 By Anjanette Delgado
Measuring the audience response to a journalistic story usually means counting page views and unique visitors, yet that assessment falls short. At my Gannett newspaper in Westchester County, we wanted to know more: What happened when we started asking questions (about a story)? After we published a story? When a key decision-maker or a crowd of people saw that story? Did we spark a change in law, a donation, a citation or the dismissal of an unlawful employee? Did the family who lost their father’s Purple Heart years ago finally find it, with help from the crowd? Did we make a difference? If you’ve arrived at this post, I probably don’t need to say that journalism matters. For many of us, it’s a calling and a purpose and so on. But while print newsrooms especially have been hesitant to talk about this lest we seem boastful, we need to drop the pretense and get comfortable reminding our readers, advertisers and subscribers of the impact we have on our communities — that is, if we wish to hold onto our relevance and our institutional heft. That’s why we at The Journal News and lohud.com (Westchester County, New York) built an impact tracker — to record not the clicks but the real-world change our journalism inspires. The tracker primarily serves, but is not limited to, two types of journalism: explanatory and investigative. Whereas the purpose of explanatory journalism is to make something clear (improve understanding, change minds), the purpose of investigative journalism is most often to reveal the secrets held close by those in power. Documenting the impact of this journalism requires diligence and truthfulness on the part of the reporter; he or she must be able to prove, to a reasonable degree, that the change is the result of his or her work and not coincidence. It also requires time. The impact of a story might not be felt for months or years (for example, if a law is to be changed). Do it well, though, and you will have information like this at the ready: “The Pelham Manor Board of Trustees initially suspended Alfred Mosiello over racist emails he had forwarded. But within days of our revealing some of the emails, the board pressured him to retire.” “The story led to Libby Pataki's resignation as tourism director, the dissolution of one nonprofit, and the reconstituting of another, with a proper board of directors and appropriate oversight.” “After the story was published, the Federal Railroad Administration announced that it was considering a rule change that would limit the amount of hours track workers are allowed to put in during a day.” “In response to a lawsuit seeking to improve secular education in some Hasidic yeshivas, Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, D-New City, crafted a bill that allows the state to enforce the legal standard of ‘substantial equivalence.’ The lawyer who filed that suit credited our coverage with emboldening plaintiffs to come forward with the complaint.” “Our reporting and outreach to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer's office led to the Purple Heart being returned to the family of the World War II soldier and POW." Underneath the hood The tracker is a Ruby on Rails web application developed by Avram Billig to populate a database. Journalists manually add impacts and tie them to stories, and we can then filter and view by story, author, date, impact, etc. As reporters from multiple newsrooms add their work, it gets categorized and stored in a PostGreSQL database that we query to discover the analytics of impact over time. Why we aren’t focusing on social media data Many news organizations and foundations studying impact rightly track social media shares and influence as well to prove reach and influence, often, or money well spent. While our tracker includes an option to explain the social media impact, we chose not to put our focus there for two reasons:
What’s next We started the tracker two years ago as a Google Form because it was simple to spin up and revise as we learned more about impact tracking and how it can help our newsroom. (Much credit for inspiring this first version goes to the wise and thoughtful Lindsay Green-Barber at the Center for Investigative Reporting.) Version 2.0 is this software we’re sharing with other USA Today Network newsrooms, and we’re beginning to think about 3.0 features such as connecting impact to traditional analytics and data visualizations. Each iteration of the software is a chance for greater understanding. How we use the information we collect
Questions about the tracker or how we’re studying impact? Email: adelgado@gannett.com or Twitter: @anjdelgado. Avram Billig turned my visions for the tracker into reality and is the reason reporters and editors think this is all much easier than it really is. Twitter: @aabillig. Traci Bauer gave us the support and freedom to develop the tracker, and she helped shape many of its features. She is the vice president/news for The Journal News/lohud.com and The Poughkeepsie Journal. She believes empowering a community with strong journalism is the best way to build loyalty among audiences, and tracking their actions helps measure our own success. Email: tbauer@gannett.com, Twitter: @tbauer. Anjanette Delgado is the digital director and head of audience for lohud.com and poughkeepsiejournal.com. Email: adelgado@gannett.com, Twitter: @anjdelgado.
