Is there a distinct type of CMS for “news”?

By Deane Barker 1 min read
AI Summary

This post explores whether a distinct type of content management system (CMS) exists specifically for news organizations. The author examines characteristics unique to news CMS, such as rapid content updates, handling high volumes of articles, and integration with different media, suggesting a need for specialized features in news environments.

What is a (news) CMS?: Interesting comments about how news organizations need a CMS specifically wired for news. This involves, among other things, abstracting your repository from the presentation layer.

News organizations should instead be “content-first,” and use tools that promote content above all else. We need first-class tools for managing the production process, and then for archiving, analyzing, referencing, and otherwise taking advantage of our past work.

This sounds familiar:

Also related to this, I’ve been thinking lately about the “shape of content.” I tend to visualize content in my head, and I believe news has a different “shape” than other content. While a brochure-ware site may be hierarchical and looks like an org chart, a news site tends to be a long string of content items, stretching off into the distance.

There is no hierarchy to news articles, and they tend to not be grouped together in any particular structure other than perhaps some loose categorization, and some implied structure based on the publish date (“Articles in March”) and tags (“Articles about Barack Obama”).

There are other requirements too:

So, I agree that a “news CMS” can be a different animal. There are parallels in blogging, so you see a lot patterns coming out of the bigger blogging platforms.

Links from this – WCM Vendors: It's Time to Abstract Your Repository September 5, 2010
Over the last decade, content management has become increasingly focused on the web. However, in this world of true multi-channel publishing, the web is just one of many channels, and its time CMS vendors made their repositories less web-specific.
Links from this – The Dawn of the Web Content Delivery System (WCDS) June 13, 2010
Web content delivery is becoming so complex and important that it's deserving of a system all its own that aggregates, harmonizes, and enhances content for delivery.
Links from this – Beyond Web-Centricity in Content Management April 11, 2009
As content moves "beyond the web page," we need to start handling it in such a way that it lends itself better to multi-channel publishing.