New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME) is a leading media business in New Zealand, with a portfolio of more than 50 brands across print, online, and radio.

NZME identified an opportunity to upgrade to a modern content management system for all of its news titles, reduce the complexity of its publishing ecosystem and automate processes.

In 2022, in partnership with Google, NZME embarked on a major upgrade to its publishing ecosystem, moving to ‘Composer’ for content authoring and publishing, and ‘Photo Center’ for digital image management.

The project was a significant undertaking, involving training of more than 300 journalists and the gradual rollout of a new system in a fast-paced 24/7 business. Key decisions were made and technical solutions put in place to ensure newsrooms across the country were able to migrate to the new system over a period of weeks rather than doing it all at once, which would have had its risks.

Following the initial rollout, a series of workflow enhancements were quickly assessed and implemented with a focus on video - a high volume & impact area. An integration was built to allow the newsroom to easily search for and embed video online within articles.

With the goal to improve accuracy and time to publish, this upgrade has provided the newsroom with quality, modern authoring tools, allowing teams to publish content more efficiently, with less room for human error. Implementing a new CMS, has enhanced & automated content production, allowing journalists to focus even further on quality journalism. The new CMS has also made it easier to deliver content to audiences, which has led to improved user engagement. This project has also been a key cornerstone of NZME’s simplification strategy, as a stepping stone to deprecating some legacy systems and technical debt.