Behind the scenes of The Seattle Times’ newest blog

By Lauren Rabaino

A few weeks ago at The Seattle Times, we launched a new blog called The Today File. Technologically, the blog is a breath of fresh air in our newsroom that — like many traditional newsrooms– deals with a lot of legacy software.

We launched the blog on open-source blogging software WordPress, the very software that runs this blog and millions around the globe. It’s a place for us to break news, be more transparent, be more nimble about coverage, and do cool things on the web quickly.

I recently published a behind-the-scenes post to my personal blog that could be worth a read if you want to set up something similar in your newsroom, or on your own as a freelancer. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, see my post or email me directly! From my blog:

Prior to the launch of The Today File, we had a crime blog, weather blog, politics blog and a ton of other niche-topic blogs. If any other random in-between news broke (traffic, education, general metro), there wasn’t a home for it except as a “full story” i.e. something that originates in our print CMS (CCI) and goes through the standard workflow of being published to the web. It could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes to get an item up on our site, and it could only be done from within the building.

Not only is this a many-step process, but it’s a print-centric one that doesn’t allow us to easily do things like hyperlinking, dropping in maps, sharing on social media, etc. WordPress, of course, changes all of that.

You can read the full details here.