Measuring a news story's impact

I watched the live stream of the Media Impact Forum today – an event held at Stanford – which highlighted how innovative companies are measuring the “social impact” of their work.  I couldn’t help but think about how the same approach could be adapted to journalism. 

“You put [the story] out there, but does anyone care?” asked Neal Baer, best known for his role as producer and writer of ER.  A doctor himself, Baer integrated valuable medical information in the show. But he asked, “How do you go from inspiration to action?”  How do you know that it actually made a difference?

Baer has been thinking about this since his ER days when he participated in a groundbreaking study (.pdf) that measured whether ER viewers took action after watching a show.  In fact, one in seven regular ER viewers contacted a medical professional about something they saw on the show.  That’s an incredible impact for a TV drama.

Journalists intuitively know that their best stories make a difference.  NYT’s David Bornstein, who founded the “Solutions Journalism Network,” says he often asks journalists what story they’re most proud of. “And almost always it was a story they wrote that had a positive social impact,” he explained at the Media Impact Forum.  

But social impact is difficult to measure and often anecdotal in nature. If we were able to measure a story’s impact in real numbers, we’d redefine engagement from questionable metrics like time spent and social sharing to something much more concrete: action.  Then we’d be able to optimize stories around impact, covering and showcasing stories that make the biggest difference in our communities.

Perhaps the same model could be applied to native advertising, too.

So, how would we measure something like this?  We’re starting to see some amazing innovation in the startup space.  For example, NexLeaf.org uses mobile phones as networked measurement devices, crunching real-time data to draw scientific conclusions on the impact of non-profit projects.  Neighborland encourages neighbors to take on community causes, gain support and take action – which Neighborland tracks on a list of accomplishments.  VolunteerMatch has calculated its “social value” by determining how much money non-profits save by using the service to find volunteers (over $600 million a year.)  And ImpactStory provides a way for companies to showcase their impact metrics in real time.

There still isn’t a trusted set of “impact metrics” for journalism, but as I’ve written before, I believe newsrooms must help create that connection by including action paths from current storytelling.   If we enable consumers to take action directly from stories — when they care the most — then we’re increasingly able to measure a given story’s impact. 

Such a connection often frightens journalists who feel that adding points of action to a story feels like advocacy.  But MIT Civic Media Lab’s Ethan Zuckerman calls such a defense an “allusion of objectivity,” arguing that news organizations have a social responsibility to help citizens become active participants.  If we take change seriously, “we need to accept that participatory media is more than participating in making media,” he said at a recent conference. “Could we find ways to get people excited that they wouldn’t just get informed but join a movement and take action?”

I couldn’t agree more, and I believe there are ways to provide measurable paths of action that protect objectivity.  Together with mobile, it’s nothing less than the next frontier of journalism.