POLITICO

POLITICO, a global nonpartisan politics and policy news organization, launched in Europe in April 2015. With operations based in Brussels and additional offices in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Warsaw, POLITICO connects the dots between global power centers. Its journalism lives online at politico.eu; in POLITICO Pro, the real-time subscription-based policy news service for professionals; in daily morning newsletters, such as Brussels Playbook and London Playbook; in print via a weekly newspaper; and through live events.

POLITICO Europe engaged 10up to improve the existing WordPress website, provide ongoing technical support, and implement new features. The partnership has grown over time, expanding to include strategic consulting, user experience (UX) design, front end engineering, and back end engineering. 10up’s UX design and engineering teams work closely with key POLITICO technical and business stakeholders to craft and refine the WordPress admin experience for the editorial, production, and sales teams.

• Projects begin with a consultative evaluation of the objectives to identify the best approach.
• UX design includes workflow mapping, admin screen wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups, as well as consulting and collaboration with POLITICO’s in-house visual design.
• 10up engineers provide tactical consulting on the design of new site features, build the final solutions, and perform comprehensive quality assurance testing.

Newsroom Workflow Management

When a business is delivering the news, speed is critical. The flow of content between reporters, editors, and production, especially over staff shift-changes, affects how quickly a piece of news is published. Pulling from its deep experience working with large-scale publishers, 10up partnered with POLITICO Europe to deliver a newsroom workflow management solution within WordPress to accelerate the publishing process.

The solution involved a tight integration between Trello and WordPress that pushes and pulls content and information seamlessly between the two. This empowers anyone in the newsroom to quickly get a birds-eye view of everything happening in the newsroom, find out the status of an item, and see who is working on each news piece.

Top: Sample Trello board. Middle: WordPress article added to Trello. Bottom: Link to Trello card added to WordPress post editor.

Here’s how the Trello/WordPress integration works:

1. Within a specially-designated board, a Trello column exists for each stage of the publishing process and a Trello card exists for each piece of content.
2. When a news item is created in WordPress, a new Trello card is automatically generated, with important data about the news piece and a link to the draft in WordPress. A link back to the corresponding Trello card then appears on the WordPress post edit screen, seamlessly linking both systems.
3. The card can then be moved from column to column to update its status in the publishing process and as it is moved, the status is automatically updated in WordPress.
4. When a reporter or sub-editor picks up an article and assigns it to themselves in either system, it is also auto-assigned in the other. This allows the whole newsroom to quickly and efficiently determine not only where within the editorial workflow the content sits, but who is working on it (and on the flipside, which articles require attention).

Artificial Intelligence And WordPress

To automate and improve content classification and tagging, POLITICO Europe built a custom, artificial intelligence (AI) engine using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and natural language processing (NLP). The AI engine was fed content from the vast POLITICO archive to accelerate the discovery of tags the publisher was already using.

10up’s engineering team integrated the custom AI engine with WordPress to create a feedback loop that facilitates continuous machine learning.

Now, news content is evaluated in WordPress and the tagging engine returns tag suggestions via custom metaboxes on the post edit screen. POLITICO’s newsroom can choose to accept the suggestions, accept and add other tags, or decline the suggestions.

Subscriber-Focused Improvements

POLITICO Europe publishes content that is free for anyone to consume and sells a real-time, subscription-based policy news service for industry professionals called POLITICO Pro. 10up’s collaboration included sales team enablement through a custom Pro subscription management tool and improved contextual content suggestions for subscribers.

Subscription Management

10up designed and engineered a business subscription admin interface in the back end of WordPress. It leverages a custom settings screen where sales staff can easily manage subscription types, premium content access levels, trial periods, fully paid subscriptions, and content expiration.

An Ongoing Partnership

10up’s UX and engineering teams are currently working with POLITICO Europe to reimagine their email newsletter sponsorship management system and deliver a solution that enables the publishing team to work within WordPress—a platform they already know and are comfortable using—to semi-automate the way in which sponsored content is integrated into their email newsletters. The project includes updating a complex WordPress integration with their email marketing service provider, custom content templates, and automatic ad injectors to reduce human error and save time.

10up is proud to continue as POLITICO Europe’s digital experience partner, helping the global news organization connect and empower professionals through non-partisan journalism and actionable intelligence about European politics and policy.

To discuss how 10up can help achieve your digital goals, contact us.

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