National Journal has spent the past year preparing to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions using a new approach. Traditionally, it has sent large teams that include editorial, design, and IT support in order to publish directly from the convention floors. This year, with some smart planning and investment in new workflows and technology, National Journal will be able to provide the same level of coverage faster, more efficiently, and with fewer people.

“All of our copyediting and production, and much of our editing, will be done from D.C. instead of Tampa and Charlotte,” explains Charlie Green, Editor of National Journal. “That means at least a dozen people or so who would have gone in the past are now working from D.C. Given the cost of airfare, hotels, and meals in the convention cities, that translates into a big savings for the company.”

Technology for Publishing has been working with the National Journal team for several years to identify the right time to implement this new strategy. With recent editorial changes, including a complete revamping of newsroom philosophies and teams, the time was right to focus on optimizing processes and practices. The past year has been one of radical change for National Journal, and the result is a publication that is now better leveraging its content-delivery options. These changes, which included the launch of a new website, have attracted attention across the media industry.

TFP’s President and Founder, Margot Knorr Mancini, states, “The NJ team had been working with an established workflow for quite a long time, and as a result they were really eager to embrace new approaches that allowed them to work more optimally, with fewer steps and a more integrated process.  They were easy to work with because they knew where they wanted to go and what they wanted to change.”

National Journal took a phased approach to building a smarter publishing process. This allowed the magazine to lay the groundwork in order to implement change in a cohesive, thoughtful manner. This approach also allowed the staff to learn easily and adapt quickly. Here’s how TFP worked with NJ to make this endeavor a success.

  1. Evaluated NJ’s content structure, and how it was being prepared. This allowed templates, styles, and tags to be embedded into the workflow process for cross-media publishing.
  2. Implemented a new web system and website, after evaluating how to tie that system into content practices, including print production.
  3. Developed a metadata strategy that could be embedded into the editorial process.
  4. Reviewed and employed new workflow process that cut extra steps and allowed for more parallel workflow to occur.
  5. Implemented a cross media-publishing platform (vjoon K4™) to support new processes.

This preparation has opened the door for National Journal to continue to build and expand its content operations—whether onsite, on Capitol Hill, or elsewhere—to take advantage of new opportunities for sharing the latest in U.S. politics with the world.

Posted by: Gina Barrett