Jason Alcorn – MediaShift http://mediashift.org Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution Thu, 29 Jun 2023 06:52:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 112695528 DigitalEd Panel: The Value Of Attention: Metrics, Methods and Outcomes http://mediashift.org/2018/05/digitaled-the-value-of-attention-metrics-methods-and-outcomes/ Wed, 02 May 2018 10:05:33 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=152117 Panel Title: The Value Of Attention: Metrics, Methods and Outcomes Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift Panelists: Clare Carr, Parse.ly; Evan Mackinder, Slate; Byard Duncan, Reveal/CIR The difference between building a loyal audience and getting lost in the noise online? Measuring and valuing audience attention in your organization. Getting this right allows you to connect with readers the […]

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Panel Title: The Value Of Attention: Metrics, Methods and Outcomes

Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift
Panelists: Clare Carr, Parse.ly; Evan Mackinder, Slate; Byard Duncan, Reveal/CIR

The difference between building a loyal audience and getting lost in the noise online? Measuring and valuing audience attention in your organization. Getting this right allows you to connect with readers the moment it matters.

This live online panel will include a discussion with publishers who have spent their time figuring out what matters to their audience and how they can measure it well. Hear how they’re writing better stories, creating innovative products and experiences, and finding new revenue for their businesses.

This free online panel is sponsored by Parse.ly. Parse.ly empowers companies to understand, own and improve digital audience engagement through data, so they can ensure the work they do makes the impact it deserves. All attendee emails will be shared with the webinar sponsor.

Handouts:

– Presentations will be available to participants.

Who should attend:

Journalists, editors, growth managers, social media editors, marketers, publishers, non-profits, and content creators interested in learning about engagement metrics.

Date and Time: June 20, 2018, 10 am PT / 1 pm ET

Free!

Register now for the online panel!

Note: If you can’t attend the live session, you can still register and see the archived video of the panel. Free registration for BigMarker is required.

About the Moderator:

Jason Alcorn is the metrics and impact editor at MediaShift. As a consultant he advises news organizations on business strategy and leadership and works with funders to develop program strategies. He also facilitates the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leaders Council. Jason lives in Washington, D.C., with his family. You can follow Jason on Twitter at @jasonalcorn.

About the Panelists:

Clare Carr leads Parse.ly’s marketing team. She focuses on helping companies understand the power of audience’s attention. She contributes to MetricShift, Native Ad Institute, Digital Content Next, and speaks across the world on digital analytics, data, and marketing. You can follow her on Twitter @clareondrey.

Evan Mackinder is a senior audience engagement editor at Slate. Previously he was the digital engagement manager at the Sunlight Foundation and outreach coordinator at the Center for Responsive Politics. You can follow him on Twitter @evandmac.

Byard Duncan is Reveal’s engagement reporter. He leads social media strategy, writes The Weekly Reveal newsletter and helps spearhead a variety of audience engagement initiatives. His reporting for Reveal has spanned a variety of topics, including law enforcement, cybersecurity policy and the opioid crisis. He also has written for GQ, Esquire, The California Sunday Magazine and Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets. He was the winner of a 2015 feature storytelling award from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter. You can follow him on Twitter @ByardDuncan.

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DigitalEd: Loyalty and Revenue: The New User Metrics http://mediashift.org/2018/03/digitaled-loyalty-revenue-new-user-metrics/ Fri, 30 Mar 2018 10:03:34 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151861 Panel Title: Loyalty and Revenue: The New User Metrics Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift Panelists: Denise Law, The Economist; Dave Burdick, Denverite What user metrics matter most when reader loyalty is your goal? Right now a tectonic shift is happening in publishing from a click-driven era to one that is community-driven. How publishers respond today can determine […]

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Panel Title: Loyalty and Revenue: The New User Metrics

Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift
Panelists: Denise Law, The Economist; Dave Burdick, Denverite

What user metrics matter most when reader loyalty is your goal? Right now a tectonic shift is happening in publishing from a click-driven era to one that is community-driven. How publishers respond today can determine if they will succeed in building an audience that shows up tomorrow and every day after.

