In August, the U was in the news 3,701 times.
Research carried the month: a U-led census of the ice hidden in the world's rock glaciers, a national stroke-rehabilitation guideline chaired by U faculty, and widely picked-up findings on antibiotic courses and on mindfulness therapy for opioid misuse. On campus, the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine opened its doors and a $155 million, 1,447-bed residence hall welcomed its first students.
Daily coverage volume
Almost entirely wire: 457 press-release pickups, led by 246 copies of the Urology Care Foundation grants release and 201 of the Peterson School of Music piano-student release.
Wire again: the Soris Institute launch (164 copies) and cardiac-transplant anniversary pickups on the 26th; the Outlook Therapeutics CFO release (186) and 55 pickups of the U-chaired stroke-rehab guideline on the 27th.
239 wire copies, led by two releases: a Salt Lake City surgeon's team service day (144) and an OB-GYN conference announcement (65).
Broadcast syndication, not wire: roughly 170 airings of a game-show clip citing 1991 U research, plus a syndicated youth-sports segment. Only 3 press-release pickups that day.
Coverage mix
About half the month's placements are news and broadcast coverage — news articles, broadcast segments and student media. The other half are wire sites running a release verbatim: counted, labeled and grouped, but not reporting.
Syndicated copies are the same reporting re-run on Yahoo, MSN and aggregators. A story that ran both as coverage and as a release counts in both rows.
The U's role, across the 828 stories
Top coverage by reach
Stories where the U or U-led research is the subject, ranked by total reach across all copies.
National
Utah
Yahoo and MSN copies carry very large reach figures, so reach is an ordering, not an audience count.
U geoscientists measured the ice locked inside Mount Timpanogos' rock glacier — a possible future water source for a drying state — and scaled the method worldwide: rock glaciers may hold about 48 gigatons of water. Carried by KSL-TV, Yahoo News, The Economic Times and StudyFinds, and roughly 42 outlets in all.
The U named as the institution that made the discovery, not the one asked to comment.
Most-copied stories
One story, hundreds of copies — this is why placements and stories are reported separately.
What the coverage was about
Distinct stories, by topic.
By part of the University
Research pickup
Outlets carrying each of the month's research and faculty-expertise stories.
Sentiment, from the University's point of view
Sentiment was judged from the University's point of view by human review.
Where the coverage landed
Top countries
National outlets, by hits
Marquee names present this month: The Washington Post, Associated Press, Politico, Axios, Gizmodo, ScienceAlert, Medscape and The Economic Times.
Utah outlets, by hits
The advertising value Meltwater assigns to the month's coverage.
$158.8M of that is news and broadcast coverage; $138.1M sits in Yahoo/MSN syndicated copies, which is how Meltwater values those pages.
Key takeaways
Research and faculty expertise made up 586 of 828 stories — 71% of everything written about the U. The rock-glacier study alone was carried by 42 outlets, with 892.5M in cumulative reach.
20 of 828 stories were critical; six traced to two decisions — the retirement-benefit change and the Sandy closure. None of the 1,933 press-release pickups drew critical coverage.
466 placements ran outside the United States, led by Canada, the U.K., India and Australia. Research carried the name abroad — the rock-glacier census, the antibiotics rethink and the mushroom study all ran internationally.