Politics

Is the "Druggiest Campus" List a PR Stunt?

By Anne Landman

The Monterey Herald accused The Daily Beast of shameless self-promotion after the news Web site posted a list of what it claimed were the 50 "druggiest" colleges and universities in the United States. California State University Monterey Bay was ranked the seventh most drug-infested campus in the country, which the Herald disputes as illogical and unfair, particularly since UC Berkeley was ranked 46th, and UC Santa Cruz and Humboldt State didn't even make on the list. The Herald accused the article's authors of using shoddy methodology, like surveying relatively small samples of students, and considering U.S. Department of Education statistics for on-campus arrests and drug law citations for 2009, without regard to how aggressively each campus carries out enforcement. Using the latter measure, the Herald points out, would make campuses that actively discourage drug use through stricter enforcement rank higher on the "druggiest" list than would schools that ignore students'  possession and use of marijuana and other recreational drugs. The Herald says the rather than shedding light on the problem of drug use on U.S. campuses, but the goal of the authors "was to get newspapers and TV stations in at least 50 college towns around the country to produce stories mentioning the Daily Beast, and it worked exceedingly well" -- and put The Daily Beast at the top of the list for shameless website promotion.

Full post as published by PR Watch on December 16, 2010 (boomark / email).