How does this make you feel? How emotions compel us to act—or not

Now more than ever, we are experiencing a range of emotions based on the media we encounter. Sometimes, these emotions lead us to take action—for better or for worse. Read More

Media Impact Funders is tracking impact resources specific to COVID-19. We'll keep adding to this list as more resources become available. Email us at info@mediafunders.org if you know of a tool, guide or framework that should be added here. Read More

Children’s early learning and brain development are subjects that I have always cared deeply about. But now, as the mother of three little ones, these subjects have taken on a much more personal significance. I marvel every day at the connections my daughter and two sons are making and all that they are absorbing from engaging and interacting with the world around them. Read More

After seven years of tracking the field of media impact assessment, we're pleased to announce the release of our latest report, Decoding Media Impact: Insights, Advice & Recommendations, which provides an examination of the current state of the field. Read More

From our earliest days, the Pulitzer Center has been committed to the notion that, for quality news to continue to be relevant in the United States, we must commit in equal measure to supporting more of the best work but also to building the audience for that work.  Read More

Editor's note: Co-founded by The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review, Covering Climate Now is a collaboration of more than 390 news outlets around the world boasting a combined audience of well over 1 billion people, all dedicated to strengthening news coverage of the climate story. Written by Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now and environmental correspondent at The Nation, and Columbia Journalism Review Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope, the report below chronicles the week of high-profile climate coverage that the collaboration organized around the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September. Hertsgaard was one of the attendees at our recent gathering on media and the environment. There, we asked Hertsgaard how Covering Climate Now got started. Here’s his answer: "In October of 2018, the scientists at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report that concluded that humanity had 12 years to slash heat trapping emissions in half—on the way to net zero by 2050—or face extreme, perhaps irreversible climate destabilization. The scientists added that achieving this very ambitious goal would require rapid, “transformational" changes in the world economy’s energy sector, agricultural sector, transport, construction, finance and others. It struck me that the scientists neglected to mention the media sector, and that this was a crucial oversight. For unless the media sector is transformed, none of those other sectors will be transformed, because without much better media coverage of the climate crisis, there will not be the public awareness and public pressure necessary to make governments, corporations and others do what’s needed. That’s what led The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review to co-found Covering Climate Now: We want to help our colleagues throughout the news media transform our approach to the climate crisis and “tell the story so people get it,” as the iconic TV newsman Bill Moyers said at the April 30 conference at Columbia that launched Covering Climate Now." Read More

Question: Let’s say you’re at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, watching the premiere of a documentary about the power and promise of veganism. “A shocking new documentary that will change the way you look at meat,” reads one of the reviews. Immediately after exiting the film, do you: Read More

SIMA Studios is a global curator of social impact media with multiple arms: SIMA Awards, which honor high-quality social impact media across the globe; SIMA X, a community film screening and distribution initiative; and SIMA Classroom, an educational program designed to “provide first-class visual storytelling resources to education forums worldwide.” Recently, we chatted with SIMA’s founder and executive director, Daniela Kon, and global partnerships director Viri Pittaro about SIMA Classroom, their new impact assessment tool for measuring empathy, and the power of storytelling through film. Here’s what we learned. Read More

“Scale"—too often this is the bane of a grantee’s or evaluator’s existence when it comes to assessing the social impact of media projects. Why are funders so stuck on this concept, and what other impact models might matter more? As we’ve been reviewing materials we’ve gathered on media impact over the past several years, these questions have popped up time and again. Read More