Times Change in Higher Ed Coverage
The New York Times has made reference to research universities consistently over its many years of publication. But in the last half century, the newspaper has grown less interested in the universities and more interested in their researchers, according to a new study.
A team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign analyzed 60 years’ worth of Times archives in an attempt to find out how its coverage of research universities has evolved since World War II. The researchers found that the proportion of articles focusing on particular institutions has declined significantly, while the share of articles on non-university topics that contain “sound bites” from university researchers has risen.
“In 1946, 53 percent of articles mentioning a research university were about that university, focusing on its research or activities,” the authors wrote. By 2005, “Just 15 percent of articles mentioning a university are about that university: the remaining 85 percent simply cite high-stature faculty for soundbite commentary on current events.”
The Urbana-Champaign team parsed the thousands of university references published in the Times in the latter 20th century with the help of a computer program, which separated articles in which the university name appears near the top from those where it shows up farther down in the article -- the assumption being that articles that mention a university’s name higher up are more likely to be about research or activities at that university, while articles that drop the name lower down are more likely to be quoting a professor on some topic apart from the university....
Leetaru and Magelli’s analysis also revealed that the Times’s coverage has historically favored the Ivy League universities, with Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania ranking among the top eight most frequently referenced institutions during the 60-year sample period. (New York University and the University of California were the only non-Ivies to penetrate that circle, ranking No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. Brown University clocked in at No. 29; Columbia, referenced in more than 50,000 separate news items, was first.)
Times staffers contacted Monday by Inside Higher Ed had no immediate comment....
Read entire article at Inside Higher Ed
A team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign analyzed 60 years’ worth of Times archives in an attempt to find out how its coverage of research universities has evolved since World War II. The researchers found that the proportion of articles focusing on particular institutions has declined significantly, while the share of articles on non-university topics that contain “sound bites” from university researchers has risen.
“In 1946, 53 percent of articles mentioning a research university were about that university, focusing on its research or activities,” the authors wrote. By 2005, “Just 15 percent of articles mentioning a university are about that university: the remaining 85 percent simply cite high-stature faculty for soundbite commentary on current events.”
The Urbana-Champaign team parsed the thousands of university references published in the Times in the latter 20th century with the help of a computer program, which separated articles in which the university name appears near the top from those where it shows up farther down in the article -- the assumption being that articles that mention a university’s name higher up are more likely to be about research or activities at that university, while articles that drop the name lower down are more likely to be quoting a professor on some topic apart from the university....
Leetaru and Magelli’s analysis also revealed that the Times’s coverage has historically favored the Ivy League universities, with Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania ranking among the top eight most frequently referenced institutions during the 60-year sample period. (New York University and the University of California were the only non-Ivies to penetrate that circle, ranking No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. Brown University clocked in at No. 29; Columbia, referenced in more than 50,000 separate news items, was first.)
Times staffers contacted Monday by Inside Higher Ed had no immediate comment....