Media Development Impact Dashboard

The Media Development Impact Dashboard is an annual assessment of the impact the work of the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) on the financial sustainability of news businesses. It is compiled by analysing sales, reach, risk indicators, the number of people they employ, and other performance data gathered over the length of MDIF's relationship with news organisations, usually 5-7 years, and provides a portrait of the development of each client - and through it, an indication of the impact of their work.

The key findings of the Impact Dashboard 2013 (with more available in the research document) include:

• 65 million people in developing democracies got their news from MDIF clients in 2012 - 55 million through traditional media and 10 million through digital media. MDIF works in countries where access to free and independent media is under threat.
• After 5 years with MDIF, clients on average increased their sales by 240% and their reach by 111%. Working with MDIF is aimed to strengthen a news business’s sustainability.
• For every US$10,000 invested, MDIF supported access to independent news for 12,971 readers, listeners, and viewers.

MDIF invests in independent media around the world using its resources of financial capital - primarily through affordable debt and equity financing - and human skills in independent media companies in countries where access to free and independent media is under threat, with the aim of helping them to build commercially sustainable businesses around professional, responsible, quality journalism.

The methodology for this research is explained online in the Impact Dashboard section of the MDIF website. Research limitations reflect the measurement limitations of the media industry as explained by MDIF: "Not all of our clients, for example, collect audited reach data, so in certain cases we have to make estimates based on population size and other relevant factors (although we do omit these values from our growth-rate analysis). Another challenge is in collecting consistent online metrics since not all of our clients systematically measure their web traffic, although we are working hard to encourage clients to adopt a consistent, comparable platform of Google Analytics. Also, when calculating reach our overall numbers include double-counting, as many digital users will also be traditional media consumers. This is an industry problem for which there is not yet an agreed solution. This year, for the sake of transparency, we have decided to break out the reach of digital media and traditional media."

Click here to read an online summary of this document.