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.

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?

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?

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)