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 This Is Us producer Vera Herbert was among those celebrating healthy storylines during the Sentinel Awards. Photo by Howard Pasamanick By Laurie Trotta Valenti, PhD
On September 27 in Los Angeles, I had the pleasure of attending the Sentinel Awards, an annual celebration of television programs that entertain millions but also help viewers gain insights into serious health and social issues. These are popular shows that we (or some subset of we) love watching, shows whose writers artfully weave factual information into compelling storylines. The awards are sponsored by our Hollywood, Health & Society colleagues at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. Categories include documentaries, talk shows, comedies, reality shows, children’s programming and dramas. Highlights among the evening’s celebrity guests was Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) star Kelly McCreary, who spoke eloquently about learning of the rare type of breast cancer to which her character’s mother succumbed. Grey’s Producer Bill Harper, upon accepting the award, shared that a personal friend had pursued medical treatment after watching the storyline, which resulted in her receiving early, life-saving intervention. Vera Herbert from the hit show This Is Us (NBC) accepted a Sentinel Award for a riveting plotline dealing with mental health issues, specifically panic attacks. Also celebrated were stories that made us laugh while informing, as awardee Laura Gutin Peterson from black-ish (ABC) accepted for the show’s exploration of preeclampsia among pregnant women. The unscripted series Born This Way (A&E) received an award for documenting the lives of teens with Down syndrome; and a story around the new Sesame Street (HBO) character Julia, who is diagnosed with autism, was celebrated as providing a tool for modeling social behavior among children. Years of research in the social sciences tells us that children imitate behavior they see onscreen. We also know viewers gain medical knowledge from stories they see on television: a recent Pew report revealed that 83% of Hispanics studied received medical information from media. A study by the Lear Center’s Hollywood, Health & Society about a transgender storyline on the show Royal Pains revealed that the more shows with transgender characters viewers saw, the more positive their attitudes toward transgender people and policies were. In the case of Sesame Street, the “neuronormal” characters were helped to understand that a new friend’s seemingly eccentric behavior was due to her autism. How many children watching this show will now feel more comfortable interacting with an autistic classmate? In the case of Grey’s Anatomy, we know that at least one woman’s life was saved due to the information gleaned from the show. How many more viewers might these health and issue-oriented storylines impact? Here at the Media Impact Project, we spend our days considering ways to measure precisely how a television show, a video experience, a game, a movie or a news series impacts audiences. We ask such questions as: What information did viewers learn and apply to their own lives after watching? Did people take action after viewing? Which storylines spur more viewers to take actions such as seeking medical treatment, or “liking” a story on a Facebook page, or signing-up to volunteer for a cause, or donating money? Answers to these questions could help writers, directors and producers create more meaningful stories that truly engage their audiences, and could assist anyone interested in media’s role in our lives gain more nuanced understanding of the issues. In future blogs, myself and my colleagues on the MIP team will be sharing insights on our projects and our methods to quantify media’s impact on viewers. Stay tuned! The 2017 Sentinel Awards honorees: Drama
 By Laurie Trotta Valenti Two recent projects by Netflix, 13 Reasons Why and To the Bone, have attracted attention among public health officials for their portrayals of serious issues – rape, suicide and eating disorders. 13 Reasons is based on the popular novel by Jay Asher and involves a teen who commits suicide (in a heart-wrenching, four-minute wrist-cutting scene) after sending cassette tapes to 13 people she "blames” for her troubled life. The film has come under fire for what critics say are depictions of youth suicide and rape in graphic ways that could influence vulnerable teens. A study last week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine reports there were between 900,000 and 1.5 million more suicide-related searches overall in the 19 days after the show's release than would normally be expected during the same period—many of them searching for information about suicide methods.  To the Bone delves into the world of anorexia. It is a semi-autobiographical account of writer Marti Noxon’s battle with the eating disorder as a teen. The leading actress Lilly Collins lost 20 pounds to prepare for the role, and has openly discussed and written about her own battle with an eating disorder. Some health experts voiced concern for the actress and the possibility of the experience triggering a relapse for her, and others commented that the real horrors of the disease were not shown in enough graphic detail. But in comparison to 13 Reasons, this film was more widely acclaimed for portraying a nuanced look at the underlying issues of eating disorders and raising awareness. Further, the creative team involved consulted with other survivors as well as public health groups such as Project Heal, and were able to weave some educational messages into the script. Project Heal offers a To the Bone advice and discussion guide for viewers who want to explore the issues in the film. Producers and writers of both projects stand by their choices. Both projects creative teams appear committed to exploring their respective issues, and they did so in ways that only could be done through narrative storytelling – placing us inside the minds and bodies of two young women and helping audiences to experience their pain. Both teams sought to tell serious and important stories and both wanted their projects to start a dialogue about subjects often seen as taboo. For this they should be commended, as should Netflix, for taking on this subject matter. And yet, 13 Reasons producers seemed surprised by the outcries from public health community after the series aired. Their vision was to show the brutal gory truth of what a real suicide looks like, believing this would act as a deterrent to teens. They seemed unaware of the research that shows suicide portrayals statistically can lead to copycat suicides or contagion among teens, a group particularly likely to experience suicidal thoughts. Producers responded to criticisms by adding advisories and resource pages to their websites and to their films. They sponsored 13ReasonsWhy.info as a global resource center for people seeking help or information. But this backtracking could have been avoided if the producers had thought more deeply about the influence their series could have on their young audiences. Their creation amounts to more than telling a compelling story – they offer a glimpse into attitudes and actions that could be adapted – a “how-to” manual of sorts. To the Bone producers were more authentic in their presentation, but critics still felt the nature of the material could cause trigger behaviors. These are dedicated creative professionals sharing meaningful stories… but in their roles as producers, writers, directors, casting and make-up professionals, the project teams failed to fully realize the POWER of their work to influence real behaviors in real life. At the Lear Center’s Media Impact Project, we study the impact of news and entertainment on audiences. Our goal is to prove that media matters, and to improve the quality of media to serve the public good. The Lear Center’s Hollywood, Health and Society program offers free expert advice to entertainment industry professionals on a wealth of media issues from leading experts in health, public safety and security. We invite the creative community professionals telling stories with possible public health issues to contact us if they have any questions about the effects their work might have on viewers. Filmmakers are the storytellers of our time… their work can easily reach millions of viewers. And here they have a challenge – recognizing that their stories have impact. They wield, in many ways, powerful force for emulating positive or negative behavior. They create, in fact, more than entertainment, more than a movie. For as Plato said, “Those who tell the stories rule society.”  Netflix added this resource page for crisis services after the broadcast of 13 Reasons Why spurred outcry from school counselors and suicide prevention organizations.  By Laurie Trotta Valenti, PhD I believe in the power of media, for good or bad, and I’ve dedicated my career to getting people to think about how entertainment impacts us. And what better place than the Norman Lear Center to look at these issues? I attended a TV Academy event a while back titled “An Evening With Norman Lear.” On the stage of the Montalban Theatre in downtown Los Angeles sat five talented and successful African American artists and executives from the hip-hop realm – Touré, Common, Steve Stoute, Russell Simmons and D-Nice. Each man reflected on how Norman Lear’s work on such shows as “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times” had influenced and helped shape them into the men they are today. So many studies have documented the effects of media, particularly on young viewers, but nothing was more powerful than hearing someone like Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Recordings, talk about how he loved watching George Jefferson wearing a three piece suit and mouthing off to everybody in his high-rise building; and about how George Jefferson helped him realize that a powerful African American entrepreneur had something to say on American TV. Musician Common, who grew up in the same Cabrini-Green housing complex as the family portrayed on “Good Times,” reminisced about how the series told honest stories of life in the Chicago projects... it was an amazing evening that spoke to the heart.  I did not get the opportunity to discuss with Norman Lear his thoughts about that night, but it must have felt wonderful. He was getting first-hand knowledge of the profound positive impact his work had on real live people – successful people I might add.
