UB is kind of a big deal.
We had an economic impact on Western New York to the tune of $1.7 billion from 2006 to 2007, and each year that impact is growing. Students alone spend over $200 million in the area and are a big economic engine in Buffalo.
We have events going on nearly every day, and scandals that erupt. Over 40,000 people are on campus during classes, bigger than many small cities.
So it would come as no surprise that UB gets great media coverage, especially when something of importance is involved, right?
Not exactly. When you take a closer look, a disturbing trend emerges. Local media has dropped the ball on covering even major issues at UB, going just short of completely ignoring us.
Although, it should be noted that our sports teams get covered well by The Buffalo News, major stories have fallen through the cracks. For being such a huge part of the WNY community, it seems unlikely that there are no stories to be covered here.
In fact it's more than unlikely. It's untrue.
Take for example the article "The Great UB Heist," written by Artvoice. The implications made in that article had far reaching impacts. Yet it took The Buffalo News over 2 weeks to cover anything about the issues in the article, and brought little new reporting to the table. A major news outlet should be a little more concerned about the fate of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Certainly this must be a fluke, UB is a big deal, isn't it?
Not according to The Buffalo News. Doing a simple search on its website shows that they have not covered any story of substance in the last month that has anything to do with UB other than sports stories. A $140 million dollar change to financial aid policies that affects over 20,000 students might at least cause a blip on the radar of other news outlets, but not Buffalo's local news.
Buffalo TV station WGRZ was supposed to cover the student protest of the financial aid policy changes, but they apparently decided it wasn't important enough and didn't send anyone to cover the rally. Considering the level of student apathy in recent years, a story about students standing up for their rights should get big coverage from local outlets.
It seems like the Buffalo media outlets only care when there may be a shooter in one of our libraries or when they can make an easy story out of selecting Satish K. Tripathi as president of UB. More coverage of these stories was important to the community, and it was failed.
UB has taken upon itself a monumental task. It has been dedicated to revitalizing the flailing region by expanding, creating jobs and generating spending in the area. The Buffalo News and the local television news stations have a responsibility just as The Spectrum does to cover the issues that their readers deserve to know.
We all need to be held to a high standard, and Buffalo's local media needs to help get the word out about what goes on at UB.
