Sometimes you have to advocate for yourself in terms of publicity. Being in a large metropolitan area (Chicago) there is only so many minutes on the news or pages in the paper to recognize everything so the most popular subjects (sports) make the news.
In our large suburb there is a local paper that has academic recognitions but it is probably ranked #4 in terms of subscribers locally and how many people still subscribe to the paper today? What we do have is a popular cable access channel (who knew those still existed?) that covers most local events (parades, city council meetings, local high school sports, etc.) and is pretty widely viewed.
My wife was approached at a sporting event she was coaching by this channel to provide an interview about her team. After the interview she was talking with the reporter and learned that they are always looking for local stories of any type and would love community suggestions. My wife mentioned one of her athletes was about to receive his Eagle Scout and within a week they had set up to do a feature on him. It turned into a wonderful 10 minute piece that he will now have forever and it all came from an off handed conversation. This opened our eyes to a way to recognize those that are over looked by the typical media and we plan to make suggestions whenever we see someone that could use the recognition, be it athletics, test scores, volunteer work, etc.