But the majority of individuals who work in the entertainment industry seldom have the opportunity to hear how their work affects their audiences. Not just the high profile actors, writers and producers, but the many people who together help to create the films, TV shows, games and music videos we all consume every day. If you’re say an editor working on low budget indie films, struggling to make the next mortgage payment, you are perhaps not thinking about how your edits affect viewers – you are just trying to tell your story… If you are a costume designer on a sitcom, or a casting director working under deadline pressure to find the perfect actor for a role, you perhaps are not considering the social stereotypes your choices may be planting in the minds of children watching your show… and yet, this work is affecting them. Audiences are taking in all of the subtle social and cultural cues embedded in the stories we watch. Research shows that these choices made by our creative professionals do matter, as viewers model behaviors and attitudes and accept as normal what they see in the media. My work in the past two decades has been to create awareness and dialogue among people in the creative community about the power of their work not simply to entertain, but to INFORM, and dare I say to INFLUENCE. This is nothing new to Madison Avenue, which has been selling sugary cereal to kids for a long time now. There have been many studies that explore the prosocial effects of positive role models as seen in entertainment characters. Others explore the power of the narrative story lines to stimulate emotions, and how emotional responses influence learning and behavior. Still others explore the negative influence of glamorizing violence or drug use to promote negative behaviors in viewers. At the Lear Center’s Media Impact Project, we study the impact of news and entertainment on viewers. Our goal is to prove that media matters, and to improve the quality of media to serve the public good. This work has been my mission. I look forward to sharing with you in upcoming posts.  What does entrepreneurship have to do with cultural diplomacy? By Fernando Berdion Del Valle Jean-Luc Goddard’s protagonist in Le Petit Soldat famously observed that “the cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” What he failed to mention is that this cinematic truth does not come free. As any filmmaker (especially any independent filmmaker) knows, capturing a story with a camera is only half the battle. Films must be pitched, financed, marketed, and distributed. Teams of creative and technical experts need to be recruited, managed, coached (and paid). After the whole film production cycle comes full circle, investors, institutional backers and concerned family members continue to ask questions about the film’s impact and ultimate success. Did it return a profit? Did it resonate with audiences? Did the outcome justify the cost of production? In short, contemporary filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers, are as much entrepreneurs as they are artists. This dual-role has long been a fact of cinematic life (whatever midcentury, continental theories of the auteur suggest), but it is especially relevant for young storytellers seeking to navigate a highly fragmented and rapidly changing global media landscape. Coincidentally, these are exactly the types of media professionals that the US Department of State seeks to support through several of its cultural diplomacy programs. Put another way, the success of several American cultural diplomacy programs depends, in large part, on conveying entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to emerging media professionals around the world. Many regions in which American PD programs work lack either a culture of independent filmmaking or a media market robust enough to support emerging talent working outside the “traditional” filmmaking path (e.g., attending the national film school and then working within a hierarchically organized national filmmaking guild). Success in this context might require adopting alternative financing models that are better suited to local contexts or founding entirely new non-profit organizations to supplement the support provided by national governments and international organizations. Without these types of innovations necessary to create more vibrant media ecosystems, it is difficult to see how, over the long-term, American cultural diplomacy efforts can take firm root. Considering these challenges, how can American public diplomacy learn from the field of entrepreneurship education? The first step involves policymakers globally recognizing the connection between these two areas. Thankfully, the past few years have seen several initiatives designed to bring entrepreneurship education under the umbrella of American PD practice. The State Department currently sponsors the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, Global Entrepreneurship Week, and the Mexico-United States Entrepreneurship Innovation Council - all well-established programs that promote mentorship and capacity-building among emerging professionals abroad, much as cultural diplomacy programs currently do. The Obama administration was particularly bullish on the possibilities of so-called “startup diplomacy” seeing it as a tool to promote American ideas and promote economic development simultaneously. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department described the public diplomacy potential of entrepreneurship in this way: Indeed, entrepreneurship, as a channel for young men and women to express themselves, is a compelling weapon in the fight against terrorism and violent extremism. It is an outlet to build and add value rather than destroy it. This is especially important in the Middle East, which is, as the Brookings Institution has noted, experiencing “an unprecedented ‘youth bulge.’” Replace “entrepreneurship” with “storytelling” or “film making” and the point stands. Yet, even if policy makers continue to recognize this key area of potential convergence, how do other, non-state actors move towards greater collaboration? Should film education and mentorship programs simply place a greater emphasis on teaching the business of media making? Should supportive non-governmental organizations create accelerator or incubator programs specifically tailored to startup business in the independent media space? Or is a more formal collaboration needed, perhaps between the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (EB), where entrepreneurship-related programming is centered, and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), where cultural diplomacy efforts are housed? All these options are possible, of course, but perhaps the greatest opportunity for the film diplomacy community is to adopt some of the data collection practices that have emerged among non-profits. One striking example is the Kauffman Index – an in-depth measure that captures the rate at which new ventures are created, the durability of startups over time, and the contribution to local economies, all mapped geographically. The Index is not only helpful for entrepreneurs and investors to gauge where new opportunities may exist, it also facilitates the work of policy makers looking to assess and communicate the impact of entrepreneurship education to other stakeholders. Also, the Kauffman Institute’s reputation as an effective non-partisan and non-profit organization adds to its