NewsLynx seeks to augment metrics with context. It shows how an article performs in comparison to the average of all a publication’s articles and allows comparisons within subsets—all immigration articles, for example, or within any user-defined category.
NewsLynx also provides efficient tools for tracking, categorizing, and assessing indicators of impact aside from audience reach. Such impact indicators might be legislative reform or community action. This has previously proved extremely difficult and time-consuming. NewsLynx’s “Approval River” functionality aims to reduce the effort associated with managing traditional clip searches and social media searches, which newsrooms use to monitor impact. Crucially, it allows users to apply consistent (and therefore comparable) metadata to impact indicators.
The NewsLynx developers propose an impact framework that allows for the fact that real-world impact measures are often messy and hard to categorize. NewsLynx implements a framework that offers newsrooms enough structure to categorize “impactful events” across similar boundaries, while also providing enough freedom for them to create their own impact definitions to match particular goals. Importantly, the researchers believe that successful, long-term impact measurement can only result from identifying such organizational goals.