mention on the publication’s website

All four fields should be completed for each entry to ensure accurate display and usability for site visitors.

Organizing with Categories

Media mentions can be assigned to categories of the site administrator’s choosing. Categories allow you to group mentions by topic, publication type, audience, or any other organizational structure relevant to your site.

Categories are managed under In the News Stories → Publication Category in the WordPress dashboard. Once created, categories can be assigned to individual entries when adding or editing a media mention.

Displaying Media Mentions

Archive Page

The In the News archive page provides a full, paginated listing of all published media mentions for your site. This page is automatically generated by WordPress and can be linked to from anywhere on your site — navigation menus, sidebar widgets, body content, and so on.

On post sites the URL for the archive page follows the pattern: https://yoursite.ncsu.edu/in-the-news/. If you are not seeing the archive page on your site, you may need to do the following:

1. Go to your news frontpage and then append /in-the-news to the end of the URL.
2. Refresh your site’s permalinks by going to Settings -> Permalinks and click “Save changes” without making any changes.

Linking to this archive gives visitors a single destination to browse all media mentions, similar to the listing available on news.ncsu.edu.

News Feed Block (News Frontpage Template)

Media mentions can also be featured within the News Feed block, which is available inside the Split Content block on the News Frontpage template. The News Feed block surfaces a curated or dynamic list of recent media mentions directly on your homepage or landing page.

Note: The News Feed block is only available within the News Frontpage template. It will not appear as an available block option on standard pages or other templates.

For guidance on setting up and configuring the News Frontpage template, refer to the News Frontpage Template documentation.

Tips and Recommendations

• Keep URLs current. External news articles can move or expire over time. Periodically review older entries to check that links are still active.
• Use consistent publication names. Standardizing how you enter publication names (e.g., always using “The Washington Post” rather than “Washington Post” or “WaPo”) makes filtering and display more predictable.
• Use categories strategically. If your site covers multiple topic areas, categories can help segment mentions for future display or filtering needs.
• Publication Date drives ordering. Media mentions are sorted by publication date, so entering an accurate date ensures they appear in the correct chronological sequence in your archive and News Feed.