II. Strategizing for Impact
The project launch date was a key piece of ICIJ’s strategy for “Evicted and Abandoned,” designed to maximize audience reach and the potential for impact. Prior to publication, lead ICIJ reporter on the project Sasha Chavkin explained: “Our launch is going to be the day before the World Bank spring meetings this year. That’s not a coincidence. Right now the Bank is rewriting its safeguard rules.ii[...] And we want our story to come out before the second version is published.” And while Hudson says that the team did not talk explicitly about the impact the project would have, it did make explicit predictions about readership potential, assuming that wide readership was most likely when there was a news hook.
ICIJ decided to have a rolling release of its prepared stories over a four-week period. This strategy was designed to drive sustained traffic, which (in its tacit theory of change) would produce impact. At the time of project launch, ICIJ had eight known stories. Chavkin explains:
We are trying to present the most compelling body of work to the widest audience we can . . . Some of that requires strategic decisions. For example, there are eight stories overall that we have planned. We could release all eight on the same day. We think no one would possibly read of all of them. So that’s why we’re going with four on the first day, and then the others will come out a week at a time after that.
ICIJ had also committed Chavkin and Hudson full time to the project for the remainder of 2015, after having already worked on it for ten months. Mike Hudson says, “That’s where the true impact comes from . . . We get a big bump on the first publish then the traffic reduces. More time allows the team to cover reactions, and respond to any leaks or sources who emerge to suggest new lines of reporting.” He suggests that this style of rolling release and ongoing coverage is different from “most other news organizations.” While he names a few exceptions, such as The New York Times, he says, “Most do big splash then move on.” In addition to a rolling release sustaining public attention and increasing the potential for impact, he says it also allows the story to evolve.