Part Two: Impact Theory

The notion of journalistic impact—that is journalism having an effect on individuals, organizations, and society—is not an invention of this century. At the very least, the practice of collecting, making sense of, and distributing information is built upon an assumption that individuals will access the information, which will inform their perspectives, decisions, opinion, attitudes, and knowledge. However, in recent years, impact has become a hotly debated topic in the media industry. Amid the failure of the legacy newspaper model, paranoia around “new media” that doesn’t follow long-established journalistic rules of the game, and an obsession with whether and how millennials access and consume news and information, is in the zeitgeist.

This section traces the forerunners to journalists’ current concerns with impact, starting with the years before the press adhered to a rhetoric around disinterested objectivity. Later on, a theoretical and evidence base developed to show that journalistic influence not only existed but could, in certain circumstances, be identified and measured. However, other fields have more precise and established impact-assessment regimes. This paper briefly surveys some that may be interesting and relevant to journalists.