Five impacts The Land has made so far

The impact of nonprofit news can sometimes be hard to quantify. As one journalist put it, “Nothing bad happened at city council last night because we were there.” However, when measuring impact, nonprofit news groups tend to look at: 1) Readership, 2) Engagement (sharing, commenting), 3) Re-framing narratives, and 4) Creating action or change.

Here are five impacts The Land has made so far:

• People are engaging with our stories. We have over 7,000 enews subscribers and our web and social media traffic are growing.

• We are telling stories that aren’t being told and changing conversations, esp. about city neighborhoods: Old school still rules: Lee-Harvard’s high census response rate could teach other neighborhoods a few tricks, Local Heroes: Westown resident’s ability to see silver lining turns houses into home and Covid-19 and crime accelerate economic struggles in Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. 

• We launched an internship program for young journalists of color. Our fall college interns Kayla Murrell and Asha Fairley joined The Land in September.

• We learned, from our readers, that government, community development and social equity are the top three areas our readers want us to cover. Our stories are tracking strongly against these topics. 

• Our stories are making waves — because of our SUDs story, a local company is now in conversation with CWRU about manufacturing the device; following our story about over-policing in Bratenahl and the Bratenahl’s mayor’s court’s potential violation of defendants’ constitutional rights, we learned that the village council is planning to hold a public safety committee meeting about the issue; and our “mower lady” story, part of our “Local Heroes” series was picked up by Channel 8 News after Cub Cadet generously provided Bridget Daniel’s with the “cadillac” of lawn mowers. 

We’re looking forward to sharing more impacts as The Land continues to grow and develop.