In his effort to discredit NY Daily News reporter Adam Rubin, Mets General Manager Omar Minaya may have likely given the newspaper a wealth of positive exposure.

On July 22nd, when Rubin first reported that Mets VP of Player Personnel Tony Bernazard challenged players on the team’s minor league affiliate to a fight, the NY Daily News received no spike in online chatter according to Nielsen Buzzmetrics.

But during a July 27th press conference announcing the dismissal of Bernazard, Minaya poured fuel on the fire, by accusing reporter Adam Rubin (in attendance) of writing in self-motivation to get Bernazard’s job. The blogs began to boil, and buzz surrounding the Daily News doubled.

On television, national sports channels and local stations in New York ran with the story. According to Nielsen’s Grabix, which tracks over the air audio mentions correlated with minute by minute viewership data; the Daily News was referenced 24 times delivering a total of 41.9 Gross Rating Points (GRPs) in the New York Market on 7/27 — or roughly 3.6 million Gross Household viewers in New York.*

With dollars tight in a down economy and a transforming print industry, bloggers, word of mouth, and news coverage provided organic, free advertising. For the Daily News, the work of one reporter and a memorable press conference brought their paper to the top of the sports news cycle for at least one day.

*The same viewer exposed to multiple programs that mentioned the “Daily News” is counted each time.