The UW-Madison is crowing about a new study of university news coverage that says the university was mentioned 6,995 times in New York Times articles between 1945 and 2005. That ranks the UW-Madison 19th among U.S. universities and second among Big Ten schools.
"We're delighted to see that UW-Madison has ranked so highly," says UW-Madison spokeswoman Amy Toburen in a press release. "It's a reflection of the consistent quality of our work in the laboratory, our teaching in the classroom and our public service mission."
Woo-hoo!
But wait. Wouldn't any such tally include negative mentions, like the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall? Toburen concedes the point ("I'm sure it all goes in there") but doesn't think this changes the larger picture. "I think if you looked at overall mentions, they'd be positive."
Readers can do their own searches of the New York Times Article Archive. Toburen also cites the "UW in the News" section of the university's website, wisc.edu. This tracks all sorts of articles, local and national, including a recent one from the Times on "free radicals" - the kind released by exercise, not the kind that blow up buildings.