credibility as an honest-broker of entrepreneurship related research, especially within the United States. Another organization whose work has a more global focus is Endeavor, a non-profit that promotes mentorship to entrepreneurs globally, mapping the country-by-country (and sometimes city-by city) landscape of the local “ecosystem” for new firm development. What is intriguing about the Endeavor model is that by operating as an independent non-profit it can gather with a range of constituencies – venture capitalists, universities, policymakers, and entrepreneurs – and disseminate that accumulated knowledge broadly with the goal not merely of supporting individual entrepreneurs, but more importantly, the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole. Granted, film diplomacy and cultural diplomacy programs are not resourced in the way that many entrepreneurship education programs currently are. Even so, the potential for an initiative analogous to the Kaufman Index or Endeavor Insights is promising. Imagine a global media landscape map comparing the national or sub-national environments for local film and media makers, highlighting particular areas of growth and opportunity. Or imagine an independent repository of best practices in the field of global media entrepreneurship, available to partner NGOs and independent filmmakers all over the world? Now that would be entrepreneurial. Check out our annotated bibliography on public diplomacy evaluation Johanna Blakley The Norman Lear Center and the Paley Center for Media held an event on November 2 exploring how technology and storytelling are raising awareness about important social issues. I gave a presentation (which you can watch here) addressing how we can connect the dots between media exposure and social or political action. Summarizing results from the Lear Center’s impact studies of the documentary film Waiting for “Superman,” the narrative feature film Contagion, and the Guardian’s global development news website, I explained how mixed methods research can be used to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes and behavior from media exposure (You can read full-length reports here). The evening started with a very timely panel discussion about how new technologies are informing and invigorating public discourse about social issues. Justin Osofsky, Vice President of Media Partnerships and Online Operations at Facebook, discussed how “humbled” the organization was by the profound impact that Facebook Live video streaming has produced. Wesley Lowery, National Reporter at The Washington Post and author of the forthcoming They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, explained how his fluid use of Twitter, Snapchat and Periscope transformed his journalistic process. Raney Aronson-Rath, Executive Producer of Frontline, weighed in on the expanding use of VR among newsgatherers, and her “Aha!” moment at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. Jennifer Preston, Vice President of Journalism at the Knight Foundation, which sponsored this event, joined the panel in a nuanced conversation about the difference between journalistic ethics and online community ethics, which are becoming more deeply interwoven as citizens move to social media platforms for news The second panel of the night addressed the impact of storytelling in entertainment, bringing together the grandfather of social issue TV, Norman Lear; Kenya Barris, creator of black-ish; and Gloria Calderon Kellett, Co-Showrunner of the Netflix reboot of Lear’s classic One Day at a Time. Moderated by Marty Kaplan, the group addressed the critical need for entertaining stories about real people and real problems on screens large and small. Sensitive to the historic lack of diversity on primetime TV, Barris and Kellett discussed the need to dislodge the notion that there’s one monolithic experience for each ethnic group. By injecting their own lived lives into their storytelling, all three writers felt that they could trigger conversations that could lead to social change.  Ivonne Veciana By Kevin Davis, MIP Senior Fellow Big Data and metrics are changing the way businesses of all types operate in a digital environment. From automotive (think Uber and Waze), to retail (think Amazon and Gilt) to content (think Netflix and Facebook) to advertising (think Google) big data is changing the way today’s most successful businesses and industries operate. While data has changed the way news organizations are producing and packaging content (think data journalism and data applications), the business of journalism has not been as fast to adopt and adapt to a world where every consumer action and decision point can be tracked, measured and analyzed. The reasons for this have been stubbornly persistent even within news organizations that grasp the concept; that see metrics and measurement as an opportunity to improve their products and services, and which have committed resources to the effort. This was a key takeaway from three intrepid and determined news leaders from independent publishers from around the globe after participating in “Measuring Digital Media Impact 101,” a media metrics training course conducted by the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project on the USC campus in early June 2016. The Open Society Foundation’s Program on Independent Journalism sponsored participants from three nonprofit news organizations: El Faro (El Salvador), Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), and Himal Southasian (Nepal). The course was led by Dana Chinn, MIP director. Three other media metrics analysts – Jason Alcorn, Justice Haque and Alana Victor – also helped with hands-on training in both English and Spanish. The program provided an intense if not practical crash-course on leveraging ubiquitous measurement tools to help newsrooms answer the most persistent questions in newsrooms today: Who is reading our content? What are they doing on our platforms? Where are they coming from and where are they going? What content is and what is not working? How do we translate these findings into action that increases our effectiveness, revenue and impact? The course syllabus stated the objectives of the program this way: “After completing this course, participants will know how to prepare, interpret and present basic and customized reports from Google Analytics for their staff, board members and funders.” Participants were told that as a result of attending the seminar that they would learn how to:
