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NewsLynx

Preparatory Research

Our background research unfolded in two parts by way of:

  1. A survey we circulated online. It was announced via our launch blog post and emailed to newsrooms that the authors assessed as within the demographic of our target newsroom.50
  2. Focused interviews with newsrooms that fit our target demographic (and some that didn’t).

Our survey (Appendix A) looked at six categories and adapted some questions from a similar survey circulated by Joanna Raczkiewicz at the Harmony Institute in 2013. Newsrooms agreed to participate anonymously and only be identified by their size and general characteristics. The survey focused on the following main areas:

  1. Organization profile—what size/type of newsroom?

  2. Content streams—what types of stories (cultural, aggregation, investigative, etc.) and publishing schedule?

  3. Current quantitative analytics practices

  4. Current qualitative analytics practices

  5. Institutional challenges and goals

  6. Actions—what is this information used for/who are the stakeholders?

The 26 organizations that responded to our survey varied greatly in size and in their prior experience measuring impact. Some employed a small team that generated daily reports circulated to staff, while others had no single person officially charged.

We conducted follow-up interviews, usually an hour to an hour-and-a-half long, from March to July 2014 with newsrooms that had completed the survey and had indicated interest in using the beta NewsLynx platform. It was important that they had websites with which the software could interface, namely an RSS feed and Google Analytics.

Below is a summary of our survey results and more detailed interviews. Going forward, we’ll refer to the target user of NewsLynx as an Impact Editor, or IE, as shorthand to describe the position tasked with data management.ii