Through a range of successive administrative units, including the Publicity Office, Office of Public Information, and Communications, The New School has issued press releases to local and national news outlets from at least 1933 through the present day.

For many years, course and program promotion was often simultaneously carried out by instructors, whose livelihoods were directly linked to student enrollment. Under the leadership of Agnes De Lima beginning in 1940, the Publicity Office attempted to introduce standards and policies and to establish consistency across the institution. The school also sometimes employed publicity firms, such as Fizdale, Inc., to write and place features in targeted publications.

The New School Associates, the President's Office, and the Public Relations Office in part performed functions that overlapped with those of the Publicity Office. Each of these departments were at various times responsible for producing press releases. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading up to and just after De Lima's resignation, during a time of general administrative upheaval and self-analysis across The New School, attempts were made to clarify and professionalize these overlapping activities. New personnel were hired, certain responsibilites combined into a single office, others separated out. For a time, names of offices and the division of responsibilities shifted monthly.

The New School Office of Public Information was the successor to the New School Publicity Office, renamed in 1957. Until at least the 1990s, New School divisions conducted independent public relations and course promotion activities, although concerted efforts at centralized oversight are in evidence from the late 1960s onward.