Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading business and financial newspaper, faced challenges with a fragmented editorial workflow. To meet the demands of a digital-first environment, they undertook a major overhaul of their content planning process. Here’s how they successfully unified their editorial operations.
Overcoming the challenges of fragmentation
Before the overhaul, Handelsblatt’s editorial teams were using a combination of emails, Google Docs, and a self-developed scheduling tool. This decentralised approach created several obstacles:
- Lack of a comprehensive overview: fragmented tools made it difficult to maintain a clear view on projects
- Decentralised planning: using multiple tools led to no cohesive strategy, especially across digital platforms
- Cumbersome long and short-term planning: short, medium and long-term content planning across separate systems added layers of complexity
- Disjointed print and digital processes: consolidating print and digital channels resulted in inefficiencies
- Unstructured editorial conferences: meetings often felt scattered making it difficult to keep participants aligned.
Stefan Kaufmann, lead managing editor at Handelsblatt, noted: “We needed a unified platform that was accessible everywhere and on all devices. The merging of print and online editorial processes increased complexity and highlighted the need for better planning.”
To address these challenges, Handelsblatt introduced Kordiam, a centralised content planning tool integrated with their content management system (CMS).
A breakdown of Handelsblatt’s editorial process:
Story registration through author
At the first stage of Handelsblatt’s editorial process a story is registered on the system by the author. This includes the following steps:
- Fills in details: title, teaser, personas, target group etc.
- Assigns tasks: text length, images, graphics
- Assigns platform: “Story Registration”
- Story Status :“Pitch”
Kordiam then synchronises with the Handelsblatt content management system.
Processing of registration
- Departmental managing editor reviews and processes registrations and sets story status to “Accepted” or “Rejected”
- Status Accepted
- Tasks and elements are specified or supplemented by the departmental managing editors
- Earliest possible publication time is assigned to the “Story Registration| platform.
Writing
- Author writes the article in the Content Management System and sets the story status to “Author Ready” in Kordiam
- “Editing” task is assigned
Review of finalised registrations
- Editor in chief and planning editors for digital and print review registrations in the dashboard
- Discussion of the most important registrations, weighing and daily rough planning in a daily editorial conference.
Picture editors, research, graphics
- All departments have individual dashboards in Kordiam
- Document the status of their work in Kordiam
From rough planning to daily detailed planning
- All registrations are viewed and evaluated with the help of a dashboard in Kordiam
- Planning managing editor digital adds the “Digital Plan” platform and assigns the final planned publication date
- Planning managing editor print adds the “Page Plan” platform and distributes the selected registrations to the pages in Kordiam
Editing
- Editing the text
- Set story status to “Edited” and add new “Proofreading” task
Proofreading
- Proofreading the text
- Update the story status to “Proofread”
Final production and publication
- Managing editors check final texts and update story status to “Done”
- Managing editors publish and place texts in the digital, print and newsletter platforms
- Managing editors update publication status in Kordiam to “Published” and “Placed”
A blueprint for other newsrooms
Handelsblatt’s implementation of a centralised planning tool stands as a powerful illustration of how newsrooms can elevate their operations, foster enhanced collaboration, and effectively tackle the nuanced demands of digital and print publishing.
The overhaul of their editorial workflows yielded notable advantages, including unified editorial planning, where the platform served as a single, accessible hub for planning across various formats, and streamlined content planning workflows, as integration with the CMS alleviated manual tasks and facilitated a more seamless content production process.
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