Our Impact
Our team works hard to bring the philosophy of Modifier to as many newsrooms and journalists as we can. We are incredibly grateful for the support we’ve been shown along the way.
People Who Trust Us
[Modifier] sets a new standard for reporting conduct that should be taught in every journalism program, and proves that resources exist to help all publications make transformative changes for more inclusive and representative reporting practices and newsroom culture. No more excuses!
The leaders of Modifier are an inspiration to those of us who work in journalism collaboratives They helped me to think more deeply about how to build relationships with our community, including potential funders. And they helped me to dream big. The team is generous with their knowledge and passionate about what they do.
Our work with [Modifier] is helping us support the editorial mission of Capital B with an organizational foundation that will reflect our core values and allow us to build a first-of-its-kind newsroom. Their thoughtful counsel and targeted guidance has been invaluable during the early stages of building our nonprofit.
Modifier's advice and insights allowed us to not only understand our need for Operating Principles, but gave us the language to talk about these with our team and the building blocks to develop our own. Their advice and resources were people-centered and practical. It's rare to find an organization that shares your values, practices what they preach, and executes so successfully on its desire to help other organizations.
Community engagement was a major goal of Qnotes’ OUTlook project and the individual coaching from [Modifier] was extremely productive. They helped us conceptualize and put on our very first Qnotes Connect event which had over 45 people in attendance, as opposed to only a handful at previous events. Our reporters did mini-interviews throughout the night and we had nine story ideas come out of the event. Qnotes Connect events continue quarterly now and they’ve been a great way to build trust in the LGBTQ+ community.
It was super helpful to hear from [Modifier's] in-depth experiences as trusted journalism collaborative managers with a growing track record of success. Plus, they had some good insights for the circumstances we face in our own state, despite being in a different part of the country. It's awesome to know they exist — and that they exist to help other organizations like ours get better at what we do.
As Seen In
Case Studies
InvestigateWest successfully tests Modifier resources in their newsroom
In 2021, Modifier (then called Reframe) set out to test its tools and resources with a working newsroom in a six-month-long pilot. We found an ideal partner in Seattle-based investigative outlet InvestigateWest and wrote about the partnership in a case study.
How Resolve Philly is diversifying its revenue streams to power its growth
“Resolve is often cited as one of the most successful collaboratives in the United States. While it remains a hub for collaborative reporting, that is no longer its sole function. The organization’s main goals are to improve journalism, equity, and communication in Philadelphia. It’s branched out to include projects, such as Shake the Table, a long-term initiative to hold elected officials accountable, and [Modifier], an effort to help journalists better report on misrepresented and underrepresented communities. Resolve is also known for its revenue success to date. Over the last four years, it has brought in enough money to grow into a team of 18 people managing a half-dozen projects.”
Developing Journalism Collaborations for Local Impact
“The Philadelphia collaborative stood out for its clarity and organization in its approach to finding sustainability. In part due to its embedded structure within the broader Resolve Philly umbrella, Broke in Philly leveraged its planning and precision about funding allocations and timelines to communicate across the membership about resource availability, mitigating the risk for membership confusion.”
How Resolve Philly measures impact at a community level
“Traditional ways that news organizations use to measure their reach metrics, like clicks and page views, don’t lend themselves to tracking this kind of impact. So to meet this challenge, Resolve Philly has created its own solution using the database tool, Airtable. This allows us to connect the dots between our first interactions with a community member or journalist and the resulting impact. The impact tracker helps us capture the narrative of our work, as well as quantify and organize more intangible outcomes, like newsroom behavioral change, such as when a journalist changes how they are practicing their craft. It also allows us to analyze the qualitative data we collect along the way.”