This panel will include a discussion with publishers who are the forefront of thinking about how to measure user loyalty in this new community-driven era to strengthen their brands and use a loyal readership to grow revenue for their businesses.

This free online panel is sponsored by Opinary. Opinary enables users to share their opinion in-content, helping publishers and brands reach, understand and convert their most valuable audiences. Publishing partners – including global leaders like The Times, HuffPost, NBC etc., use Opinary to engage and monetize their audiences, while global brands like Toyota or Mastercard boost attention, create conversions and generate insights. All attendee emails will be shared with the panel sponsor.

Handouts:

– Presentations will be available to participants.

Who should attend:

Journalists, editors, growth managers, social media editors, marketers, publishers, non-profits, and content creators interested in learning about engagement metrics.

Date and Time: May 2, 2018, 10 am PT / 1 pm ET

Free!

Register now for the online panel!

Note: If you can’t attend the live session, you can still register and see the archived video of the panel. Free registration for BigMarker is required.

About the Moderator:

Jason Alcorn is the metrics and impact editor at MediaShift. As a consultant he advises news organizations on business strategy and leadership and works with funders to develop program strategies. He also facilitates the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leaders Council. Jason lives in Washington, D.C., with his family. You can follow Jason on Twitter at @jasonalcorn.

About the Panelists:

Denise Law is head of strategic product development at The Economist where she is leading an initiative to accelerate the development of our website, new mobile app and newsletters. Previously, she led the social media team for two years. Denise began her career as a journalist at the Financial Times in London and Hong Kong, where she helped to set up several online-only news publications. A native of Toronto, Denise has lived and worked in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Utrecht.

Dave Burdick is the editor of Denverite, part of Spirited Media. He has previously worked at the Denver Post, the Daily Camera, the Huffington Post, Naropa University up in Boulder and at a Best Buy near a suburban mall circa “Now That’s What I Call Music” volume 4. His parents are retired local newspaper journalists, and he is married to a freelance journalist. Dave lives in Denver with her, their two children and a very good dog.

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Media Metrics Roundup for March 28, 2018 http://mediashift.org/2018/03/media-metrics-roundup-march-28-2018/ Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:03:40 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151856 How We’re Measuring The Success Of Trusting News Strategies Joy Mayer / Trusting News How can newsrooms know if they are building trust with readers? It’s Time To Revisit Engagement Metrics Jason Alcorn To better measure engagement, go back to the old tools. To Build And Engage Your Audience, Consider These Core Metrics For Measuring […]

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How We’re Measuring The Success Of Trusting News Strategies
Joy Mayer / Trusting News
How can newsrooms know if they are building trust with readers?

It’s Time To Revisit Engagement Metrics
Jason Alcorn
To better measure engagement, go back to the old tools.

To Build And Engage Your Audience, Consider These Core Metrics For Measuring Success
Steve Mulder and Mark Fuerst / Current
The results of a public media working group on KPIs and key metrics.

Using Data To Measure Impact
Eric Martin / ITVS
Good ideas for journalism in this study of documentary filmmakers.

Recirculate! Vox Media’s New Structure For Story Packages Gives Readers Context (And Helps Them Stick Around)
Christine Schmidt / Nieman Lab
How a new template increased recirculation on Vox Media sites.

The Financial Times Uses YouTube To Boost Subscriptions
Lucinda Southern / Digiday
Readers come into contact with the FT brand 6 to 8 times before subscribing.

More From MetricShift

How Canadian Filmmakers Combined a Film + Game to Combat Gambling Addiction
Bianca Fortis

How Publishers Are Learning to Embrace Twitter Video
Liam Corcoran

How A Local Newsroom In Brazil Learned To Track Its Impact
Sam Berkhead

How WhereBy.Us Will Track Impact of Local Media
Jason Alcorn

Knight Media Forum Focuses on Non-Profit News, Impact and Danger of Algorithms
Jason Alcorn

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

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It’s Time For Better Engagement Metrics http://mediashift.org/2018/03/time-rethink-engagement-metrics/ Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:03:12 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151841 Join MediaShift and experts from Content Insights, WhereBy.Us and the Dallas Morning News for “How to Get Better Engagement Metrics,” a free online panel on April 18. Reserve your seat now! At many publishers, community and engagement editors have long been pushing for a change in the newsroom culture away from superficial metrics toward a […]

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Join MediaShift and experts from Content Insights, WhereBy.Us and the Dallas Morning News for “How to Get Better Engagement Metrics,” a free online panel on April 18. Reserve your seat now!

