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HOW DO YOU DEFINE "IMPACT"?

FUNDERS ARE GRAPPLING WITH THE QUESTION OF HOW TO BEST GAUGE THEIR journalism grants and have commissioned a number of reports on the topic. One useful point of reference is Deepening Engagement for Lasting Impact: A Framework for Measuring Media Performance & Results, a report commissioned in 2013 by the Knight and Gates Foundations. [Note: 5] 

This guide provides a thoughtful snapshot of how funders and public interest outlets have been working through the process of setting meaningful goals, identifying key audiences, measuring engagement and demonstrating impact. It also offers a model (below) that gets to the crux of the debate about evaluating journalism.

Oriented around the concept of “impact” as “change,” this funnel-shaped model traces effects of a story or media project first on individuals, then on institutions and systems and then real-world social or physical conditions—creating what we could call an “impact continuum.”

In this way it resembles a number of models that have been developed over the past several years. For example:

• The Center for Investigative Reporting’s media impact analyst, Lindsay Green-Barber, developed a journalism impact model divided into three levels derived from social science research: “micro” or individual-level outcomes, “meso” or discourse-level outcomes, and “macro” or structural change outcomes. This model posits that these levels are “interrelated in complex, fluid ways, rather than one leading to the next,” Barber says. [Note: 6] 

• The Skoll Foundation has developed a funnel framework (below) to illustrate the strategic nature of the storytelling partnerships it cultivates to drive adoption of social entrepreneurs’ innovations and impact on social issues. Partnerships that provide “exposure to a narrative” are at the broad end and then it narrows through different levels of engagement to partnerships and productions that reach key influencers and prompt deeper action. Success at any stage in the funnel necessarily reinforces the partnerships at other levels. [Note: 7]
  

In their work with documentary filmmakers, The Fledgling Fund has developed a “Dimensions of Impact” model (next page) that moves in ripples out from the story, through awareness and engagement, into movement-building and finally to social change. [Note: 8]

Dimensions of Impact
Reprinted from The Fledgling Fund, 2010

These models can’t capture the full range of factors that influence individuals and stakeholders, but they are clarifying for those who practice journalism that accepts social change as part of their mission.

These might include investigative journalists seeking to rally support to right a wrong, accountability journalists who want to mobilize public support against corruption, or advocacy journalists focused on reporting stories that bolster the case of a particular movement or group. Each of these forms has played a long and storied role in journalism’s history, as journalist Finley Peter Dunne famously said, working “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Josh Stearns, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s Director of Journalism and Sustainability, notes in a post on the foundation’s Local News Lab that this historical impulse is resurfacing in a raft of online journalism startups. 

“Today, I’d argue that journalism is still grappling to identify its theory of change,” he writes, “but we are beginning to see more experimentation around setting goals and measuring impact. And, just as there is no one business model for news, there is likely no one answer to this question of journalism’s role in making change. Newsrooms and communities have to navigate these questions about engagement together, and define the right focus for their goals.” [Note: 9] 

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