What do your journalists want in their CMS

How involved is your editorial team in your decisions around your tech stack? Journalists today have demands and it’s important they’re involved in tech discussions to ensure that the tech stack fits their needs. It’s important for publishers to adopt platforms that suit their journalists or content creators. As they are the ones working closely with the CMS, it is critical that they voice their opinions on the matter. Journalists also have to bear the shortcomings of CMS platforms more directly, this is why it's important to have these discussions within the newsroom.

1. User-friendly

Journalists should have a CMS that is easy for them navigate around. Some CMSs have complex developer friendly interfaces that can be counterproductive in a newsroom. A CMS that caters to the editorial set up would be ideal. Journalists should be made to understand the functionality of each element in the CMS inorder to enhance their experience. The team should be kept in loop with the relevant demos, updates and nuances of the platform by the tech team.

2. Mobile Friendly

Journalists have most of their work out in the field. If you expect your journalists to spend hours outdoors, come back into the office to type out the story - you’ve already cost them precious time! Getting a mobile friendly CMS allows journalists to publish stories on the go. They can submit stories, upload photos or even cover stories live directly through such a CMS.

3. Collaborative

Many insightful, in-depth analytical stories have been a result of powerful collaborative writing. It is important that journalists have a space wherein they can come together and contribute. If you have a CMS that allows this, it reduces the friction of content creation one may have to go through in the absence of such a feature. Collaborations should be facilitated in a manner that is productive and must ensure that there is no overlapping of content.

4. Social Media

Social media is one of the strongest channels to promote content in today’s day and age. Everyone is on social media! It is important that news is available on these vibrant platforms. Expecting journalists to upload posts in a timely manner and keeping a check of all the various social media handles can be a stretch.

Get a CMS that allows you to promote stories onto social media handles directly from the dashboard. You can now find CMSs that help you customize your push notifications from the back end. With Bold, you can also schedule social media posts!

5. Story templates

In order to prevent news sites from looking text heavy and monotonous, it’s important to have a CMS that provides story templates. Having a variety of templates allows you to explore content styles while also helping you break the monotony. These also add a visual relief to the readers. Having a set of templates from your CMS also helps manage a sense of unity across the site.

6. Accessibility

It can get confusing with larger newsrooms without access control. Choose a platform that allows you to set access controls. Journalists, photojournalists, editors, proof readers etc should be able to access content with varying accessibility to avoid any overlap while allowing everyone the space to contribute in their capacity.

Are you ready to talk to your editorial team about these pointers with CMS? Schedule a demo with us today to learn how Bold CMS could help you achieve all these goals. Create a newsroom that empowers your journalists with Bold CMS!