View from Somewhere; the Public Good

“Where from here?” has been the guiding question.

Block by Block in Chicago brings community site operators together in September 2010

Part of my work at RJI is the creation of an experiment that offers a forum for information exchange across news content creators. News, in this context, referring to content that is created in the public’s behalf.  This spans those doing the hard work of reporting, investigating and writing, as well as those who support, or are part of, the news and information ecosystem. As I’ve been thinking about this, that includes researchers, funders, journalism students, subject matter experts and public interest advocates, citizens, small businesses, and the academy.

Earlier this month I was in Seattle, to partner with the Journalism That Matters PNW community, to hear their thoughts on the most pressing need; what would help their work, serve their audiences and contribute to a vibrant news ecology online?

It was a great gathering, with a range of ideas around news and information infrastructure needs, collaboration, innovation, opportunities, barriers and aspects of work each participant was most proud of.  I’ll post more on the particulars of the event a little later in December.

A recurring theme the news community is responding to, in Seattle and broadly across all conversations, is around relational impact. A new area of potential measurement, relational impact assessment would provide the ability to track, monitor and report on the collective, qualitative benefit your news content brings the audiences you serve.

Relational Impact Indicators; Building a Community Brand

Many of the folks that invested their time to join in the Seattle conversation were vocal around the value they see in discovering new ways to measure the unique benefit their news products’ offer customers. The idea of news and information content as a product described by one participant as an “interesting way of looking at the work.” The news product perspective seemed to free people up a bit to consider the value of news from a different angle.

Relational impact as I’ve been exploring this concept is the relational equivalent of the community brand of your news goods.  Brand, in a public service context, is about the value of service your audience perceives, and experiences, as a result of your product’s promise realized in their lives. It’s very personal. Some might even say “hyper-personal.” At the Online News Association (ONA) conference, Amy Webb of the Webmedia Group awarded hyper-personalization the # 4 2010 tech trend with one of five key associated statements. Such as "local is where I am right now. Not necessarily where I live or work."

Measuring the unique footprint of your relational impact can help to better understand the weight, and value, your news content has in your audiences' lives. Exploration around how to measure for unique types of news and information impact (e.g. community and local news, policy, civic involvement, support for education, investigative) inspires all kinds of possibilities. What a great way to better understand your unique brand of community service!

What is it? Developing Impact Indicators

Gaining focus on the soft stuff

Different forms of journalism, reporting, community sites, investigative analysis, or news and information service providers all would have unique impact indicators based on the unique service news products deliver to readers. If we can create “apps” for every possible use under the sun, surely we can create some impact indicators to valuate the community benefit gained by consuming news and information.

Understanding the needs and motivations of the audience, with clarity where the demand is unmet within the market, is an essential part of the process. Patch’s business model, based on what AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong shared in a luncheon keynote at the recent ONA 2010 conference, is largely built around this.

How do innovative forms of collaboration coupled with technology and people yield unique benefits to the communities served? How does layered innovation, integrating things like technology platforms, apps, social communities, affinity groups, networks, distribution pipeline and sales channels to distribute information and news create a better quality of life for citizens, or consumers of their cherished news products?

Say if you were to mash together a specific mix of “touch points” – what are the tangible benefits your community gains? Experimentation is happening in all shapes, forms and sizes. News that lives and breathes in the interactive realm now reaches out to touch people, each unique interaction a touch point.

The news and community editors and writers I’ve heard from are eager to explore the qualitative ways their content makes the lives of their audience better, safer or simpler. Or more aware and armed with data and analysis of the issues they wrestle with, to deliberate and inform their life choices. Different kinds of content provide different kinds of impacts; diversity of information presents a greater likelihood to produce well-rounded, and well-informed citizens.

In working together with Mizzou J-School student teams, we’ll report back on our observations. With research on some of the ways news product consumption and sharing patterns intersect with perceived credibility, or trust of news and information sources. We’re curious about better understanding motivational indicators that are more likely to predict participation or collaboration. What are the patterns that reveal themselves? What might we learn from this, and what might we want to learn more about?

The time here at RJI is brief, so I’ll do my best to take a few slices at this and serve it up to those who are also curious to continue the exploration and test within specific news and information environments.

I’d be interested to hear from you all if you have ways you’ve been measuring community, or audience, or issue impact. What are the ways your audience is benefiting from the important work that you do?