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A publishing tech stack is the collection of digital tools that support how a newsroom creates, distributes, measures, and sustains its work. Its effectiveness depends on how well these components interact. When integration is well designed, it reduces friction, improves coordination, and supports reliable operations.
It can be viewed as a set of interconnected layers, each supporting a core function of the publishing ecosystem:
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Among these layers, content (particularly the Content Management System) is one of the most consequential technology choices a newsroom makes. The sections that follow focus mainly on CMS selection, though several considerations also apply to other layers and systems within the tech stack.
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🕶 Perspectives from CEE
The data shown here reflects aggregated responses from the 13 publishers in the Perspectives cohort about which elements of their tech stack they plan to change or prioritize for improvement.
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Technology choices shape newsroom capabilities and editorial outcomes. Whether to build or buy isn't just technical; it's strategic, determining where you invest resources, what expertise you develop, and how much control you retain over systems that define your journalism.
This decision has compounding effects: custom systems can become maintenance burdens that drain resources from journalism; purchased solutions can lock you into workflows that don't match editorial needs. And the cost of choosing wrong varies dramatically: migrating away from a custom CMS is far harder than switching newsletter platforms.
As Ben Werdmuller advises: “Build what makes you special. Buy the rest.” Build systems that express your unique editorial approach (a proprietary election-data engine, custom investigation tools, or formats competitors cannot replicate). Buy infrastructure that supports journalism without defining it (email delivery, standard analytics, authentication systems).
Ask yourself: Does this system differentiate our journalism from competitors? Do we have the sustained capacity to maintain it long-term? How costly would it be to reverse this decision later?
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Beyond the technology itself, three factors determine the right path:
☠️ Common traps to avoid
For systematic frameworks on weighing these factors, see Ali Mahmood's practical guidance on technology decisions in newsrooms.
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📢 CEE examples
A newsletter on news-media technology by Ali Mahmood, written from Prague and grounded in years of work with publishers across Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia.
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Each path carries implications for control, cost, innovation, and long-term sustainability. Understanding both helps teams decide deliberately where to invest and where to depend on proven solutions.
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Neither path is universally better. What matters is clarity of intent: ensuring each decision aligns with your mission, organizational capacity, and long-term vision.
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Technology decisions are never abstract, and few are as central to a newsroom as the content management system. Choosing the right approach means translating strategic principles into practical criteria. Rather than asking which platform is “best,” the goal is to understand which configuration best fits your newsroom’s workflows, capacity, and long-term direction.
This section outlines the principles and operational factors that help evaluate those choices, offering a framework for systems that are sustainable, adaptable, and aligned with editorial goals.
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These offer a framework for making choices that are coherent, transparent, and aligned with editorial goals. They help teams evaluate trade-offs through a shared lens: balancing control and convenience, ambition and sustainability, and favouring long-term adaptability over short-term gains.
These principles provide a philosophical framework, but alone don't evaluate platforms. The considerations below translate strategic intent into practical assessment.
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