OSU Research Communications, CASE Entry, 2005

OSU News Research Archive Search an archive of past research stories.
Coverage of OSU Research
Reports on national news coverage of university research.
Research Communications Staff Who we are and what we do.



(Last updated 5/24/05)

Short bios on the staff in Research Communications can be found here.

[Ohio State University's Research Communications program received the top award, the Gold Medal, in the 2005 "Circle of Excellence" awards competition sponsored by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. This is the 10th time in the last 25 years that OSU has been singled out for this honor.]

CATEGORY 9B --Research, Medicine and Science News Writing -- Office of Research Communications, Ohio State University

A: Brief description of your institution, its mission, and the communications office structure

Ohio State University is the flagship research institution for the State of Ohio and one of the largest public research universities in the nation. With more than a half-billion dollars in research support spread across more than 100 academic departments, Ohio State has scholarship underway in nearly every discipline. Research Communications – one of four directorates within the Office of External Relations – is charged with reporting on research advances arising from faculty studies. With an overwhelming emphasis on stories linked to peer-reviewed publication or presentations at national/international scientific meetings, the operation produces more than 150 research news stories annually, as well as supplemental research reporting for external and internal communications uses. This office also serves as the primary unit directing crisis communications in the area of research risks. It is staffed by a director, and assistant director and two science writers.

B: Communications program objectives

As stated above, this program reports on discoveries and advances emerging from research and scholarship by Ohio State faculty. A majority of the national and international news coverage enjoyed by Ohio State each year (excluding sports) can be traced back to the stories produced and disseminated by the Research Communications program. Our intent is to function as in-house science journalists, reporting on published and presented findings in a manner equivalent to conventional news media reporters covering science, medicine, the environment and research. All stories are linked (when appropriate) to previous reports of discovery offering readers a larger context for breaking news. Graphics and multimedia material are provided whenever possible to supplement the textual content. Our goal – which we believe we are fulfilling – is to present this program as a reliable and accurate source of emerging science news, free of public relations messaging and spin. Following this path, Ohio State's Research Communications program is one of the most trusted in the nation by journalists covering these fields.

C: Audiences

The primary audience for any news operation is the cadre of reporters covering that field. In our case, we focus on the needs and interests of the national and international science, medical and environmental reporters who daily decide what is news in these fields. Focusing on these gatekeeper journalists allows us to avoid the influence that campus politics or agenda-setting may play in the news judgment exhibited by some institutional news operations. This refinement of purpose – while excluding some traditional communications activities – reinforces our promise to these journalists that we will consistently provide what they would consider “news.” Secondarily, all stories produced by this unit are available directly to the public on the World Wide Web via this program's independent website [http://researchnews.osu.edu/]. All stories are hyperlinked (when possible) to additional contextual resources and supplemented with links to previous reports on related research, as well as supplemental graphics.

D: Budget and use of available resources

The operating budget for the Research Communications program annually, less salaries and benefits, is around $40,000. This is used for the following primary allocations:

Attendance by staffers at major research meetings – AAAS, AAS, ACS, APA, SfN, GSA, ASA, New Horizons briefings, etc.
Subscriptions to top research journals, general science magazines, database access
EurekAlert!, Newswise, Ascribe subscriptions, plus additional distribution systems
Additional research communications projects (i.e., supplemented funding to enhance individual faculty researcher project websites, costs for supplemental photography and videography, purchase of broadcast-quality audio equipment for radio reporting pilot.)

E: Response/Results directly attributable to submitted material

Information Paradox Solved? If So, Black Holes Are “Fuzzballs” http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/fuzzball.htm

Take the name of noted cosmologist Stephen Hawking, add in his dominance on the subject of “black holes” and a long-standing wager on his interpretation of quantum mechanics, and then insert an OSU finding suggesting Hawking was wrong – that's the formula for a winning science story. The report of OSU physicist Samir Mathur suggesting that black holes were really “fuzzballs” ranked high in any list of major science stories for the past year. Coverage included stories in The Economist, New Scientist, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Columbus Dispatch, CNN, CNNfn and Space.com, among others. Additionally, the story was cited on the website Slashdot, along with the URL for our story. Within the next 24 hours, that story garnered more hits than normally result from stories during a three-month period, forcing the main university website to shutdown three times during those first 24 hours after release.

New Evidence Suggests That Monkey Thought Extinct Still Exists http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/redcolo.htm

Few tales fare better than the stereotype of a brave researcher slogging through the primeval forest searching for a “lost” species. And for OSU anthropologist Scott McGraw, that describes his life during the last decade as he sought a rare African primate – Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey. New evidence he unearthed suggests that the animal isn't extinct – as he had earlier thought – and instead it is in deep hiding in the rain forests of western Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Stories arising from our release included USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, ABC News, Columbus Dispatch, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Toledo Blade, Associated Press, Scripps Howard News Service, United Press International and CNN.com.

Children Can Have Better Memory Than Adults (At Least Sometimes) http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chldmem.htm

Let's face it – people root for the underdog! That's probably why our story on one OSU psychologist's discovery that 5-year-old kids do better than adults on certain memory tasks garnered so much media attention. The problem, the story explained, was that adults know more than children and tend to apply this knowledge when learning new information . It's one more reason why adults reverting to their childhood might not be a bad thing. Coverage included stories in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Toronto Star, Arizona Republic, Prevention magazine, Reuters News Service, United Press International, CBC Health & Science, WebMD and MSNBC.

50,000-Year-Old Plant May Warn Of The Death Of Tropical Ice Caps http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/quelplant.htm

Sometimes, the finding of the simplest, ordinary thing can signal a discovery of enormous importance. That was the case with the report that OSU geologist Lonnie Thompson had discovered beds of organic plants, recently uncovered by a retreating glacier high in the Peruvian Andes. Carbon dating of the plant material shocked both Thompson and colleagues around the world when he reported the plants' age at a minimum of 50,000 years. That meant that ice had buried these plants all that time and, more importantly, the climate had not been as warm as it is now in the last 500 centuries, and maybe longer. Coverage included stories in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, NPR's “Talk of the Nation,” Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Newsday, Financial Times, Desert Sun, Associated Press, Scripps Howard News Service, Washington Times, ABC News.com and CNN.com.

Anxiety Good For Memory Recall, Bad For Solving Complex Problems http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/testress.htm

OSU neurologist David Beversdorf has good news and bad news for students: The more nervous you are before a test, the better you may do in recalling facts you have memorized. But if the test requires solving complex problems, he's recommending students need to really chill out before they start. His results focusing on the kinds of mental activities helped and harmed by higher levels of psychological stress netted stories in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Times of London, Self magazine, United Press International, WebMD, BBC News and Forbes.com.