Director of Research and Evaluation Impact Architects, United States
Abstract Information: Impact Architects frequently works with news and media organizations to define and track the impact of journalism. The goal, and part of the challenge, is to identify and centralize evidence about real world change of journalism. The challenge of a recent project was a little different: What do you do when there's too much impact? The source of the impact was a series of audio documentaries and a podcast, Sold a Story, produced by Emily Hanford of American Public Media. The journalism was about reading instruction and the gap between what is known about how children learn to read and how many children are being taught in school. There are thousands of examples of impact over the past six years, so the trick wasn't identifying impact, but capturing the essence of it. We did so through the power of story. This panel presentation walks through the challenge, the mixed methods approach to documenting impact we took, and the use of narrative for different audiences to grasp the real world change of American Public Media's journalism.
Relevance Statement: Since 2017, education journalist Emily Hanford has been reporting on reading instruction in U.S. schools. The reporting appeared first as part of APM Reports' Educate documentary and podcast series, with one audio documentary and text version released every year from 2017-2020, and then as a standalone, six-episode podcast series, Sold a Story, released in late 2022. The documentaries and the podcast focus on the gap between what is known about how children learn to read and how many children are being taught in school. Hanford's collective body of work is having an obvious impact, defined as a change to the status quo as a result of the production and distribution of journalism. This panel presentation provides a summary of the impact case study conducted by Impact Architects that shows why and how Hanford's work spurred change. Impact Architects considers three types of impact for journalism: Individual, network/community, and institutional. In addition to these three areas of change, we pay close attention to media amplification as evidence that the journalism is influencing greater public debate and narratives, and thus that more opportunities for impact are being created. The case study identifies specific consequences of Hanford's reporting in the experiences of four individuals: A former elementary school principal, a former elementary school teacher, a pediatrician and parent to a dyslexic child, and an education advocate and parent to a dyslexic child. Several elements of the presentation are relevant to the field of evaluation. First, the presentation fits the conference theme, as the report relied on powerful stories as a way to reach different audiences (community members and potential funders). Second, the explanation of what we did can be useful for evaluators, as we will identify specific ways of approaching similar projects. This will be particularly helpful for anyone who employs impact harvesting as an evaluation method. And finally, we will demonstrate how Impact Architects' Impact Tracker contributed to the work. The Impact Tracker is a free, Google-based resource designed for media but adaptable for any community-serving organization.
