Media Matters Impact Summit
The Impact Summits Come to We Media: How Do You Know Your Media Matters?
Throughout the spring, Jessica Clark of the Center for Social Media and Tracy Van Slyke of The Media Consortium are co-hosting a series of “impact summits” in Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, DC and Boston, drawing together leading public and independent media makers, funders and researchers in each city to share and hone assessment strategies. The summits are designed to inform ongoing Center for Social Media research, as well as broader discussions among funders, outlets and policymakers about how best to support public interest media in the networked age.
The Miami summit will be taking a slightly different form—as a panel and conversation at We Media (8 am Thursday). First, two innovative media projects—Not in our Town and the Public Insight Network—will share their stories of impact, and then Clark and Van Slyke will turn to the crowd for their best ideas about how to evaluate media projects.
We wanted to provide some questions in advance to jump-start the conversation and we look forward to your comments here and during the discussion both in-person and virtually:
For media makers:
What is the mission of your outlet or project?
How do you define impact?
Can you describe a particular piece or program that demonstrated the impact you’re seeking to make?
What tools are you using to collect data and stories about your impact?
How are you using that information for planning, fundraising, and interacting with your users?
What do you really wish you could measure?
For funders:
Do you require your media grantees to use particular evaluation tools or approaches?
How do those requirements relate back to the mission of your foundation?
What do you really wish you could measure?
For researchers:
How do you define impact?
What tools and approaches do you use to assess the impact of media projects?
Can you describe a particular piece or program that demonstrated the impact you’re seeking to measure?
So far the conversations in Chicago and New York have produced exciting ideas about new tools for visualizing and tracking impact—we expect even more from the innovators attending We Media!
Beth Laing is the project manager for iFOCOS, which organizes the We Media conferences, awards and community. Prior to working with We Media she worked in a variety of new media roles with Knight Ridder, Infonautics and Access Atlanta. She is currently on the board of the Atlanta Women’s Alliance (AWA), Community Advisory Board for Junior League Dekalb and a Leadership Dekalb 2010 class member.
