Nobody loves their content management system. It’s a stubborn truism that’s persisted over the 20-plus years I’ve worked in digital journalism. Not long ago, it was practically sport to compete with friends in other organizations to see whose was the worst. (“Oh yeah? Well, mine can’t even do hyperlinks right!”)
But it’s not just journalists who have been let down by these tools over the years. They’ve failed audiences too: Nearly two decades after Dan Gillmor first wrote that “my readers know more than I do,” the software most journalists use to author, edit and curate content is still surprisingly reader-indifferent. And while content analytics tools (e.g., Chartbeat, Parsely, Content Insights) and feedback platforms (e.g., Hearken, GroundSource) have thankfully helped close the gap, the core content management experience remains, for most of us, little improved when it comes to including the audience in the process.
Fortunately, this is changing. The CMS is no longer just an empty vessel that carries content on a one-way trip from creator to consumer. Today’s leading-edge content tools are integrated context, collaboration and insight machines. We’re moving from unidirectional publishing of articles to organizing all our work and closing the feedback loop with our customers. I call this “full-stack publishing”.
Some things your tools will soon do for you — if they don’t already:
Here at the USA Today Network we’re excited about building capabilities such as these into Presto, our proprietary content platform, and helping to unlock the unique collaborative potential of the thousands of journalists in our newsrooms across the country.
But sophisticated tools are no longer the sole domain of organizations with the scale and budget to roll their own. The power of both The Washington Post’s Arc Publishing and Vox Media’s Chorus is available to external customers. And WordPress, which long ago transcended its humble blogging origins, is sporting ever more advanced capabilities, thanks to a dedicated community supported by Automattic and the work of publisher-friendly dev shops such as Alley Interactive and 10up.
Good competition in this space means we all benefit. Together, we can make content tools a force multiplier for great journalism rather than the impediment they’ve often been in the past.
If we do it right, users benefit from a feedback loop that helps make our work more valuable and relevant to them. And no journalist ever again has to wear their clunky CMS as a badge of honor.
Eric Ulken, a veteran digital editor and product leader, is product director for newsroom tools at the USA TODAY NETWORK.
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not