The 2013 Faculty Media Impact Project built on the 2006 ranking. It focused on a faculty member’s citations in the public media as drawn from the Google News Archive. Its rankings enabled readers to compare specific scholars, departments, and schools in respect to both media citations and, importantly, the degree to which those who use public funding enrich public conversations in return.

The Project was based on over 50,000 search queries that involved more than 6,000 news sources relating to 12,777 professors at 94 universities in the social sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology). It examined the degree to which these faculty members are cited in the Google News Archive over a six-year period (2006-2011). An article appeared on the Project in the Chronicle of Higher Education “The New Rankings Frontier: Media Mentions” (10/08/13). The Huntington Post published a blog statement “Making it Win-Win” (10/28/13). The Center hoped to build up a cumulative record overtime of department and school rankings.

The 2012/13 Faculty Media Impact Project was opened on October 8, 2013 with the goal of building a cumulative record and ranking of various individual, department, and school through time.  Unfortunately, on Dec. 16, 2013, the Google News Archive was shut down. It eventually returned in a significantly altered form. [1]  Given these changes and the enormous time commitment and cost involved in revising and updating the Faculty Media Impact Project to fit with them, it was decided to shut the Project down.

[1]  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News_Archive , https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/google-shuts-down-newspaper-archive-project/239239/ ,  https://searchengineland.com/google-news-archive-search-page-gone-forever-or-temporary-bug-89768 , and https://www.thoughtco.com/search-tips-for-google-news-archive-1422213