Impact PackThis spring, we’re excited to officially release our Impact Pack, a deck of media strategy cards designed to help media makers and funders brainstorm, strategize, and assess impact.

You can use this 108-card deck to:

  • Prototype your media engagement strategy
  • Tell or iterate your impact story
  • Weigh different the merits of various platforms and options
  • Get feedback from partners and users

Order yours here.

We’ve also got a new report on podcasting for the Knight Foundation; new issues of our recently launched publication Immerse, and an updated portfolio of tools, reports, and productions over at our spruced-up website.

Immerse yourself in our Medium publication

Want to join the conversation about emerging nonfiction storytelling? Dive into this publication, which we launched in the fall with the Tribeca Film Institute, MIT’s Open Documentary Lab, and the Fledgling Fund.

Recent features have included:
•    February: Booting up immersive news labs
•    January: How virtual communities could enable real solidarity
•    December: This is the moment for visionary narratives
•    November: What’s happened to transmedia?
•    October: Not a film and not an empathy machine

Each month we also offer deep reads, upcoming events for digital storytellers, and conversations with makers and thinkers.

Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to the Immerse newsletter today.

Arrivals and departures

Nancy WatzmanWe’re pleased to welcome Dot Connector’s new Director of Strategic Initiatives, Nancy Watzman, to the team. Nancy is an award-winning investigative journalist, researcher, and strategist. She has more than two decades of experience doing research, writing, strategy, communications, and policy analysis. Her reporting and commentary has appeared in many leading publications, including Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, USA Today, and The Washington Monthly. Nancy serves as managing editor at the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive. She’s also worked with watchdog and other public interest groups, including the Internet Archive, Sunlight Foundation, Common Cause, Center for Public Integrity, Center for Responsive Politics, Public Campaign (now Every Voice), and Public Citizen. She is co-author, with Micah Sifry, of Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million
 a Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), and contributed to The Buying of the Congress (Avon Books, 1998). A graduate of Swarthmore College, she lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and three children.

We also want to extend a fond farewell and congratulations to our senior associate Angelica Das, who is embarking on a new position as managing director for the Points North Institute, where she’ll oversee operations, including the Camden International Film Festival. Jessica and Katie first met Angelica many years ago at the Center for Social Media (now the Center for Media and Social Impact) and she has been a treasured colleague and friend ever since. We’ll miss her dearly, but we are looking forward to seeing all the amazing things she’ll do in her new position.

We’ve also been busy….

  • Helping Media Impact Funders conduct research and convene conversations that reveal how our new political realities raise the stakes for media in the public interest. For example, see Jessica’s January piece on how funders can stand up for the truth, and Katie’s piece about how MIF will be thinking about impact in the new year.
  • Watching excitedly as our partners at Internet Archive continue to build the Trump Archive, preserving all of Trump’s statements in order to hold power accountable
  • Thinking through local news and engagement with the Democracy Fund
  • Showcasing our Impact Pack at ONA and the Media Consortium’s annual conference.
  • Speaking about innovation in public radio at Fordham University and trends in interactive documentary at Goucher College
  • Sharing stickers and DIY holograms at the Sundance New Frontiers space.

 

Connect with us in person

Over the coming months, Jessica will be at:

Nancy will be at:

Hope to see you at one of these events!

In our off hours. . .

  • Jessica is watching Legion and Humans and waiting for the next installation of the Great Library series to come out.
  • Katie is busy tending to her six-week-old daughter, during which time she’s consumed all available episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Blackish, Schitt’s Creek, and Real Husbands of Hollywood.
  • Nancy is hoping to get in some spring skiing and has already started spring soccer team carpooling.
  • Angelica has been busy taping up boxes, but finally arrived in Maine where according to the highway welcome sign it is, “The Way Life Should Be.” To decompress from moving logistics, she’s catching up on The Great British Baking Show on Netflix—the world’s most serene reality television.
  • Carrie wants to know what the deal is with that British baking show because her husband can’t stop talking about it.