Working from early in the morning to late in the evening for an intense two days, each participant was taken through a rigorous agenda that started with asking the right questions and ended with how to share answers. One of the first lessons learned is that most of the metrics that people cite today are actually not very good and don’t actually say much about what’s really going on. Hits, page views, and even aggregate demographic information were each knocked off their perches as go to data-points. Instead, analysis of things like bounce rate, primary traffic sources and user segments were all shown to provide a far more nuanced picture with greater potential actionable effect. At the end of the two days, each exhausted yet enthusiastic participant hopped a plane back to their respective organizations to take back what they had learned and, hopefully, apply it in meaningful ways. It was my responsibility to find out just how effective the program was in helping these smaller, mission-driven news organizations become more responsive and therefore more effective in their business. Within a few days of returning back to their homes, we first asked the participants to complete an online survey. What we heard back was not that surprising. While the participants rated the program, the staff and the curriculum very highly, it was clear that each participant would have liked more time to absorb and practice what they had just learned. While the generosity of the Open Society Foundation made this program possible, the agreed-upon budget for the program dictated the time and level of effort – particularly post-seminar - that the Media Impact Project staff were able to provide. Not surprisingly, when asked what else we could provide to each of these newly minted practitioners when they returned home, the answer was almost unanimously that they needed more support and follow-up. It is one thing to perform a task when you have a one-on-one dedicated resource in the classroom helping with every step. What each participant reported was that it was much more difficult to reproduce the functions and do the work when they were back home on their own. Two months following the seminar in Los Angeles, we conducted Skype interviews with each participant one-on-one. Those conversations yielded even greater insights into the reality of putting these lessons to work. “The management team of El Faro are trying to figure it out without having the benefit of being there [in Los Angeles],” said seminar attendee, Ivonne Veciana. “The El Faro team do have some hypothesis; but they want the answer to all of their questions in Google Analytics.” This reflects a common perception that there are hard and fast answers to these important, but complicated questions. The answer, it turns out, is rarely a yes or no or fixed response, but more often “It depends.” The “on what” is what these organizations have to figure out. Upon returning to El Salvador, Ms. Veciana had a hard time meeting the expectations of her management team who agreed for her to participate and who are anxious to learn more about their business. “The hypotheses of the management team required additional context, including qualitative data, not just metrics,” said Ms. Veciana. In the real world, it wasn’t as simple as identify a business problem, design your questions, form a hypothesis, test and measure it, draw conclusions, act on them and repeat. That is not to say that she was unable to provide any insights or value. Ivonne has become, in effect, the “data whisperer.” In order to provide more context to the data she is providing her team, she has created an index of external site data, particularly of distribution partners, in order to provide more insight into the reach and impact of their journalism.  Laura Weffer Laura Weffer, co-founder and editorial director of Efecto Cocuyo, had a similar experience back in Caracas. “Before, my interpretation of the data was much more intuitive,” said Ms. Weffer. “Since being in the Los Angeles training I now have a greater understanding of what to look for and how to get it.” Another lesson learned is that metrics, measurement and interpretation require constant commitment. Said Ms. Weffer: “I work with deadlines and work best when I have a deadline to manage to.” As a result she has instituted a weekly report and meeting where she reviews the data of the prior week and communicates her findings to her staff on a regular basis. Metrics, it turns out, are not just about gaining a better understanding of what’s happening on the site, but also how the technology is performing. Armed with her new knowledge and understanding of how Google Analytics can be used to, Ms. Weffer uncovered a data point that was alarming. “All of a sudden, we were seeing abnormally high bounce rates one day on the website” she said. After writing to professor Dana Chinn for further help - a common behavior for all the participants - it was discovered that the analytics tags were incorrectly deployed on the site leading to an abnormal and inaccurate reading. “Before, I would not have been able to figure out what was wrong. Now we were able to troubleshoot and fix the problem in a very short period of time.”  Smita Mitra Unfortunately, problems with technology platforms and the ability to come up with a solution and get it fixed was a limiting factor elsewhere as well. Smita Mitra, desk editor at long-form publisher Himal Southasian, ran into multiple technical issues that negatively impacted the benefits of deploying a rigorous analytical regime. “Unfortunately, the benefits of the program have been delayed until we can address the larger issues of our underlying technology platform,” said Ms. Mitra.
What is apparent from each of these participants experience is that this type of training and competence in both deploying and analyzing performance data can be invaluable for these organizations. With this type of training, newsrooms of all sizes can deploy and utilize these tools to gain a far greater understanding of how their product and services are actually being used. What is also apparent is that most of these efforts will fall short or even fail when newly trained practitioners are not provided with sufficient ongoing technical and analytical support when they are back in the real world. Given the high expectations going in, and the lack of understanding coming out from management both on the editorial and business side, it appears that more can and should be done to bring the other members of the leadership team up to speed and bought-in to the program. While all three participants suggested having an additional online resource to refer to when back in the “wild,” it appears that relying on one individual within an organization (no matter what the size) produces less than optimal results and does not promote cultural change. Instead of flying out a single individual to participate in a training program away from the organization, this analysis leads me to believe that a more effective means would be to teach and train publishers where they are. As previous programs by the Media Impact Project have demonstrated, the ability to go into a publisher and train both business and editorial leadership on metrics integration not only helps set expectations, but also helps solidify a culture of evaluation that can lead to real action within an organization. By introducing and maintaining an experimental methodology into a news culture, we can help independent and mainstream publishers alike establish a metrics regime that can lead to meaningful and actionable answers. Author’s note: Himal Southasian has since suspended publication. By Jessica Clark, MIP Senior Fellow Producing a high-impact media project can be a befuddling prospect. What starts as a germ of an idea—“I’ll make a film about X to solve Y!”—quickly snowballs into a social media campaign to reach Z, an app to accomplish A and B, and so on. And then there are all those outcomes to track for each platform. How are you supposed to keep this all in your head? Don’t fret—instead pick up our newly minted Media Engagement Strategy Deck: The deck was developed by our MIP Senior Fellow Jessica Clark. She set out to understand how makers and funders can best assess media projects on emerging platforms. She quickly realized that part of the problem was a gap in shared language around impact models and outcomes, and began to develop a symbol font to begin to fill in that gap.