At many publishers, community and engagement editors have long been pushing for a change in the newsroom culture away from superficial metrics toward a more authentic relationship with readers. Yet that culture shift was often impeded by the value and sheer size of the Facebook audience, whose reach, distributed audience and referral traffic publishers came to rely on to hit their analytics and advertising goals.

Well that particular barrier has fallen. And now is a good time to talk about better engagement metrics.

When engagement is no longer defined as the total number of likes, reactions and shares by a aggregate audience and is instead an interaction with a particular reader of your website or publication, increasingly one you can identify by name, what are the best ways to measure that? A handful of recent examples point the way to a better set of measurement practices that rethink traditional digital analytics and refocus attention on key performance indicators.

Measuring New Engagement With Old Web Metrics

The return to loyal users is a return to traditional web metrics. But instead of page views and total unique users, publishers are using time on site and frequency of visit to take the measure of their web audience. Loyal users are more likely to seek out the site on their own, leading to the return of the home page as a priority for publishers. They are more likely to spend time on the site and more likely to come back more often. The bounce rate for a loyal audience will typically be lower than the bounce rate for users arriving from social media.

These are metrics that have always been available to publishers but that have often been overlooked.

The product team at Vox has been using web analytics to measure and grow reader loyalty. As they rethink the on-site editorial experience for their readers post-Facebook, the team is looking at how to package content to show readers relevant articles and keep them on the site longer. “We definitely think about recirculation as a key metric across all our networks and as a way of understanding our users getting a lot of value out of this,” the head of Vox Media’s CMS, Mandy Brown, told Nieman Lab.

What about time per user? In a new set of recommended KPIs, or key performance indicators, for public media, time per user (or sessions per user, if time can’t be measured accurately) is offered as a key measure of engagement. The goal of audience engagement is to “encourage affinity, loyalty membership and advocacy,” write Steve Mulder of NPR and Mark Fuerst of Public Media Futures Forums in a piece on Current. Across websites, podcasts, streaming video and mobile apps, time per user could be a consistent starting point to measure success.

Yet there are important limits to web metrics when it comes to engagement. Most important, they only measure the activity of journalists indirectly, through content. They don’t directly measure what journalists do to engage with readers and communities. One KPI that missing from the public media recommendations, for example: How often organizations engage with their audiences, a suggestion made by The Coral Project on Twitter.

Engagement Metrics for Real People

Engagement metrics need to account for the increasingly “real people” aspect of engagement work. Community and engagement teams now find themselves managing and scaling relationships with individual users. Rather than an aggregate audience and reach on social media, publishers have print subscribers, members of Facebook group, sources and email newsletter readers. Editorial engagement can even be the cornerstone of an audience revenue program. Editorial engagement, “builds the practice of bringing readers’ concerns deeper within the [news] organization,” Emily Goligoski and Elizabeth Hanson wrote in a report for the Tow Center earlier this year.

This kind of engagement work with real people needs metrics that measure the direct work of journalists, not just the indirect effect, and the quality of engagement, not just the volume.

Take Facebook groups for example. With Facebook pages getting less attention from the News Feed algorithm, groups are a way for publishers to remain engaged with users. The Dallas Morning News invites its subscribers to join a private Facebook group, one of more than a handful overseen by engagement editor Hannah Wise. Its success is a measure of subscribers’ loyalty to the News. “A group seemed like a low-cost way to test if our subscribers even wanted to talk to us since they have habits built around joining Facebook groups, liking content and reacting in the comments,” Wise told Solution Set. Wise also edits the News’s Hearken-powered project, Curious Texas.

https://twitter.com/hwise29/status/976982243896909825

Publishers from The Texas Tribune to The Atlantic are also measuring engagement with Facebook Groups. “We started looking at groups because it allows for more community and more semblances of privacy and sharing experiences,” The Atlantic’s Caitlin Frazier told Digiday. Newsrooms can use Facebook’s Group Insights dashboard to understand how members engage, see the most active group members, and examine post-by-post engagement.

