Introduction. Dissemination is a cross-cutting activity within universities so the analysis of how media cover university news becomes a relevant issue in order to understand how public image of higher education institutions is being configured. Method. This work applies a mixed methodology, quantitative -content analysis -and qualitativeethnographic study -, on a sample of 3137 news published between January and September 2016 in two digital newspapers of national scope and 13 regional / local scope newspapers, regarding 23 Spanish universities. Results and conclusions. The results suggest that media scope strongly influence the coverage. While national media carry out deeper analysis of news items, giving more visibility to university experts and including cyber-journalism resources; Regional and local newspapers are more dependent on calls and press releases from university press offices, they mainly report on university events and barely use cyber-journalism resources.