A few months into building a team, NC Local was doing what many newsrooms do: sharing early wins through forwarded emails and Slack messages, dropping testimonials into a shared doc and using a spreadsheet to track republication of its work.
They recognized the various formats and places for documenting impact weren’t giving them a full picture, and they also wanted to understand the deeper impacts of their work beyond traditional metrics, writes Catherine Komp, NC Local’s engagement director.
Asking three fundamental questions helped them realize they needed to manage the influx of feedback and data, which might be crowding out other deeper signals of impact:
- Who do we want to impact?
- What kind of outcomes do we want to see?
- What indicators or signals would we look for?
This week, we’ll walk you through identifying deeper impact signals your newsroom wants to track and engaging colleagues from across your organization on what impact they want their work to have.
Try it out
Start here: Make a list of questions or prompts that, when answered, will help you understand how your journalism is carrying out its goals or mission. That could look like:
- How do we know we’re reaching the people we aim to serve?
- Where are we reaching people?
- When we do reach people, are we meeting their needs?
- If we are filling information needs, what are people doing next?
- How do we know if we’re building relationships, trust and connection?
Compare this list to your current impact metrics. Can these questions be answered by your impact framework? Where are the gaps?
Take action: Impact goals can vary widely across a newsroom. Gathering multiple perspectives will give you a clearer picture of what your outlet should consider tracking.
- Ping five people in your newsroom, asking them to independently finish this sentence: When I think about the impact of our journalism (or beat, or department), I think about…
Reflect:
- Where is there overlap between your current impact strategy, your newsroom’s goals and feedback from colleagues?
- What kinds of impact didn’t come up?
- What kinds of impact might be there but aren’t yet noticed, tracked or learned from?
Dig deeper
- What gardening can teach your newsroom about developing a culture of impact by Catherine Komp
- Learn more about Impact Architects, the tracking platform NC Local uses
- Use this worksheet exercise to take your newsroom’s impact pulse
- 3 organizational habits that make impact easier to see, strengthen and communicate