The font in turn morphed into this deck, designed for producers, funders and developers of media projects that aim to have a public interest outcome. How does it work? The deck is divided into multiple parts—a Core Deck focused on the question “How do you engage your audience?” and Expansion Packs designed to help users dig further into content strategy or work directly with audience members to prototype projects. Different “suits” are organized by color. In the core deck you’ll find suits that answer these questions:
In addition the Core Deck contains Connectors (peach) which will help you to build and edit strategies or impact stories, and Key Concepts (aqua) to consider as you go. The Connectors allow the deck to work a bit like an equation—you can begin with the factors that you already know (either your desired outcome or your starting platform) and then build an impact story from left to right. Or, if you’re using multiple platforms with discrete outcomes, you can stack or stagger strategies. The cards are meant to be flexible to reflect the many different creative approaches that media makers are taking. The cards can be used in multiple settings: by individual makers and funders for planning or assessment; by a team to articulate and debate next steps; in a conference or classroom to prototype different media projects. While we’ve done our best to think through common platforms, outcomes and social tools, we’ve also included a few blank cards for you to customize for your own needs. Using the Expansion Packs Each of the expansion packs is available separately, or you can order the full deck to get all four:
Learn more and order your own cards today! By Anjanette Delgado and Rob Gates Gannett recently honored nine of its newsrooms for devising creative audience strategies that led to growth. The winning newsrooms — ranging in size from small town to metropolitan and tackling topics from the county fair to the Kentucky Derby — all had one thing in common: They studied metrics before planning coverage. Most gave new thought to time-worn beats, while some launched entirely new projects. We asked the journalists behind those strategies to explain their ideas, share what they learned about audience and revisit their biggest challenges. (Full disclosure: Rob and Anjanette are audience analysts at Gannett, and Rob provided the foundation for the winning Derby strategy in Louisville, Ky.) Here are the Smart Growth Award winners: THE COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, Ky. Looking back to move ahead Since 1875, The Courier-Journal had hardly changed the way it covers the Kentucky Derby. Sure, over time the staff added some digital elements (photo galleries, especially), but the heart of their coverage remained feature stories on horses, owners, jockeys and more. “Nothing makes a newsroom analyst cringe more than the notion that we have covered the same event the same way for the past 140 years,” audience analyst Rob Gates said. “We knew we could grow the digital Derby audience. We just had to figure out how.” The answer was sitting right there in the newsroom’s historic data: Above all else, the digital audience was interested in betting information. What they learned about the audience: Their thirst for betting information was unquenchable. More than two dozen videos of experts picking horses multiplied video traffic on race day by 10 times. Results: In some subject areas, year-over-year traffic (page views and visits) more than tripled. And because they cross-linked feature stories to that wagering information, traffic to those was also higher than in previous years. Biggest challenge: Anticipated challenges were actually larger than the challenges themselves. “We were concerned that reporters who had been covering Derby the ‘old way’ would not be too receptive of this new strategy, but we found them more willing. This no doubt played a role in our success.” DETROIT FREE PRESS Make something popular just that much better Inside the newsroom at freep.com last year, Ashley Woods and Elissa Robinson noticed a surprising trend in their metrics — advice columns they had been thinking about as mostly a print feature were getting significant traffic from search. So Robinson, a web editor, and Woods, the consumer experience director, turned their attention to optimizing the columns, replacing writers’ mug shots with stock photography to make them more visual, crafting better headlines and linking to additional advice content. They branded their site with an advice tab, promoted the columns on social media and created a video to raise awareness. They created polls to increase reader engagement. “The advice columns submission is a winning entry in big part because of its simplicity,” the judges said. What they learned about the audience: Mothers older than 30 are the ones searching for these columns. They’re opinionated, engaged and increasingly loyal. Social media doesn’t drive much of the audience yet, but Woods said she believes sharing these pieces will eventually build awareness of her site as a source for advice — increasing direct traffic to freep.com in the long run. “Search isn’t a long-term strategy we can rely on,” she said. “So what more can we do to improve our browsing audience awareness of this section?” Results: Optimizing the advice columns initially doubled their page view traffic, and adding the advice tab pushed the site to the first page of Google search results. Creating branded videos for these columns powered the site’s increase in video views. Biggest challenge: Finding ways to make their loyal, local readers return for advice. THE DES MOINES (Iowa) REGISTER A template take state fairs to the digital audience State fairs have been a summer staple in Iowa long before anyone had ever heard of a computer, let alone the internet. In 2015, the Register took a whole new approach to coverage of the Iowa State Fair that led to a huge increase in audience. Some of the tactics they used:
Consumer Experience Director Nathan Groepper and Storytelling Coach Lisa Rossi led coverage instead of the features editor because they wanted to pursue a true digital-first approach. “Almost all of the new efforts started with the mobile audience as the primary target,” Groepper said. He used Adobe Analytics data from the previous year to help determine what events to cover and what topics might need more resources. Page views grew by 91 percent despite the staff writing fewer stories than the year before because they avoided writing the types of stories people hadn’t read. What they learned about the audience: The year-over-year traffic increase, especially on mobile, demonstrated that the audience is willing to engage with State Fair content that was presented in a new way that was outside of the traditional features stories and photo galleries. Results: Social media traffic to fair coverage increased by more than 500 percent. Munson, the columnist, doubled his state fair audience.  RENO (Nev.) GAZETTE-JOURNAL Pay attention to voice Reno devised a newsletter strategy for a younger audience. The key? Humor and consistency. The Reno Memo, which has published three times a week for a year now, features humorous commentary on local news that’s designed to be mobile-friendly and conversational — like your friend explaining a story over beers at a bar. Before launching, they took the time to understand both the medium (email) and audience through focus groups and interviews. They realized they were missing audience by thinking their mobile site or text alerts were reaching them; email could fill that gap. What they learned about the audience: Voice matters. Assume nothing about your audience. “Snark is easy, but a curated, smart voice to cut through the clutter of news with authority is a bit tougher,” said Executive Editor Kelly Scott. “That’s also the sweet sport for our audience.” Most of Reno’s newsletter readers are new customers. "Overwhelmingly positive” feedback suggested that they had hit a nerve among their target demographic. Results: Key metrics include the newsletter’s open rate (holding steady at 41 percent), click-thru rate (13 percent) and subscriber count. Biggest challenges: Ensuring consistent subscriber growth and developing a social strategy around the newsletter. “If the newsletter is the product, then what should our social strategy be?” Scott asked. “At first we tried to drive sign ups and minimize social. Then we tried to use social to create buzz. In the end, we’ve decided to use social as a voice — and that seems to be the most organic use in-line with driving sign ups.”  ARGUS LEADER, SIOUX FALLS, S.D. Tap into a new community Jodi Schwan, who is both audience analyst and Sioux Falls Business Journal editor, launched "Sioux Falls Made" in late 2014 around the emerging maker movement. The idea was to broaden Argus Leader Media’s audience for business coverage and make it more accessible to younger readers and women. The new brand includes frequent coverage of makers in the Sioux Falls Business Journal, the Argus Leader and related digital products. It includes everything from farmers’ market vendors to artists, crafters, chefs and tech entrepreneurs. Sioux Falls Made has its own presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. A semi-annual pop-up market of locally made items began in a converted garage in December 2014 with vendors grossing $10,000. When the December 2015 market was announced, the response on Facebook was so overwhelming (more than 7,000 people said they planned to attend) that Sioux Falls Made worked with one of its corporate sponsors to move the event downtown. The market featured work from more than 50 local makers and grossed more than $50,000. What they learned about the audience: “It is an extremely engaged audience that is eager to share content and interact, both in person and digitally,” Schwan said. “Our most engaged demographic on the Sioux Falls Made Facebook page is females ages 25 to 34 so we feel we hit our target.” We also noticed the Sioux Falls Business Journal audience skewing younger and more female, which suggests that Sioux Falls Made is serving as a gateway to other business content. Results: The metrics showed clear audience growth. Page views on business coverage in 2015 grew by 79 percent on desktop and 320 percent on mobile. Reach on the December Facebook event was 438,000 (the Sioux Falls metro area population is 250,000). Overall business content ended 2015 with 7 million page views with Schwan as the only full-time content producer. Biggest challenge: Finding time to fit the brand launch and market project into the workflow.  ST. CLOUD (Minn.) TIMES Draw on expertise in the room This Minnesota newsroom applied both analytics and additional reporting time to solve the problem of its flagging entertainment section, Up Next. “Readers and advertisers were losing interest,” said Sue Halena, content coach. They restructured, turning a part-time beat of 16 hours into a full-time beat. Kate Kompas, the entertainment reporter, enlisted her colleagues to help cover subtopics in which they had interest or expertise — food, tech, drink, music, movies, anime, pop culture. They experimented, measured the results (metrics: Twitter and Facebook followers, page views, time spent, unique visitors, return visits) and then experimented again. What they learned about the audience: “They want to know what they can do with free time,” Halena said. “They want ‘true gossip,’ such as little details about venues or performers or restaurants. They want variety.” Strong response to a social media post, though, didn’t necessarily mean those readers would become regulars. Results: Kompas grew her own page views by 84 percent in a single quarter. Page views for one of those niche entertainment columns are 10 times higher now than before the change. The main Up Next Twitter account doubled its followers in a year, and social media accounts associated with that brand (movies, etc.) grew by 13-16 percent in a quarter. Biggest challenge: “Consistency of content” from those drafted to support Kompas, Halena said. “Some columns are scuttled when staffers are forced to focus on higher priorities tied to their beat.”  THE DAILY ADVERTISER, LAFAYETTE La. Give ‘em a month of football Preseason coverage of high school football used to be an annual print tabloid at the end of August in Lafayette, but moving the coverage online and spreading it out throughout the month made it more immediate, engaging and financially successful. “While I still love the concept of the football tab from an anticipation and football-nerd readership aspect, it always bugged me that we’d worked so hard for that one big bang at the end of August and had so little actual high school football coverage each day throughout August,” said Kevin Foote, sports engagement editor. This extended online coverage, reflected in print each day, focused on a single school. “We didn’t run a huge story on it, but instead broke each team’s prospects down into 3-4 categories that were a lot more readable.” The staff also used its archives to reinforce its authority, publishing shots from football picture days 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years ago “to remind everybody exactly how far back we go in covering high school sports in our area,” Foote said. What they learned about the audience: While some readers are “still stuck in the old ways of doing things,” more of them said they enjoyed not having to wait for the end of the month and getting more information on their school. Results: More page views. “We