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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
How Politico boosted AI innovation by moving to one headless CMS
Plus Bloomberg CEO Karen Saltser shares leadership tips
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Wednesday, 2 September.
🤖 It’s easy to feel a bit gloomy about AI-powered change which is creating so many challenges for publishers when it comes to content discovery.
So it was refreshing to hear from Politico product development chief Francesca Barber who explained how the technology is driving innovation at the international specialist newsbrand.
It’s an interview that also sheds some light on the possible direction of travel for other Axel Springer-owned brands like, for example, The Telegraph.
It has helped them use AI to interrogate 20,000 rulings on ICE detention practices in the US, build apps to monitor press releases and legislative data, and incorporate style-guide feedback and headline suggestions into the CMS.
Content management systems can often feel like an obstacle course journalists must navigate in order to reach the reader.
It sounds like Politico is getting closer to the dream of content technology being something that empowers editors rather than making them want to pull their hair out.
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🗽 From down in the weeds of product innovation to leadership tips from Karen Saltser, the CEO of Bloomberg Media.
She’s the latest interview in our “What I’ve Learned” series with publishing industry leaders.
One of her tips is something I’ve always clung to: don’t be afraid of looking silly.
Asked for her work mantra she said: “Be bold and learn to live with some discomfort. Earlier in my career, I’d sometimes hesitate to ask a question or share my point of view. Then someone else would voice exactly what I’d been thinking, and colleagues would nod in agreement or say: ‘That’s a great question.’ I’d be so annoyed with myself for holding back. Over time, I’ve become much more comfortable being the person who asks the ‘silly’ question in the room.”
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💻 SPONSORED: Do you feel like a tenant of a landlord when it comes to your content management system?
This is the question asked by head of media and entertainment at Wordpress VIP Josh Fosburg in a piece about the challenge of keeping up with the pace of change needed in modern publishing.
When you rent you don’t have the power to change anything yourself. Becoming a “landowner” in the CMS sense means “retaining strategic agency: the ability to add capabilities, evolve workflows, and respond to new channels without having the business’ outer limits determined by a single proprietary roadmap”.
Talking about the benefits of Open Source technology (such as Wordpress), he writes: “Ultimately, publishers do not need to predict which AI interface will dominate discovery, which audience channel will grow next, or which requirements will appear on the roadmap three years from now – they need a foundation that leaves them able to respond.”