Operating in a similar community-centric model, local newsletter publisher WhereBy.Us also measures engagement by looking the work of its journalists. Alongside traditional newsletter metrics like list size and open rate, they look at the number of responses to callouts and attendance at events. “I care most about metrics that indicate people have found value in what we’ve created and want to participate in our community,” growth editor Alexandra Smith told MediaShift in a recent interview.

Finally, one metric of editorial engagement is the impact on the journalism itself. People shared nearly 5,000 stories about maternal harm for ProPublica’s “Lost Mothers” investigation. And ProPublica tracked how they got to almost 5,000, including editorial engagement efforts that came with specific goals about increasing the representation of their story sample and led to stories like an advice piece with tips on improving maternal care from hundreds of women. At Reveal, after 2,000 listeners texted in questions about modern-day redlining, their reporters dug up the answers — and then they texted back.

https://twitter.com/ByardDuncan/status/978714314717540352

Join MediaShift and experts from Content Insights, WhereBy.Us and the Dallas Morning News for “How to Get Better Engagement Metrics,” a free online panel on April 18. Reserve your seat now!

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. He will be moderating the free online panel “How to Get Better Engagement Metrics” with experts from Content Insights, WhereBy.Us and the Dallas Morning News on April 18. Reserve your seat here.

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DigitalEd Panel: How to Get Better Engagement Metrics http://mediashift.org/2018/03/digitaled-panel-get-better-engagement-metrics/ Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:02:44 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151622 Panel Title: How to Get Better Engagement Metrics Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift Panelists: Hannah Wise, Dallas Morning News; Alexandra Smith, WhereBy.Us; Christopher Pramstaller, Süddeutsche Zeitung Engagement is so much more than Facebook reach. For publishers who want to cultivate a direct relationship with readers, it’s the top of the customer funnel. And how you define and […]

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Panel Title: How to Get Better Engagement Metrics

Moderator: Jason Alcorn, MediaShift
Panelists: Hannah Wise, Dallas Morning News; Alexandra Smith, WhereBy.Us; Christopher Pramstaller, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Engagement is so much more than Facebook reach. For publishers who want to cultivate a direct relationship with readers, it’s the top of the customer funnel. And how you define and measure engagement in your newsroom matters directly to whether you’ll be leading the industry or lagging behind.

This live online panel will include a discussion with publishers who are at the forefront of using engagement metrics to build a direct relationship with readers, improve the quality of their journalism and drive revenue for their businesses.

This free online panel is sponsored by Content Insights. Content Insights is a robust, powerful and extremely user-friendly editorial intelligence tool, turning Big Data into easy reading. Being tailor-made for editors by editors, Content Insights helps journalists understand what drives audience behavior in a really simple and comprehensible way. By replacing inadequate metrics like page-views, scroll-depth and sessions with Article reads, Read-depth and Readership and more, Content Insights provides an uniquely editorial take on how content success should be evaluated. All attendee emails will be shared with the webinar sponsor.

Handouts:

– Presentations will be available to participants.

Who should attend:

Journalists, editors, growth managers, social media editors, marketers, publishers, non-profits, and content creators interested in learning about engagement metrics.

Date and Time: April  18, 2018, 10 am PT / 1 pm ET

Free!

Register now for the online panel!

Note: If you can’t attend the live session, you can still register and see the archived video of the panel. Free registration for BigMarker is required.

About the Moderator:

Jason Alcorn is the metrics and impact editor at MediaShift. As a consultant he advises news organizations on business strategy and leadership and works with funders to develop program strategies. He also facilitates the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leaders Council. Jason lives in Washington, D.C., with his family. You can follow Jason on Twitter at @jasonalcorn.

