Once you’ve identified the impact signals you want to spark, think about opportunities to do so beyond your coverage by designing events, programs and spaces that help you both create and learn from your newsroom’s impact. This learning loop can guide decisions about where to invest your time, reporting and social capital next.
Impact-minded organizations build habits that help them notice what their communities are responding to, interpret what those signals might mean and adapt their journalism while the work is still unfolding.
Ambassador networks, volunteer pathways like Documenters, community advisory groups or even dismantling beat structures in favor of communities of interest — these are systems for learning as much as they are engagement strategies.
How one newsroom built a learning system with community ambassadors
Rather than relying solely on audience metrics, Rocky Mountain Public Media is experimenting with a statewide network of community ambassadors to understand emerging issues, community priorities and patterns of participation that help inform future editorial decisions.
Amber Coté, senior director of statewide civic engagement at RMPM, writes about how they track qualitative and quantitative signals of impact through their community ambassadors, identifying opportunities to further engage and documenting the stories behind data that might look small on a spreadsheet but signal important shifts.
Ultimately, the purpose of impact data, and of reading signals of impact more consistently, isn’t to prove our role as stewards of news and information. The purpose is in understanding how we create value so we can create more of it.
Try it out: Measure impact for the duration of a project
Start here: Choose one project that’s underway. It could be an investigation, a video series, a live event series or even a news product like your mobile app, a newsletter or an interactive database. List out the impact goals you may have identified during last week’s impact meeting exercise.
Take action: Make a plan to assess the metrics and engagement of that project on an ongoing basis. Determine:
- Which metrics or signals align with your impact goals?
- How often will you review the progress toward your goals?
- How will you pivot if something isn’t landing?
Reflect: Do you have access to the data you need to continuously track impact? If not, here’s one way to start.
