[Vision2020] Media Watch

[Don Coombs]

A good lead on page 1 in this morning's Lewiston Trib:

"The two land-grant universities on the Palouse have 
continued to bleed students, according to head counts 
on the 10th day of spring semester classes."

The second graph said UI was down 595 students 
statewide from a year ago, WSU down 406 on its Pullman 
campus.

Then the newspaper zinged the UI gently in the third 
graph: "Officials at UI chose to focus on new student 
numbers (which were up), with no mention of decreasing 
enrollment in a news release."

I think it would be a better use of public money if the 
UI issued useful news releases, rather than trying to 
spin the news. The double-digit percentage increase in 
new students is news, but nowhere near as important as 
the total enrollment number. The news story (and 
probably the news release) doesn't tell us how many new 
students there are this semester or how many there were 
a year ago, so a double-digit percentage increase may 
not be many students at all.

Later in the story we find that WSU's enrollment is 
21,694 at its four campuses, down 1 percent from a year 
ago. Nowhere in the story do we find the total 
enrollment or the percent of change for the UI.

Apparently the Trib came up with more information than 
what was in the UI press release ("UI lost 595 
students") but not the numbers which would have made 
that information meaningful.

Don Coombs