A further media lesson which I drew from Brad's experience, as a third-party observer at the time, was that media feeds on "new" news: after the initial article was published, the University reacted. That created another news story the next day. And if I recall correctly, their press release about their policy on the question came a day or two later. New development, new story. If you want to either give a story legs or let it go by quickly, feed the beast accordingly.

I don't recall how many stories there ultimately were over the period of a few weeks in the RHF instance, but small, new developments which were trickling out kept it front and centre for much longer than it could have been sustained had the initial complaint simply been allowed (by the University) to blow over, or had timing allowed more facts to be compressed into fewer (yet still timely) articles.

It's a simple principle, yet as newswatchers we're continually rediscovering it: we wonder that some important story hasn't received more coverage, yet those stories "always in the news" lead off with "New developments tonight in the case of ..."