About the Panelists:

Hannah Wise is the Engagement Editor at the Dallas Morning News. She oversees the newsroom’s social media strategy and seeks ways to cultivate conversation around the News’ journalism. She edits The News’ Hearken-powered project, Curious Texas, where readers ask questions and journalists track down answers. Hannah is the Online News Association Dallas-Fort Worth chapter co-founder and president. She is the stitching maven behind behind the viral Instagram account @sewmanycomments where she doesn’t read the comments, but sews them.

Alexandra Smith recently became the growth editor for the digital media and tech startup WhereBy.Us. Before that, she led the audience engagement team at the Fort Collins Coloradoan. She started her journalism career seven years ago at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey after graduating from Rutgers University. Alexandra is most passionate about connecting local news to the community its meant to serve. When not ruminating on engagement strategies, you can find her learning to love all that living in Colorado has to offer.

Christopher Pramstaller works as an analyst and audience editor at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s biggest quality newspaper. He has a background as a journalist and editor and has worked with editorial data for several years. Nowadays he tries to enable the editorial staff to be data-informed in a meaningful way – live and based on longer time frames.

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Media Metrics Roundup for March 7, 2018 http://mediashift.org/2018/03/media-metrics-roundup-march-7-2018/ Wed, 07 Mar 2018 11:03:49 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151407 How To Manage A Successful Facebook Group Annemarie Dooling / The Coral Project Journalists have to be trained to participate in civic discourse, Dooling argues. How WhereBy.Us Will Track Impact of Local Media Jason Alcorn / MetricShift Alexandra Smith leaps into her new role, connecting metrics to local news revenue. February Social Media Platform Changes: […]

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How To Manage A Successful Facebook Group
Annemarie Dooling / The Coral Project
Journalists have to be trained to participate in civic discourse, Dooling argues.

How WhereBy.Us Will Track Impact of Local Media
Jason Alcorn / MetricShift
Alexandra Smith leaps into her new role, connecting metrics to local news revenue.

February Social Media Platform Changes: Full Roundup
Tory Starr / WGBH Social
26 updates and 6 rumors to watch.

New Data Shows Just How Much Social Sharing Has Decreased Since 2015 (And News Feed Tweaks Are Just One Factor)
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab
The average article gets 4 shares, down from 8 in 2015.

How Many Subscriptions Can You Afford?
Alexandre Botão / Medium
Can news publishers compete on cost and value?

Who Cares Whether A Movie Has A Perfect Rating On Rotten Tomatoes?
Justin Charity / The Ringer
What happens when measurement is itself the metric.

More From MetricShift

Trust In News Matters. Don’t Give Up On It.
James Tyner

Knight Media Forum Focuses on Non-Profit News, Impact and Danger of Algorithms
Jason Alcorn

MetricShift Survey: Newsroom Leaders’ Top Priority Is Audience Growth
Jason Alcorn

The 15 Biggest Local News Sites On Facebook In January
Liam Corcoran

How The Financial Times Uses Reader Feedback To Launch And Test New Features
Monica Todd and Moshe Raphaely

4 Ways Newsletter Publishers Can Hit Open Rates Between 50 and 60 Percent
Mark Schiefelbein

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

The post Media Metrics Roundup for March 7, 2018 appeared first on MediaShift.

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How WhereBy.Us Will Track Impact of Local Media http://mediashift.org/2018/03/measure-impact-local-news/ Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:05:30 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151368 In December, Alexandra Smith joined WhereBy.Us as its first growth editor. The growing company, which uses the slogan, “Live like you live here,” and has 24 employees, currently runs local media sites in Miami and Seattle as well as a creative studio. And it just launched an impact tracker internally. It’s notable as one of […]

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In December, Alexandra Smith joined WhereBy.Us as its first growth editor. The growing company, which uses the slogan, “Live like you live here,” and has 24 employees, currently runs local media sites in Miami and Seattle as well as a creative studio. And it just launched an impact tracker internally. It’s notable as one of the first times commercial media has embraced impact tracking as a strategy for marketing and growth.

