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