We weren’t able to launch NewsLynx at every organization interested in participating. Besides a limited research staff that kept us from onboarding more organizations, some weren’t able to adopt the platform because they didn’t themselves know all the pieces of their impact puzzle. This problem took two forms: First, immature analytics market offerings and standards for their publishing platforms and secondarily, a lack of internal consensus on what should be measured and how.
The first issue is particularly visible at broadcast or combined digital and broadcast organizations where currently available analytics metrics are fraught with unknowns. Syncing terrestrial radio listeners with those who might tune in via webstream, along with those listening via podcast or a web version of the story presents a problem whose solution is still in the process of unfolding. Although web analytics is no hallmark of clarity, its comparative simplicity gives purely digital operations an advantage in quantifying their audiences.
The other kind of insufficient clarity is the lack of internal articulation of what impact is, how often impact reports should be formally produced, if at all, and who is responsible for producing them. This issue is related to the fact that adopting new workflows that don’t show an immediate short-term benefit, or if the long-term benefit isn’t clearly communicated, is extremely difficult. Even if a newsroom is interested in starting to measure impact, giving employees a list of new tasks they have to monitor can be a hurdle that is hard to overcome.
This problem is addressed more in Chapter 5, Recommendations and Open Questions.