For local news organizations, tracking impact is a way to tie journalism’s value to revenue. Impact trackers can help show readers how news works and source powerful messaging for membership or subscription campaigns. Thirty-one percent of recent subscribers to local newspapers subscribed because they wanted to support local journalism, according to the Media Insight Project. Gannett, where Smith worked before joining WhereBy.Us, recently launched an internal impact tracker, and LION Publishers is now offering investigative reporting grants to local newsrooms and helping grantees use the impact of that reporting in fundraising.

WhereBy.Us has been at the forefront of using analytics to create news products for the local media market. This philosophy has led to a newsletter-first strategy, an emphasis on connecting people with the cities they live in, and a membership program with benefits that include merchandise, giveaways from local businesses and discounts for events. The company is currently using an institutional fellowship from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute to build a toolkit for using metrics in small, independent newsrooms.

I talked with Smith over email about her new role at WhereBy.Us, the metrics she tracks and why the company started tracking impact. Here is our lightly edited conversation.

Q&A

What’s a typical day look like for you as growth editor?

I’m not sure I’ve had a typical day since joining the WhereBy.Us team in December! Much of my work so far has been around building workflows and processes for our growing team. My role is set up so I’m like a consultant for our local brands — The New Tropic in Miami and The Evergrey in Seattle (and more coming soon!) I check in with the local teams daily to brainstorm how we can engage our current audiences and capture the attention of new people. I also lead project work related to growth — things like our content distribution plans and tracking, CRM-like people tracker for editorial use and organic and paid social media strategies.

What metrics do you track?

Since we’re a daily newsletter, subscribers and open rates are important. We use a net promoter score system to get regular feedback on how our newsletter subscribers feel about our daily product. For social media, we look at engagement metrics, so comments, shares and reactions. We also look at things like number of responses to our callouts and how many people attend our events. I care most about metrics that indicate people have found value in what we’ve created and want to participate in our community. And, of course, we keep tabs on revenue.

It’s a new position, so in the bigger picture what does the company hope to learn through your work?

How to grow effectively. I’m tracking our experiments, big and small, so that we can learn over time what works and what doesn’t. Test, measure, learn, test again.

What can impact look like for WhereBy.Us?

We organize how we think about impact in four buckets: informed awareness, informed conversations, informed action, external recognition. We look for and track when someone tells us we taught them something or changed their mind, shared or talked about our work, took an action, changed a behavior, things like that.

Is there a great example you can share?

Our first experiment with Facebook Groups. Our Seattle brand The Evergrey launched “Embrace the Grey,” a Facebook group designed to help their community (and themselves!) make the most of winter there. Members participate in daily challenges, share ideas, start conversations, and we ask if they’ve changed their minds about winter after trying new things or considering different perspectives. The group is coming together IRL in March to celebrate a holiday that we made up and members chose the name for — Greybreak. This is a great example of how we can bring a community of people together around a shared experience and help improve lives in one way.

The group is open to the public — check it out here.

What pros and cons did you talk about before deciding to start using an impact tracker?

A lot of these conversations happened before I joined the team. There are lots of pros — making sure we’re fulfilling our mission to engage the curious locals in our cities, learning what qualitative value our projects and events provide, showing clients more than quantitative metrics. I think one of the pain points on this for many organizations is the effort and time needed to keep the thing updated and useful. My smart colleague Anika Anand kept the input process for our impact tracker as simple as possible.

Anything else on your mind right now related to metrics and impact?

WhereBy.Us’ ecosystem. Is it healthy? Are people who subscribe, or have conversations on our social posts, or attend our events, or pay us for marketing work, delighted with what we’re offering? Are they participating in our work on different platforms? I’m thinking about ways to measure and check in with each mini-community we’ve created so we never rely too heavily on any one space.

Learn more

You can subscribe to WhereBy.Us’s newsletters at The Evergrey and The New Tropic.

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

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Media Metrics Roundup for February 28, 2018 http://mediashift.org/2018/02/media-metrics-roundup-february-28-2018/ Wed, 28 Feb 2018 11:03:29 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151277 Lessons Learned from the Quartz Email Team Cate Blouke / Really Good Emails The most important metric? “Total number of active subscribers we have per newsletter.” Trust In News Matters. Don’t Give Up On It. James Tyner / MetricShift What publications lose by prioritizing “engagement” or page views. Paths To Subscription: Why Recent Subscribers Chose […]

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Lessons Learned from the Quartz Email Team
Cate Blouke / Really Good Emails
The most important metric? “Total number of active subscribers we have per newsletter.”

