It seems like the University of North Carolina is constantly dealing with drama surrounding Bill Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, ever since he was hired as the head football coach back in December. However, the people most affected are not who you might think!
UNC Press has been forced to deal with all kinds of confusion over the last seven months.
Employees hired by the university to print books are often confused for a different department. They do not handle anything related to communications or public relations and they have nothing to do with the college football program.
What is the UNC Press?
Despite its name, the University of North Carolina Press has nothing to do with the press, as in, the media. It is a literal printing press. Not the media office!
UNC founded the nonprofit university press in 1922 as the first university press in the Southern United States on the campus in Chapel Hill. The press began its publishing history with an academic book called Southern Pioneers in Social Interpretation in 1925.
If you have not gathered by now, the UNC Press is only responsible for the publishing of both scholarly and general-interest books and journals. It “advances the research, teaching and public service missions” of the public university by “publishing excellent work from leading scholars, writers, and intellectuals and by presenting that work to both academic audiences and general readers.”
What does this have to do with Bill Belichick?
The UNC Press has nothing to do with Bill Belichick. That’s the problem!. They do not overlap at all.
If I was trying to contact the university for comment, I would need to reach out to Media Relations. Kevin Best is the department head. It is split into various categories from there. Everybody in the office handles a different section of the school.
The UNC Press is a completely separate department from Media Relations. They do not overlap.
It can be confusing.
Journalists who know nothing of the structure at North Carolina often get confused. Reporters frequently reach out to UNC Press for comment on a story instead of Media Relations.
That has always been the case but it happens way more frequently now that Belichick and Jordon Hudson are constantly in the news. Everybody wants to know what UNC Press has to say about all of the highly-scrutinized drama surrounding the Tar Heels football program even though they just print books.
Although I completely understand some of the confusion, it is my hope to clear things up with this post. The good folks at UNC Press are tired of answering questions about Bill Belichick and his girlfriend when they are not the people to ask!