Investigate Midwest built a centralized impact tracking system in Airtable to better document how our journalism is amplified and how it creates change over time. The system tracks republications, citations in academic research, references in lawsuits or policy discussions, notable social engagement, audience feedback and pickup from other newsrooms and organizations. We also created a dashboard that allows staff to quickly visualize impact trends across stories, reporters, platforms and outlet types.

The project was designed to solve a longstanding newsroom challenge: impact data often lived in scattered spreadsheets, emails and anecdotal conversations, making it difficult to track consistently over time or use effectively for grant reporting, fundraising and audience strategy. While portions of the workflow are still manual, the project established a shared newsroom system for continuously documenting and evaluating the reach and influence of our reporting.

We’re continuing to expand the system over time, including plans to better track geographic reach, partner republication traffic, and more automated data collection where possible. Internally, staff responded positively to having a more organized way to visualize the reach of our journalism beyond pageviews, clicks and shares. The dashboard format made it easier to identify trends and quickly communicate impact across the newsroom.

Later this year, we plan to launch a donor survey to better understand what types of impact and outcomes supporters most want us to track and report back on.

One of the biggest lessons was that consistency matters more than perfection at the start. Building a usable system early allowed us to begin tracking impact immediately and improve the structure over time. We also learned that simpler category systems are often more sustainable than highly granular ones, especially for small teams managing workflows manually.

For a long time, so much of our impact lived in screenshots, Slack messages, emails and conversations during team calls that were eventually forgotten or lost over time. But this project has helped us start building a clearer, more organized picture of where our reporting is showing up, who it’s reaching and how it continues moving long after publication. I’m really proud of how far we’ve come already and excited about where we can take it next. 

Contributed by Lauren Cross

Cite this article

Cross, Lauren (2026, June 2). 1Investigate Midwest. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/investigate-midwest/