What is journalism’s role in monitoring and supporting the health of communities? How should media organizations measure their impact?

These questions were at the heart of The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Dissection: B, a two-day event on media impact with the Center for Collaborative Journalism in Macon, Ga. Building on CIR’s first Dissection last October in Oakland, Calif., we convened a group of journalists, researchers, academics and community members to talk about how we define, track and articulate the impact of our work.

Take a look at how the conversation went below. This is just the latest installment of an ongoing discussion, so we’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your own approaches to defining and measuring impact in the comments, or tweet us: @CIRonline.

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Cole Goins is the director of community engagement for Reveal, where he cultivates partnerships that blend in-depth journalism and creative public engagement. He has built and supported distribution networks, spearheaded arts-based initiatives such as the Off/Page Project, led social media and audience strategy, and facilitated statewide media collaborations. He was a senior fellow in the 2015 USC Annenberg Health Journalism Fellowships, mentoring five journalists on approaches to community engagement. Previously, Goins was the engagement editor at the Center for Public Integrity, where he led audience development initiatives and multimedia features for award-winning investigative projects. He earned a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked as music director for WXYC, the student-run radio station. He is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.