not so dave, you can advertise for free through news atricles you just have to put a different spin on it.
More usually you pay a small amount for it though.
e.g. Drug companies paying for small studies into the effects of a disease, and then supplying it to all the news agencies who are too lazy to investigate their own 'proper' stories. Next day front page news, and (they hope) a flood of concerned people going to present to their GP to seek treatment.
Following their lead, perhaps STFC could sponsor (give them £50 to spend down the pub) an A-Level student's coursework project attempting to establish a direct correlation between football match attendance at the County Ground, and getting 5 or more GCSE passes, or whatever the metric is these days. It would probably make the adver...
