Why impact should be at the heart of the newsroom

You’ve just finished the biggest, most important story you’ve ever worked on. You have poured your best reporting, writing, sweat, and tears into it. It’s been edited and approved, and then, there it is, finally published. You share it with friends, family, connections, strangers on social media. You check the reach, impressions, your mentions – hoping for a big splash. There is some traction at first, but after a few hours, it has died down. The news cycle continues.

All that for this? You move on to your next assignment.

“There isn’t a journalist in the world who wants their story to just be printed and no one to react to it, nothing to happen. Everyone wants something to happen. What we’re doing is saying, ‘Well, okay, if you actually do some strategic things, that’s going to become much more likely.’” Miriam Wells has been an impact editor since 2019. First at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (where she co-created the position with “pioneer” then-CEO Rachel Oldroyd), and now at The Examination (where she is also serving as deputy development director). Maximizing the likeliness of something happening after publication is part of her job.

“It’s my job to make sure we don’t just want to report stories. We want them to be used. We want them to get to the people that can use them to affect change in the world,” she explains.

“When you strip it back, what is journalism here to do? People will say, ‘to inform,’ ‘to hold power to account,’ ‘to protect and strengthen democracy.’ So how do we hold power to account and how do we strengthen democracy?” 

Planning for impact might help with that. “The traditional editor is thinking about what the story is, and the impact editor is thinking about what the story will do.”

Throughout her career, Miriam has worked for different news outlets (BBC News, The Sunday Times, Vice News…) as a producer, a foreign correspondent, and an editor. She remembers the few times when she was disillusioned by journalism and its actual power for change, especially during her years reporting from Latin America, when she “could be writing about the worst, most horrible human rights abuse in the biggest-selling paper in the UK,” without it sparking any kind of real-life change.

After some on and off time of journalism (and some time working at Human Rights Watch focusing on women’s rights, then at a domestic abuse refuge), she came back to the industry richer in knowledge on grassroots impact. 

All these different experiences combined allowed her to contribute to a growing discussion at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which she joined in 2016, on amplifying the impact of their investigations. Three years later, the impact editor job position was, thus, born, with the ambition of implementing a strategy that incorporates impact at every stage of the editorial process. But how does one do that?

Ideally, through a newsroom culture shift starting “from the top,” before involving the whole team in establishing a unified vision that answers essential questions, such as “Who are we? What is our organization for? Who is our journalism for? What kind of impact do we want our journalism to have in the world?”

From then on, it’s about strategically building impact thinking into every step, from deciding what to cover to publishing and then distributing the stories. That doesn’t mean that impact needs to dictate what gets reported on and what doesn’t, but thinking of the possible outcomes of a news story needs to be part of the editorial process – whether an impact editor is in charge of it specifically, or it’s an editor, or multiple editors, embedding that into their approach.

But such work takes time, trust within the newsroom, and even more time. “Even at a non-profit that was mission-driven, and that said in its strapline it’s aiming to spark change,” she says of The Bureau where she helped make that transformation happen, “it was still a big culture change that was difficult, and that you never really finish.”

But if such a change can only come from the top, is there really nothing one can do in their own newsroom, no steps one can take in their own reporting to be more impact-driven?

Here are Miriam Wells’ tips:

Make your journalism useful and visible. “It’s just thinking very carefully about your audiences. So, for any story, you make a list. Who are the key people that you want to see this? Who should be paying attention? Who could use it? Who might find it useful? Who has the power to make a change at the top, or on the ground?

And, so we’ve got our newspaper article: Are they going to see it there? Are there other ways that might be more effective? Are there Facebook groups where we should post? Is there a community organisation that we can do an event with? As long as your editor is cool with that.

Or ask your sources as you’re going along, because all of these people will be people that you’re in contact with for a story, ‘What’s the best way to make this story accessible and useful for you, for your community? What do you think the best way is to get these findings out to people who might not read them in the newspaper?’”

Make your journalism inclusive. “The role of being valuable to society, you can play that much better if you really think about what that value is, and who you’re going to be valuable to – like people that journalism hasn’t been inclusive of, hasn’t been representative of. We are encouraging all journalists to think really deeply about what is the role of their particular outlet, who are their audiences, who are their communities, and what needs are they serving.”

When talking about the bigger availability of news outlets today versus 50 years ago and how that might influence the potential for impact, Miriam points out that, in countries of the global North (or “the Minority World”), it also has to do with inclusion and representation. “The entire industry is built on white wealth and white power. That’s not something that we talk enough about.”

She adds: “Traditional journalism done in traditional ways upholds harmful systems, even if it’s reporting on corrupt governments, or whatever. Just by existing in the way it exists and being done in the way that it is done, it’s still kind of upholding these power structures which benefit certain people.”

If you’re trying to convince within your newsroom, you can emphasize the business case. In the face of “the saturation of the news environment” and “the trust [in media] issue,” “it’s kind of a sustainability question because the business model is completely broken down for traditional media. For good reason, because traditionally, we have not represented and served the needs and the interests of large proportions of the population. So there’s no trust and there’s no reason why they should be, you know, paying for news or visiting our sites.

So you have to be genuinely valuable in today’s world for people to pay attention to you, to come to you, and to financially support you ultimately. And all the big organizations that are doing really, really well now are ones that have, in-depth, thought about their audiences and their audiences’ needs, and built membership programs that have catered to that, you know, like The New York Times, The Guardian – even though The Guardian is more about their identity and mission rather than providing for the members.

That’s all impact. It’s like thinking, ‘How do we bring something of tangible value to these audiences?’ And I think the change in the news environment has made this kind of work really necessary.”

FYI: Impact can occur in unexpected ways. “Over those years [at the Bureau], my thinking evolved from ‘impact means something changes as a result of a story’ to ‘it means that the journalism was useful’. And the impact can come just as much from the process of doing the journalism and how you do that, and how you involve people as from the product.”

One of the examples Miriam recalls is an investigation on cigarette advertising in Lima, Peru, published in 2022. Tobacco companies were advertising near schools, which is not allowed. The investigative team “engage[d] young people across Lima, connecting with universities and young people’s organisations.” And with the help of an impact producer in Peru, they were able to collect evidence and create the data that would be used in the investigation. The whole process – taking photos, contributing, using software, and even learning that what those companies were doing was illegal – “it was educating them, and raising awareness and agency.”

“I came to the point where I understood that even if you have all this amazing instant change or reaction when the article comes out, it’s what’s happening at the grassroots and how you’re getting that story and how that story is representing and serving the people that are affected on the ground that’s where the lasting impact comes.”