News organizations have gotten very good at measuring things like impressions, reach, and engagement. We are great at determining who is reading our content, how long they spend with it, and how they are sharing it.
What we don’t do well is measure why our content matters. Did a story help anyone make a better healthcare decision, contact a city council member, or spend money more wisely? Did it prompt officials to fix a dangerous traffic intersection, improve services for the homeless or tighten policies that were enabling corruption? In other words, did it lead to something actionable that helped our audiences?
In 2019, the news media will step up its efforts to measure their impact on society, and not just because it will make us feel better. We are facing an unprecedented crisis in media credibility. One way to regain the trust of our audiences — and potential audiences — is to show them that journalism plays a vital role in making their lives better.
The McClatchy newsrooms, for example, are making the case for credibility and trust through their #ReadLocal campaign. It highlights important investigations and stories that have led to concrete changes in the lives of their readers. This initiative goes one step beyond how other news outlets are actively engaging with their audiences through social media, live events, and other activities that were traditionally not part of the newsroom’s work.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, and Gannett are among other media groups that have made a priority of tracking the impact of their stories. Leading the effort for Gannett is Anjanette Delgado, senior news director for digital at the Detroit Free Press. She first helped develop Impact Tracker for the Journal News Media Group, also part of Gannett. The investigative team there felt that traditional audience metrics didn’t capture major changes triggered by their stories. Now, the entire Gannett USA Today Network can use the new tool to determine which stories have the most impact.
The trend reaches beyond U.S. borders. ICFJ Knight Fellow Pedro Burgos has pioneered an impressive tool in Brazil that uses automation to find instances of how journalism creates positive change. His tool is called Impacto, and six media partners in Brazil are using it to scrape public documents, social media, and academic research to reveal when a story made a difference. Impacto can detect whether a story was cited by influencers — such as legislators including it in a bill to fight corruption or city officials citing it as a reason for cleaning up a dump site.
The premise is that by tracking examples of impact and sharing them with audiences, trust in the media will grow. One of the newspapers using Impacto, for example, maps every instance of impact, so when a reader calls to cancel a subscription, staffers can check the map and show the caller how the paper has improved quality of life in that person’s neighborhood.
A big part of Pedro’s project, which is also supported by Google News Lab, is not just to develop and test Impacto. It’s to make media organizations aware of the importance of measuring impact, whatever tool they choose to use. He has spoken about this at conferences throughout the Americas, and met with newsrooms in five countries, including the U.S. The reaction is usually an enthusiastic “Yes! How can we do this?”
In 2019 and beyond, there will be an increasing number of new tools that news organizations can use to do just that. Showing impact will become an essential way to retain and expand the audience for reliable, accurate information. I believe our future depends on it.
Patrick Butler is vice president of the International Center for Journalists.
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success