Norman Lear Hires Chinn for Media Impact Project

Media analytics strategist Dana Chinn has been named Director of Norman Lear Center's Media Impact Project (MIP); an initiative for collecting, developing and analysing approaches for measuring the social impact of the media.

The project, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, involves developing new metrics to provide a deeper understanding of media's influence on social trends and individual behaviour.

Chinn (pictured) has more than two decades of experience researching and teaching analytics. For the past twelve years, she has been a Lecturer in Digital Analytics at the USC Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism (of which the Norman Lear Center is a part), during which time she also served as a Senior Consultant with the Media Insight Group. Earlier, she was Director, Internet Business Projects at 101communications, Director of Online Planning and New Projects in Gannett's newspaper division, and held strategic planning, marketing, and market research roles at the Los Angeles Times.

In her new position, Chinn is tasked with building the MIP into a hub that brings together data from the news, film, television, digital communication, academia, and the analytics community, in order to understand how media affects audiences.

Commenting on the appointment, Lear Center MD and Director of Research Johanna Blakley said: 'Dana brings to MIP her incredible passion for reading the digital tea leaves, hunting for the kinds of insights that help media organizations reach target audiences efficiently and optimize impact.'

Web sites: www.learcenter.org and www.mediaimpactproject.org .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.