always struggled with how to present the football tab online,” Foote said. Biggest challenge: Being ready with a new school every day. YORK (Pa.) DAILY RECORD Take advantage of your archives Coverage of an annual event can become rote, but this Pennsylvania newsroom used analytics to retool its York Fair strategy and focus on quality, not quantity. “I was really focused on not doing the status quo,” said Kate Harmon, then the paper’s dayside metro editor. She and Joel Shannon, the innovation editor, studied the data to prove a theory — that stories about hot-dog races and tractor pulls, those daily features that pulled a rotating schedule of reporters away from their beats, weren’t getting read but more in-depth fair stories were. They were right. “For years, our coverage had been extensive, routine and low-impact,” Shannon said. “Once we recognized this, we had a strong desire to use data to update our approach — to give our readers more of what they did want and less of what they didn’t.” Harmon focused a single reporter on two or three larger stories and let photographers handle the rest for a fresh approach that paid off. What they learned about the audience: Fair readers valued news and information they can use. They wanted stories with emotion, stories that surprised. Anything other than that wasn’t worth the investment, Shannon said. Readers who seemed to value “fair news for the sake of fair news” were actually nostalgic and loved the historic photo galleries the newsroom produced instead. Results: The number of page views per story improved. “We cut the number of bylines in half and doubled the number of page views,” Shannon said. “We worked less and got more results by only writing stories we knew our audience wanted to read.” Biggest challenge: Planning. “This could never have happened if we didn’t conduct the analysis and work to assemble the galleries weeks in advance,” Shannon said. That, though, is key to York winning the company’s Smart Growth award. “Analyzing audience metrics takes time that some newsrooms, large and small, sometimes feel they can’t afford,” the judges said. Clearly, though, that time can pay off. “I've always tried to look at work and life that way,” said Harmon, who now works in nonprofit marketing. “Not everything needs to be done better, or can be done better. But I really believe that you have to stop and take a look at how and why you're doing things often. The world and people are always changing and we have to adapt to keep up.”   THE NEWS STAR, MONROE, La.
Reporter finds that politics is social Greg Hilburn, Gannett’s Louisiana political reporter based at the News Star in Monroe, expanded his reach by sharing stories to social media pages of topical interest. “In a story I did about the warming relationship between the United States and Cuba and the possible benefits to future trade – Louisiana rice, Cuban cigars, etc. – I shared the link at least 15 times on Facebook, from the Louisiana Farm Bureau to national and state rice industry groups to cigar lovers,” Hilburn said. “It drove thousands of readers to our website, where we try to keep them there with other related links. I’ve had similar success with many other stories.” What they learned about the audience: “There is a great demand for our work, but we can no longer expect the audience to find us,” Hillburn said. “We have to find the audience in the platform they frequent, then coax them to spend more time with us. “ Results: Hillburn said he was surprised by the effectiveness of such a simple strategy. “Success is measured not just by the additional people who read the story I’m promoting, but the amount of time I can engage them in our site once attracting them there,” he said. Biggest challenge: Taking the time to find the social audiences to target. “I might spend a few hours reporting and writing the story and an almost equal amount of time (sharing) it,” Hillburn said.
By Jessica Clark, MIP Senior Fellow
How can media producers and funders get on the same page about the social impact of projects developed for emerging platforms? That’s the question that has animated my research as a senior fellow at the Media Impact project, and in April I travelled to LA to report in on my ongoing explorations. In my talk, What’s New Media Good for Anyway, I introduced an experimental new symbol font that I’ve created in collaboration with designer Carrie McLaren to help make impact conversations and analysis quicker, more creative and more playful. Here’s a quick rundown on how it works and why I’ve taken this approach:
In the full presentation, embedded below, I also lay out a series of questions to ask when encountering a social impact media project created using an unfamiliar platform:
These questions include:
It’s this last question that I’m hoping this font can help makers and funders to answer. Why is a social impact project being produced, and what’s the goal for audience engagement? The font offers several engagement models that I’ve developed in recent years in dialogue with researchers and producers of documentary and news — ranging from creating a private “safe space” for reporting on and discussing sensitive social issues, to “you are here” projects based in a local community, all the way up to the “big bang,” which assumes that the goal is to spread the message far and wide. Also on tap: symbols for a range of emotions that users might experience when interacting with the production, which can be used to help inform impact strategy. In addition, the font offers users the chance to think about the impact of various new forms of media. On the number keys, you’ll find familiar platforms such as radio, TV and print. However, hit the shift button, and these keys transform — to virtual reality, wearables, bots and more. The goal is to help you think through how these platforms change consumers' experiences of media, in turn spawning new models of social impact media yet to be defined. During the talk and in other workshops and presentations that MIP kindly organized for my visit, we discussed many other icons that could fill in the “TBD” gaps currently in the font. We're currently working on a second version of the font to incorporate these suggestions. In the meantime, though, you can download and install the beta version of the font yourself to play around with. It’s in True Type format (.ttf) and was designed primarily for use on the Mac. You’ll find it here in Dropbox, along with a key that explains the meaning of the various symbols. Please note that this font is for noncommercial and educational use only — please don’t sell it or repackage it. Stay tuned for an updated version with more icons, and more instructions about how to put the font to use in your own work. |
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