Lokey Donation Coverage

This morning, I recieved an email from UO President David Frohnmayer, announcing the largest ever donation to the university's academic departments - $74.5 million.
Lately, one of my biggest gripe points has been how Phil Knight (the UO graduate who co-founded Nike) seems to own a disproportional amount of my school with his almost complete sponsorship of its athletic program. (Not that this is a bad thing, but now that he sells racially profiled shoes, it starts to feel that way.)
Anyway, I was excited to hear about Lorry Lokey's donation. Maybe now UO's academics can share the limelight with athletics, at least until Knight trumps Lokey with a larger donation.

The announcement also brought up an interesting point of comparison between two local papers. I've been reading Slate Magazine's column "Today's Papers" in an attempt to stop failing the news quizzes in my Journalism class, and have found it fascinating to compare what papers run what stories and where. When I looked into the Lokey donation story a bit more, I realized that the same comparison can be made at a local scale, with revealing results.
My first questions when I heard the news about the donation were "What is the largest amount that has ever been given to non-academic purposes (ie athletics)?" and "What is the largest academic donation the University has ever received?" I pulled up the Oregon Daily Emerald's site. The campus paper ran the story at the top of its web edition (well, under two banner ads), with an image of the now-renamed Lorry I. Lokey Science Complex. When I skimmed the story, however, I didn't find the information I was looking for. It did say that Lokey has given a total of $132 million to the University, and gave a breakdown of where the funds would go, which was nice. But I left the very short story hungry for more information.
Next, I tried the Register Guard. Their story was also on top (no ads) and almost twice as long as the Emerald's. It gave more context, including some of the information I was looking for: Knight's got Lokey beat for a single-donation record with a $100 million athletic donation made earlier this year. Still, I don't know what the previous record was for strictly academic donations, and I'd have to do a bit more digging to find out. But the Guard's article did a much better job of covering the whole story, from the controversy over athletic donations to Lokey's plans to donate more in the future.
There are certainly a whole list of factors that make the Emerald's coverage so different from the Guard's coverage of the same story, and I won't try to name them all. Obviously, the Guard has much more space to work with. The Emerald is probably making the assumption that students are familiar with the controversy over athletic donations, and wanted to cover Lokey's act for what it was: not a jab at Knight or an attempt to end the argument, but an honest gift to the University that rises above athletics vs. academics fights.

Put that in your shoe and smoke it, Phil!