Trust In News Matters. Don’t Give Up On It.
James Tyner / MetricShift
What publications lose by prioritizing “engagement” or page views.

Paths To Subscription: Why Recent Subscribers Chose To Pay For News
American Press Institute
45 percent finally subscribed because of a promotion or a free trial.

It’s Time To End ‘Trending’
Brian Feldman / Select All
Trending algorithms can’t determine whether content should be shared.

After Years Of Testing, The Wall Street Journal Has Built A Paywall That Bends To The Individual Reader
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab
Each site visitor is scored, “based on dozens of signals,” on their propensity to subscribe.

A Guide To Page Value – The Undervalued Metric
Donovan Ayon / Luna Metrics
How to track which pages, or groups of pages, users see before a transaction.

More From MetricShift

Knight Media Forum Focuses on Non-Profit News, Impact and Danger of Algorithms
Jason Alcorn

MetricShift Survey: Newsroom Leaders’ Top Priority Is Audience Growth
Jason Alcorn

The 15 Biggest Local News Sites On Facebook In January
Liam Corcoran

How The Financial Times Uses Reader Feedback To Launch And Test New Features
Monica Todd and Moshe Raphaely

4 Ways Newsletter Publishers Can Hit Open Rates Between 50 and 60 Percent
Mark Schiefelbein

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

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Knight Media Forum Focuses on Non-Profit News, Impact and Danger of Algorithms http://mediashift.org/2018/02/no-doubts-impact-news-knight-media-forum/ Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:03:45 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151169 MIAMI – The theme of this year’s Knight Media Forum in Miami was “Strengthening Local News, Community and Democracy.” The annual gathering of librarians, community foundations and journalists hosted by the Knight Foundation opened with a panel of Knight Commissioners who set a pragmatic but urgent tone on trust, media and democracy. Smart questions from Tony […]

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MIAMI – The theme of this year’s Knight Media Forum in Miami was “Strengthening Local News, Community and Democracy.” The annual gathering of librarians, community foundations and journalists hosted by the Knight Foundation opened with a panel of Knight Commissioners who set a pragmatic but urgent tone on trust, media and democracy.

Over a day and a half, the future of algorithms and technology took center stage, with talks from tech pioneers and authorities Tim O’Reilly, Jimmy Wales and Amy Webb. But more intimate breakout sessions and panels offered a chance to see where philanthropic attention to media is being directed right now: discussions focused on local media collaboratives, national-local partnerships, community-focused journalism, community and ethnic media, and the science of storytelling among other topics.

Implicit in many of these: It’s a given that media has impact on the health of our democracy, and filling the growing gap in professional reporting is of utmost importance. It’s no longer a point that has to be proven each time it comes up, at least for this crowd. Rather, the gathered leaders in media, philanthropy and tech asked more nuanced questions about impact, metrics, news and how to pay for it all.

What’s the impact of local non-profit news?

On Wednesday, a panel of non-profit news outlets and the community foundations that have supported them discussed the impact of news in their communities. At a fundamental level, what the Texas Tribune offers is the “maintenance of an educated public,” said John Thornton, the Tribune’s co-founder. The Tribune now boasts the largest statehouse news bureau in the U.S.

As the media gets hollowed out, the notion that someone in media has your back gets lost, Thornton said. “What’s filled that void is distrust.”

As in Texas, strong local coverage by a non-profit newsroom is making a difference in Vermont. VTDigger covers the state with impartiality, rigor and a 10-person newsroom. “Maybe not at the national level, but when we report, things change,” said Anne Galloway, the nonprofit newsroom’s founder. At the state and local level, you can be more pragmatic, she said, and there’s less political noise crowding out the journalism, even when covering the state legislature. “We give everybody a hard time,” she said.

Are attention metrics a destructive force?

