Impact as a value metric
In different disciplines, from the social sciences to media studies, there have been major advances in our understanding and documentation of how journalism’s impact plays out. One major contribution has come from Dr. Anya Schiffrin, director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Building on the work of academics such as Phil Napoli and Lindsay Green-Barber, she and a team of experts have come up with a comprehensive taxonomy for understanding how media affect society.³
The taxonomy recognises that media can influence the beliefs and attitudes of individuals, policies and behaviours of governments and organisations, or shape institutions and culture. It also incorporates an internal orientation of impact: how the work affects the journalists, newsrooms, and the journalistic community itself.
Efforts to articulate the value of journalism have not been limited to academia. In 2012, ProPublica’s former president, Richard Toefl, published a white paper explaining how their news outlet measured the success of its work with impact metrics.⁴ This might sound obvious in 2025 – how else would journalists measure their success? – but it has not been common wisdom in an industry that still ranks “size of readership” as the number one indicator of value.
Seeing this gap, Jennifer Brandel co-founded Hearken, a consultancy focused on addressing the disconnect between organisations, like news outlets, and the people they want to serve.⁵ A key area of their work has been on audience engagement through listening techniques to achieve more impactful results.
Tina Rosenberg, former New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, co-founded the Solutions Journalism Network in 2013 with the intent of shifting the industry’s spotlight from rote recitation of bad news to how people and communities are working to solve their issues. “By revealing what has worked,” they said, “stories have led to meaningful change.”⁶
Impact Architects, founded by political scientist Lindsay Green-Barber, developed an impact tracker that has served as a model for several newsrooms, including my own.⁷ Meanwhile, the Impact Network, an initiative that Miriam Wells started in 2020 when she was working at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, facilitates conversation and collaboration between journalists and impact editors about the positive impact of journalism.
Finally, a joint study by Report for the World (RFW) and Dr. Anya Schiffrin and her team at SIPA, offers insights into the types of impact derived from the work of RFW’s partners in Global Majority countries.⁸ Among other findings, the study suggests their journalism increased the knowledge of audiences, shifted perceptions, and that advocacy groups took their coverage and acted on it.
There are several reasons for the convergence of academia, media development organisations and news outlets on the topic of impact. A key driver has been an increasingly competitive donor-funding landscape, where funders want to know how their investment will yield real-world effects beyond sustaining the projects and operations of their grantees.
Unlike advocacy groups, newsrooms are not adept at explaining how their work will yield positive outcomes. Page views and video streams are not enough, and this has driven a need to create concepts and tools that offer a more comprehensive understanding of impact – and an ability to track and report it.
None of the work around measuring impact is easy, which is another reason why this area has earned more attention in recent years. Researchers and news outlets who are looking at it are careful not to draw a straight line between a publication and its effects precisely because they know it is more complex than that.
³ Schiffrin, Anya, et al. (2023). Understanding journalism impact: A multi-dimensional taxonomy for professional, organizational, and societal change. Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, 12, 1-26.
⁴ Toefl, R. (2012). Non-profit journalism. Issues around impact. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/impact
⁵ Hearken. (2025). Hearken. Retrieved from https://wearehearken.com/
⁶ Solutions Journalism Network. (2025). What Is Solutions Journalism?. Retrieved from https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/who-we-are/solutions-journalism
⁷ Impact Architects. (2025). Impact Tracker. Retrieved from https://www.theimpactarchitects.com/impact-tracker
⁸ Nallu, P. & Schiffrin, A. (2025). The Path to Impact: Insights from Global Majority Newsrooms. Report for the World and Columbia University [SIPA].