Lessons in impact in investigative journalism
The thirteenth Global Investigative Journalism Conference brought together more than 2,000 people from around the world in Gothenburg, Sweden in September 2023. The international event focused on best practices, tools and approaches, and challenges facing global media and investigative journalism.
It was an opportunity to learn and to share, and I was grateful to participate in a panel with other experts in the field to talk through how to get journalists more comfortable with the idea of defining, setting goals for, and measuring impact within their organizations.
Though there was only one session fully devoted to impact at the conference this year, it was a consistent thread in sessions throughout the week. There were a few ideas and discussions throughout that I think would be relevant to folks just beginning their impact tracking work:
Building qualitative data sets
While investigative journalists are no strangers to data sets, how to determine whether their work is contributing to change among various audiences can seem like a step out of line. How do you solicit and transform instances of impact, like feedback received from stories or events, into actual datasets and actionable insights?
In one panel session, a speaker outlined an investigation in which interviewees within a city were each asked the same set of questions, entered into a Google form by reporters (for example: Small business owners could be asked their experience in their neighborhoods, if they had experienced a crime in last few years, if they felt support from residents, etc.). Because of the method of data collection, all of that information came back into a spreadsheet and could be easily visualized and used to surface an interesting story–for instance, an opportunity to follow up on a trend of rising crime in one neighborhood.
By asking readers directly, through a consistent format, this news organization was able to build a hard data set–and that same approach applies when thinking about an organization’s impact. When looking for instances of impact among an audience, asking the same questions through a qualitative feedback form can generate useful insights on your organization’s impact on your reader’s lives, their knowledge, their awareness of issues, or whether they took action as a result of your reporting.
Lesson: Impact evidence gathered in a systematic way can yield useful data sets and insights.
What rises to the level of “impact” in your organization?
At Impact Architects, we maintain that impact is essentially an ecosystem of change in various categories, meaning there are many ways to approach it beyond the “gold standard” of institutional accountability that’s often celebrated in investigative journalism. For instance, how communities or advocacy networks use investigative journalism content to further their goals and support their work is an important metric to track, as well as impact directly on individuals and readers.
But one of the biggest concerns we hear when we embark on a new impact tracking partnership with a news outlet, which came up during our impact panel at GIJC, is that they’ll end up having to track everything–every Facebook comment, every Instagram story reply, every DM–which for some organizations can be unmanageable. But not all of those comments, those replies, or messages would constitute “impact” for an organization, depending on your framework.
When determining what an instance of “impact” looks like in practice, it’s most important to determine its relevance and evidence. Not every Facebook comment rises to the level of impact for your organization–it requires a relevance to the content you’re posting (i.e. not spam) and evidence that change has happened in some way. For example: Someone comments that they’ve become a first-time donor as the result of content being posted, or shares how the story has influenced or informed them in their life.
Lesson: To determine what rises to the level of “impact” for your organization, ask: Is the instance relevant, and what is the evidence of change?
How to focus on impact long-term
How to make impact tracking and measurement a sustainable enterprise within an organization is a challenge for a field already strapped for resources. For those either far along in or just starting the process, having an impact editor, or a dedicated person to keep impact front-of-mind for everyone within an organization, and integrate it into reporting processes, is a huge help. On our panel, Miriam Wells, formerly of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, talked about what this has looked like at TBIJ, specifically around output strategies for content. Ultimately, TBIJ breaks down the question of impact to simply: How do we reach the right people in the right way at the right time? In an example of TBIJ’s investigation into Deliveroo, a UK food delivery service, they discovered that delivery riders were disproportionately paid, with one in three making on average less than the national minimum wage, yet the company was on the verge of a huge public offering.
Keeping “impact” central to the dissemination of their reporting, TBIJ engaged with strategic audiences, including a footballer with connection to Deliveroo, a press release sent to prime time and tabloid news packages, including financial groups and catering trade organizations, local articles, and messages pasted into the Deliveroo app.
By tailoring content to the specific audience that was most likely to engage with it, the story ended up going further and contributing to a larger conversation about the gig economy. The story had huge impact–it was shared by more than 250 local, national, and international outlets, received a high-profile political and investor response, footballer Marcus Rashford held talks with the company about the treatment of workers, bolstered the Deliveroo union’s campaign, and even inspired one Deliveroo rider to become a journalist.
Lesson: provide specific content and context for your stories to their relevant audiences, and be intentional about the type of change you could see from your work.
Tools come last
As always at a journalism conference, opportunities abound to try new tools and templates to integrate into a journalist’s work, which are intriguing and sometimes downright fun. And when it comes to impact tracking, a lot of folks want to jump straight to tools and dashboards — but from our work at IA, we’ve found that impact tracking tools are really only effective when there’s a sustainable strategy behind them, meaning clear definitions, outcomes, and indicators.
Once an impact framework is developed and collectively agreed upon internally, if you’re looking for a tool to help you measure that impact, it’s important to consider what tool complements your existing workflows. For instance, do you already use Airtable, Salesforce, or Google products? Does it help visualize your impact, and is it flexible enough to adapt to your organization’s framework and taxonomy? A tool should centralize your data collection, simplify the reporting process, and ultimately help you tell your organization’s story to your stakeholders, be they readers or donors (it’s why we built our impact tracker). But ultimately, it should be the last step in your impact tracking approach.
Lesson: When does technology help your work, and when does it hinder it?
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What other tools, tips, strategies are you interested in learning about impact in journalism? Reach out to us and let us know!
