Center Will Offer New Tools for Measuring the Impact of Media Beyond Numbers

What is the difference? If your question is like that one, more practical than philosophical, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism may soon have an answer. With $3.25 million in initial financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the college’s Norman Lear Center is about to create what it is calling a “global hub” for those who would measure the actual impact of media — journalistic, cinematic, social and otherwise.

Martin Kaplan, the director of the Lear Center, will join its director of research, Johanna Blakley, as a principal “investigator” for the new enterprise. He spoke last week about the futility of counting page-views, “likes,” and retweets when trying to figure out whether an opinion piece, a documentary film or a television show actually moved anyone. “Those measure how many people saw something,” he said. “That’s not the same as an outcome.”