Digital Media Excellence: Two Headline News Case Studies
Lessons from WordCamp US 2024 in digital transformation from CNN Brazil and TIME
One of WordPress VIP’s great digital calling cards is how we power the world’s largest media brands.
We streamline how they get the news out by empowering their journalists and newsrooms with tools that engage readers in modern digital storytelling.
It’s a compelling origin story: A purpose-built CMS platform that combines the ease and ubiquity of WordPress with the scalability and stability major news organizations need to ensure they’re ready for the next big story.
That was never more in evidence than at the recent WordCamp US 2024 in Portland, Oregon, which featured spotlight presentations from CNN Brazil and TIME. Breaking news: CNN’s rise to industry leader in Brazil.
Since their inception in 2019, CNN Brazil has transformed from an unknown, unlisted website to the third-largest news portal in Brazil. This remarkable growth is a testament to its focus on technology adoption, optimization, and team culture.
CNN Brazil’s technology adoption and innovation
CNN Brazil’s technological journey has been marked by strategic decisions that have enhanced their operational efficiency and user experience.
But early in that journey, they faced challenges with their CMS, everything from stability and security to media uploads and content management. That led CNN Brazil to switch things out and adopt WordPress and WordPress VIP.
“WordPress VIP makes our sites more secure and problems easier to understand,” says CNN Brazil Technical Leader João Carvalho, underscoring the platform’s role in stabilizing their digital infrastructure.
This transition not only streamlined operations but also increased flexibility in content management and editorial workflows, Carvalho adds. That includes being able to add AI-driven suggestions from Parsel.y for post titles and internal links based on what CNN Brazil journalists write.
“WordPress is simply the best. We had another CMS before WordPress. It was terrible.”
João Carvalho, Technical Leader, CNN Brazil
Engineering best practices and performance optimization
With more than five million posts in its database and numerous custom post types and taxonomies, CNN Brazil has indexed on performance optimization, particularly in handling traffic spikes during breaking news events.
For example, focusing on Core Web Vitals and adopting lazy loading—a web development technique that delays loading resources until they are needed—has improved front-end performance, page load times, and user experience for CNN Brazil readers.
Meanwhile, implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes has also led to faster build times, safer deployments, and easier pull request approvals.
Team culture and collaboration
CNN Brazil’s culture is one of collaboration and continuous improvement. That’s evident in its code review process, akin to “pair programming,” where developers engage in discussions about the code even before it’s fully developed.
Carvalho says this approach enhances the quality of the code and fosters a sense of teamwork and shared responsibility among developers.
Weekly DevTalks are another integral part of CNN Brazil’s team culture. These meetings provide a platform for developers to discuss ongoing projects, coding standards, and documentation improvements.
“For almost a year, we’ve been doing these every week,” Carvalho says, noting that these sessions have significantly increased developer productivity and accelerated onboarding processes.
#teamculture
Watch CNN Brazil’s WordCamp US 2024 presentation, starting at 3:11:
TIME’s digital transformation with WordPress
TIME has embarked on a significant digital transformation journey by leveraging WordPress and WordPress VIP to enhance its online presence and editorial experience while maintaining brand integrity and embracing technology innovations.
This initiative has not only streamlined their content management processes but also improved user engagement and operational efficiency, building a more robust platform that can handle high traffic during major news events.
“Digital transformation just doesn’t end. I think of [it] as this ongoing journey.”
Burhan Hamid, CTO, TIME
It’s a prime example of how traditional media can adapt to the digital age through strategic re-platforming, innovative technology, and effective partnerships.
By improving editorial workflows, leveraging AI, and building scalable components, TIME is setting a benchmark for digital transformation in the publishing industry.
Replatforming with WordPress VIP for enhanced performance
The core of TIME’s digital transformation involved a comprehensive re-platforming of TIME.com to improve performance and scalability.
By adopting WordPress VIP and transitioning from an older editor to the WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor with Google Cloud and Next.js on the front end, TIME dramatically optimized its infrastructure.
Yet this transition wasn’t merely a technical upgrade but a strategic move to enhance the flexibility and efficiency of editorial processes.
“We wanted to improve the speed to publish,” says TIME CTO Burhan Hamid, noting that they reduced the number of clicks to publish an article from 20 to 15, significantly enhancing the editorial workflow.
Improving the editorial experience
Hamid also credits the Block Editor for creating a user-friendly editorial experience for its newsrooms.
That shift has made the editorial process more intuitive, “reducing visual clutter” and helping editors handle and publish content more efficiently, especially during major breaking news events, such as the assassination attempt of Donald Trump on July 13, 2024.
With tools that support quick modifications and easy updates, editors can ensure that content remains dynamic and reflective of current events. Such capability is obviously invaluable to a 100-year-old news organization where timeliness and accuracy are paramount.
At the molecular level, using Patterns and reusable Blocks has revolutionized the way TIME’s editorial team manages content. Editors now have the means to quickly adapt layouts and respond to breaking news or high-traffic events, ensuring content is both timely and visually engaging.
Leveraging AI for content engagement
TIME has also integrated AI into their content strategy to boost engagement and drive revenue.
Part of that includes developing a tool called Deep Dive, which uses generative AI to extract topics from articles, allowing readers to explore related content.
Hamid notes that this innovation not only enriches the reader’s experience but also increases page views, thereby enhancing ad revenue.
Streamlining content management
“When we re-platformed, we simplified the number of templates in WordPress,” Hamid says. “We have an article post type and three variations now—and each variation has a bunch of different blocks you can throw in there.”
This allowed TIME editors more flexibility when creating a page, which paid dividends when TIME named Taylor Swift 2023 Person of the Year. Rather than build what Hamid calls an old-school “collections hub” with pages in a “pretty boring template,” TIME used a single-column template to give users “a more immersive experience.”
In short, the template simplification allows TIME’s team to focus more on content creation and less on managing technical complexities. And you can (digitally) print that.
Watch TIME’s WordCamp US 2024 presentation, starting at 13:57:
Author
Greg Ogarrio, Content Marketer—WordPress VIP