# Automated University News pipeline change log

## 2026-08-10T18:28:42Z — topic proxy scope correction

- **Trigger:** A face-validity inspection after the first complete run found that the topic proxy searched the full body. Incidental historical references therefore assigned `protest_palestine` as the primary control topic to 1,013 of 1,527 articles, including obituaries and unrelated event stories.
- **Frozen rule retained:** The original implementation remains identifiable in version history as `classify_topics(headline_text + body)` and in the first-run script SHA-256 `9af5eea2a709f9b173baf595812500b312962120221956e775596af33bae9ffb`.
- **Correction before recalculation:** Topic proxies will search only the headline, description, and first two body paragraphs. This aligns the proxy with the original eligibility boundary that a substantial topic should appear in the headline/subtitle/lede or occupy multiple reported paragraphs.
- **Affected outputs:** Topic labels, topic/quarter validation strata, topic breakdowns, and adjusted models that include topic controls. Actor presence, actor-window scoring, unadjusted paired gaps, quotation measures, and article metadata are unchanged.
- **Likely directional consequence:** Unknown. The correction should reduce residual confounding and improve topic face validity, but it could move adjusted estimates in either direction.
- **Status:** Parser-defect correction permitted by the addendum. Because it follows a first automated outcome run, topic-adjusted estimates are labeled post-outcome exploratory. Unadjusted primary estimands retain their preregistered status because their inputs did not change.

### Preserved specification and before/after audit

- The complete first-run results are preserved at `work/university-automated-results-prefixed-topic.json` (SHA-256 `ba67f122a395aa26060c858835960421d65020845109237bd9d88ae50ddd81bb`).
- First-run primary-topic counts were: protest/Palestine 1,013; president/trustees 119; policing/Public Safety 98; federal pressure 90; discipline 72; labor 46; major announcement 31; governance 21; other 21; institutional policy 10; speech 6.
- Corrected primary-topic counts are: protest/Palestine 540; president/trustees 211; other 200; federal pressure 196; policing/Public Safety 105; major announcement 104; governance 54; labor 44; discipline 38; speech 18; institutional policy 16; campus access 1.
- The adjusted administration-minus-challenger coefficients were effectively unchanged because each paired article contributes one administration and one pooled-challenger row with identical article-level controls. Framing changed from `-0.034427284427284634` to `-0.0344272844272847`; scrutiny from `-0.06561023074784283` to `-0.06561023074784633`; first-quote probability from `0.06563706563706545` to `0.0656370656370636`; quote-word share from `-0.06714748214078457` to `-0.06714748214078554`. The small CI changes reflect the corrected topic dummy structure.
- The corrected results are `work/university-automated-results.json` (SHA-256 `af3433ae33e9e37437f6ea9609fe88e1857bbe9cec27ce9222c1d58c4bc5281a` at validation).
