Total Stories
3,038
across 31 days · avg 98/day
Media Coverage · July 2026
In July, the U was
in the news
3,038 times.
July put University of Utah research at the center of the story — the first of Omega Centauri's 10,000 missing black holes, how Alzheimer's spreads, what Utah's air does to a pregnancy. Coverage reached nearly five million views across 55 countries, on air and online.
Estimated Views
4.91M
verified audience worldwide
Favorable
99.7%
of all coverage
Countries
55
on six continents
Coverage Breakdown
July 2026 · 3,038 storiesDaily Coverage Volume
Stories per day. Four spikes account for a third of the month's volume.
1
Jul 6 · 339 stories
Moran Eye Center presents Stargardt disease trial results
2
Jul 16 · 347 stories
Wildfire smoke, the U's preterm-birth study and the Omega Centauri black hole land the same day
3
Jul 18 · 176 stories
NPR stations carry a U expert on the smell of wildfire smoke
4
Jul 23–24 · 829 stories
National measles record, with U of U Health explaining it, plus the cleft-portraits tour at Primary Children's
Broadcast vs. Online
Where the coverage aired or published.
72%
Online & print
2,191 stories · 4.30M views
News sites, wires, trade and research press, and syndicated national aggregators.
28%
Broadcast
847 stories · 612K views
TV and radio, including 181 Utah airings. KUER-FM, KUED, KSL, Fox 13, KUTV and ABC4 led locally; the measles and wildfire-smoke stories carried U experts onto stations nationwide.
Roughly one-third of all coverage (35%) was news about the U itself; the rest cited U faculty and U of U Health as the expert voice.
Top Coverage — National & Utah
Stories about the U & U-led researchNational ↗
Top 5 where the U or U-led research is the subject.
Utah ↗
Top 5 in-state stories driving local trust.
134Stories, one discovery
Story of the month
A University of Utah graduate student led the team that found the first of Omega Centauri's missing black holes — 20,000 light-years away, in the densest star cluster in our galaxy.
Matthew Whitaker was lead author; U astronomer Anil Seth was a co-author. NASA, the European Space Agency, the BBC, Scientific American, Space.com and Phys.org all carried it. This is the position we want: the U named as the institution that made the discovery, not the one asked to comment on someone else's.
$65.3M
Advertising Value Equivalent
What it would have cost the University of Utah to buy the equivalent advertising exposure earned through media coverage in July 2026.
Where the Coverage Landed
Top countries · outlets by volumeTop Countries
U.S.-dominant, with pickup on six continents.
United States2,674
United Kingdom83
Canada52
India36
Australia27
Plus 50 more, including Malaysia, China, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand.
National Outlets
Reach beyond the state line.
MSN.com38 hits
Yahoo! News27 hits
The Washington Post4 hits
The GuardianGlobal
NPRNational
Associated PressWire
BBC · Scientific AmericanScience
Utah Outlets
Anchoring the home audience.
KUER-FM48 hits
KSL (TV & radio)44 hits
KUED (PBS Utah)37 hits
The Salt Lake Tribune29 hits
Fox 13 News (KSTU)21 hits
Deseret News11 hits
KUTV (CBS 2)11 hits
ABC4 Utah (KTVX)8 hits
Key Takeaways
Three things to know01 · Reach
The U led the story, not just the commentary
Lead authorship on the Omega Centauri black hole discovery carried the U into NASA, BBC and Scientific American. Alzheimer's, heart failure and preterm-birth findings added national health coverage. The strongest research-attribution month of the year.
02 · Trust
Two-thirds of coverage came to us for answers
1,972 stories cited U faculty or U of U Health as the authority on measles, air quality, law, economics and climate — including 847 broadcast airings. That is the position an institution earns over years, and it held through a month of hard national news.
03 · Story
Environmental health is our engine
Air quality, Great Salt Lake dust, heat and suicide risk, preterm birth — U research on how Utah's environment affects Utah bodies drove more sustained coverage than any other theme. Worth resourcing deliberately.
Sentiment note: eight of 3,038 stories were critical of the U — seven syndications of one commentary on healthcare credential fraud, plus one item on H-1B visa filings. None ran in a major outlet.