
Gawker's Kinja retreat is more evidence publishers struggle as tech companies - ilamont
http://digiday.com/publishers/gawkers-kinja-retreat-shows-false-hope-in-publishers-licensing-tech/
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danso
The concept of what a CMS is still pretty vague for many in the journalism
industry...Nieman Lab recently published a piece [1] about the New York Times
first blog (which is now shutting down)...reading it gives you a good sense of
how just having a WordPress blog changed the top-down hierarchy of how they
did stories and published on the web. Even today, when you read the
retrospective, it seems that many of the editors and reporters still don't
really know what a blog or CMS is...there's even a couple quotes by an editor
who says now that they've moved off of WordPress, they're able to create more
"beautiful" articles than ever before.

[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/how-one-blog-helped-
spark-t...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/how-one-blog-helped-spark-the-
new-york-times-digital-evolution/)

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exelius
I agree with this article completely. I've worked on a few platform
implementations for publishers and this is a very crowded, complex space. The
business model is really more around service and support, and no publisher is
going to let another publisher embed themselves that deeply into their company
(not to mention the paranoia about giving a potential competitor access to
your article library and metadata). Platforms evolve over time, and you don't
want your competition deciding how you should evolve.

Besides, it's not like there is a shortage of AAA publisher platforms out
there. A company like Gawker is also not remotely at the scale that a lot of
these platforms can handle: the big thing right now is multi-media CMS that
allows a single article to be published online, in print, via syndicated
newsfeeds, in multiple languages, etc. Someone like Gawker's business model is
far too limited to even address the problems that a lot of publishers have.

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draw_down
I worked for a financial publishing company that prides itself on being more
technically advanced than its competitors. (The nice thing is, it's easy to be
ahead of the curve technologically in the financial services industry.)

Shortly before I left, the CEO started adamantly insisting that it was, in
fact, a tech company. It was a nice thought, but underscored how much he did
not understand about what that would actually mean. You're not a tech company
just because you employ a few people who know what Angular is.

~~~
mooreds
What makes you a "tech company"?

I took some time to try to think of what defines a tech company, and it's hard
to draw the lines.

Would be interested to hear what you think.

~~~
exelius
Anymore, every company that's not a "tech company" is trying to become one.
Turns out the market values standard interfaces and APIs, even if they're
locked behind API keys and business agreements.

Technical competency (specifically around APIs and internal platform
development) is no longer optional. It's not something you can just outsource
to a vendor either; it's got to be a core part of your operating model or else
your competitors will steal your clients by being easier to integrate against.

This means that many companies we think of as "tech companies" will need to
redefine themselves in terms of the problems they solve. This has started to
happen as well - Amazon is a merchant, Microsoft is a business services
company, Apple is a consumer electronics company and Google is an advertising
vendor. Their tech platforms all exist to support their core businesses - not
the other way around. Incidentally, this is why "Google" became "Alphabet" \--
new products under the "Google" umbrella were being tainted by its revenue
base (and thus, internal political power base - he who controls the revenue
makes the decisions) in advertising. Customers just expect a technology-
enhanced experience in each of these areas.

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anon6_
It's still light years ahead of what you get with any defaults on CMS system.

I always found Gawker's site and comment system to be quite nice. Though I
miss the "old days" back in say 2011.

Who is the competition?

Does anyone know what platform runs sites like Breitbart.com and US Today? I
see similar layouts on other websitse.

