Select a CMS for your news organization
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Get started with publishing online
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What is a content management system?
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Every day, news organizations use a CMS, or content management system, to publish their articles online. It’s typically the first technology your news organization chooses when building their tech stack.
If you’re starting a newsletter, you might use an email service provider (ESP) as your CMS.
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What might I need a CMS for?
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Content management systems don’t just help publish - they also support other parts of your news organization, like audience engagement, ad revenue, or reader revenue.
Review these questions to make sure a CMS can meet your needs:
Audience
- Do you moderate, approve, and remove comments?
- Do you send emails, texts, or notifications when an article is published?
- Do you send newsletters?
- Do you recommend articles based on individual readers?
- Do you support a print publication by exporting articles for layouts?
Content
- Do you publish real-time, localized information, like local weather or traffic?
- Do you publish social media content, like Tweets or public Facebook posts?
Monetization
- Do you sell ads?
- Do you have a subscription with a paywall?
- Do you collect payments on your site, like for donations?
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Who will use your CMS?
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Many news organizations have several teams that might use your content management system, such as:
- Editorial will publish every day
- Audience might publish or re-publish articles
- Product might ensure articles are displaying properly based on your site’s design
- Business might manage different sources of revenue, like creating subscription landing pages or ensuring ads are displaying properly
Evaluate whether a content management system will meet your needs by asking these questions, especially if you’re a smaller news organization:
- Technical skills: Who can help you with implementation?
- Support: Who can you ask if you have questions or issues?
- Familiarity: How familiar is your team with other content management systems? Which have they used in the past?
- Price: How much can you budget? Can you start with a free option, and pay for an upgrade later?
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Which CMS do news organizations use?
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The Google News Initiative and the International News Media Association (INMA) surveyed, interviewed, and evaluated 15 CMS providers based on a list of features. All reviews were conducted by independent third-party experts, and included:
- A 70-question questionnaire
- A 90-minute demo
- Customer reference checks
- Fact-check interview with each CMS provider
The 15 CMS providers include:
- Arc XP
- Atex ACE
- BLOX Digital (formerly TownNews)
- Drupal
- Eidosmedia
- Ghost
- Naviga Global
- Newspack
- Ring Publishing
- Stibo DX
- Tresite
- Whitebeard
- Woodwing
- Wordpress (Managed, VIP)
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