The day before, tech publishing veteran Tim O’Reilly offered an explanation of algorithms in technology, as well as a warning. In response to a question about the incentives of commercial news, he said, “You put your finger on my biggest concern, we have not realized that we are living within an algorithmic society that is optimizing for the wrong thing.”

Algorithms, O’Reilly said, are designed with an objective function. Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is designed for engagement. Media, both real and propagandistic, optimizes for that News Feed algorithm in search of likes and shares. “The clicks are always going to be on the sensation,” he said, calling the feedback loop of attention and traffic a destructive force.

Can Facebook be fixed? O’Reilly is hopeful. In many respects, he said, Facebook’s current situation is analogous to Google in 2011. Then, Google faced its own “crisis of trust” and responded with a major update to its search algorithm to punish spammers and publishers of low-quality news and information. That effort worked, and whatever Facebook does not may also.

Still, “We have to find other economic models for the news business,” O’Reilly said. A model built on attention metrics can always be gamed. “You have to create value for people who care about that value. When people pay for the things they care about, you can have a better business.”

What’s the impact on communities?

In rural communities in Colorado and New Mexico, “Small Towns, Big Change” explored urgent questions like how to create robust economies, protect natural resources, and improve quality of life. Journalism itself wasn’t the aim, but rather a means to identify solutions for the LOR Foundation, who collaborated with Solutions Journalism and seven local news organizations. It came about after the foundation learned that most people in the regions it served got most of their news from Facebook instead of local or even national news, said LaMonte Guillory, communications director for the LOR Foundation.

In Philadelphia, another solutions journalism project has had an impact both in the field of journalism and on the issues it has covered. The Reentry Project won a 2017 Philly News Award for best non-traditional news provider and led to 10 stories produced in collaboration with multiple news outlets. And its work led to changes at the city, in local business practices and in the reentry community’s perception of the media itself:

What comes next for media funders?

Futurist Amy Webb is concerned about the future and urged funders to act. “You have the power to fund the future of news you want,” she said. With the rise of AI, fake audio and video, the alternative could be catastrophic.

The Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy will be releasing its recommendations later this year.

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

The post Knight Media Forum Focuses on Non-Profit News, Impact and Danger of Algorithms appeared first on MediaShift.

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Media Metrics Roundup for February 21, 2018 http://mediashift.org/2018/02/media-metrics-roundup-february-21-2018/ Wed, 21 Feb 2018 11:03:46 +0000 http://mediashift.org/?p=151079 In An Era Of Loyalty, Newspaper Publishers Focus On Time Spent And Frequency Max Willens / Digiday The Seattle Times has a dashboard showing which articles lead to the most digital subscriptions. Tricky Podcast: Attentional Serfdom Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin / Tricky The first episode of this highly listenable new podcast looks at “the […]

The post Media Metrics Roundup for February 21, 2018 appeared first on MediaShift.

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In An Era Of Loyalty, Newspaper Publishers Focus On Time Spent And Frequency
Max Willens / Digiday
The Seattle Times has a dashboard showing which articles lead to the most digital subscriptions.

Tricky Podcast: Attentional Serfdom
Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin / Tricky
The first episode of this highly listenable new podcast looks at “the fight to capture your attention.” (Or just read the transcript.)

7 Tips to Get Better Newsletter Metrics
Jason Alcorn / MetricShift
The best things we learned from our expert panel.

Snapchat Finally Gives Creators Analytics
Josh Constine / TechCrunch
Independent creators can now see time spent, total story views and more.

The Upside Down: Negative Goals In Google Analytics
Samantha Barnes / Luna Metrics
How to set goals that warn you when things go wrong, like unsubscribes or customer support requests.

Brands With Their Own Viewability Standards Are Causing Headaches For The Ad-Tech Industry
Lauren Johnson / Ad Week
Brands like IBM are setting their own, higher, standards. An opportunity for high-value publishers?

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MetricShift Survey: Newsroom Leaders’ Top Priority Is Audience Growth
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Mark Schiefelbein

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

The post Media Metrics Roundup for February 21, 2018 appeared first on MediaShift.

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