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.
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