Dateline, the Binghamton University equivalent of B-Line for faculty and staff, has been updated to streamline communication between the groups.

The renewed system, which went into effect Nov. 2, was put in place to include staff and faculty members who had previously not been receiving the weekday bulletin.

Dateline contains announcements both from the administration and from members of the campus community, and is distributed Monday through Friday.

“With Dateline going to all faculty and staff, it will ensure that important information … will be efficiently and widely disseminated,” Katie Ellis, senior director for communications and marketing, said.

As new University employees were hired, they had not been registered to receive Dateline, she said.

“When Dateline was created a number of years ago, all faculty and staff were automatically subscribed,” she said. “But as faculty and staff turned over due to retirements, etc., new faculty and staff were not automatically subscribed.”

This rendered Dateline an inefficient means to communicate information to the entire staff and faculty.

“Dateline was no longer reaching all faculty and staff, though its function as a means to communicate necessary information remained the same,” Ellis said.

Since Dateline is now distributed to all staff and faculty, the faculty/staff listserv, a separate avenue for online communication, will no longer be used for general announcements.

“I read them both so it probably doesn’t make any difference to me,” said Christine Gelineau, the associate director of the creative writing program. She noted, however, that it probably makes a difference to the people who don’t receive or read both.

Staff and faculty can still submit announcements to Dateline. Gelineau said she uses the service often. “I run the Readers’ Series, so I always post,” she said.

Some professors, however, do not make as much use of Dateline.

“I don’t know how to do it. The idea of posting something on Dateline is beyond my technical capacity,” English professor Joseph Keith said.

Efficient communication remains the central idea of Dateline.

“Information should be of interest/importance to faculty and staff,” Ellis said. “All postings to Dateline are edited for style and relevance to the audience.”

Submissions to Dateline can be sent to dateline@binghamton.edu.