Group 1: Independent Team
Contents
Participants
Participants of the first group belong to the teams that are considered independent from the daily editorial workflow. They typically manage a vertical or pages within their team and interact with other teams when the need for assets or content arises.
List of the participants
- Hot Seat Assistant Managing Editor
- Hot Seat Editor
- Prime Producer
- Strategic Content Editor
- Site Production Director
Session Recordings
We voice-recorded the entire session to go back and identify the specific problems and opinions of the participants.
Voice Recording of the Focus Group Session 1
Session Photos
For our record, we took photos of the workflow maps that participants created.
Summarized Notes
Hot Seat Editor
General
- Early morning shift – comes in too early to have interactions with other teams, fills in most of the Breaking News content by herself
- Goes over email and check what’s urgent, what happened overnight
- Ranks the homepage, looking through stack
- Any Breaking News that’s expected, e.g. Earnings, everyone knows the ID beforehand
Workflow
- International: Work on shared stories, International fills in for U.S.
- Duplication of efforts – end up spending time templating the same story
- Ideally, they should communicate via Slack what they are doing
- They only have one person who’s busy, or an intern who doesn’t know who she is
- Suggested solution by Strategic Content Editor: Latest activity globally on CMS
- Suggested solution: Notification if the same or similar slug has been written by someone else within the last 24 hours
- Strategic Content: Consult when hitting market milestones, as a subject matter expert
- Social: Important to get the IDs of Breaking News as soon as possible
- Sometimes too busy to alert the social team
- c.f. During the day, there is a person who communicates the ID of Breaking News to TV teams
- Anything to reduce the time of communication and publishing the Breaking News out quickly
- Suggested solution: Special Template for Breaking News – Social team would be able to find those themselves, which Breaking News the Hot Seat is currently editing
- Suggested solution by Strategic Content Editor: IM in CMS – simply hit button saying “Share with Social”
- Hot Seat agrees – “absolutely ideal”
- Suggested solution: Slack notification
- Suggested solution by Strategic Content Editor: Post out from CMS, publish to social
- Hot Seat doesn’t think it’s a good idea, because different social media is used differently
- Sometimes too busy to alert the social team
- Data Journalism: When there’s a big data-related milestone, e.g. S&P 500 dropped, need to know the numbers
- Don’t have time to monitor what’s going on with every single dataset
- Suggested solution: Some screen that shows all the milestones for data points
- Photo Desk
- Heard complaints about people using photos that are not licensed
- She has to pick photos herself in early hours – the first thing that they do in the morning is going through all the stories that she put photos in
- Suggested solution: Some way to sort photos to not show unusable images, e.g. screenshots
- Suggested solution by Strategic Content Editor: Notification to the Photo Desk when photo is placed in the story
- Suggested solution by Prime Editor: Alert on Photos in general, and duplicate photos. Or set a limit of the number that a photo can be used
Prime Editor
General
- Feels like hanging off the cliff every day
- Toolbelt issues
- Lowers the quality of stills of the videos – need to use it when the Press Cut isn’t available
- Refreshes 3 times to be sure that she’s not overriding anyone’s change
- Would like a simple option to turn off video pre-rolls
Workflow
- Editorial
- Gets locked out of the Prime content because some other Editorial person is in the content
- Editorial person makes changes in the content, and she gets phone call for things that are incorrectly showing up on the Prime site
- e.g. Prime and News templates are different with different editing rules
- Hot Seat says she’s done that – Hot Seat ranks the Prime content to film strip on Homepage, and that can’t have more than 33 chars
- Suggested solution: Way to flag Prime content
- Lack of communication between Prime and .com Editorial when Prime content gets used
- Never met Copy Editor, only argument over the phone
- Doesn’t get contacted when the Prime content is being used on .com
- Suggested solution: Way to internally ping when there needs to be change made in Prime content
- Suggested solution by Strategic Content Editor: Notification when someone is in the asset you have created
- Prime Editor agrees – If the asset is under your team, your franchise, etc. allowing access for the others to continue
- Suggested solution by Hot Seat Editor: Find a way to work together – haven’t worked together so far, but now on the same page / Stack on the homepage after Prime Editor agrees
- Prime team does things that Editorial team doesn’t do, e.g. use Fullscreen to do YouTube work, but need to do it all over again to fit .com format
- Video Producer & Editor
- Contestant’s name had a typo in the video file itself, and the Video Editors couldn’t fix it, and there was no Video Producer in- they had it temporarily fixed locally, but Toolbelt wouldn’t accept the file
Strategic Content Editor
General
- Toolbelt issue
- People leave the Toolbelt tab open, and it appears locked even though they are not editing
- Lot of agreements in the room
- Suggested Solution: Way to ping someone inside the system
- Suggested Solution: Toolbelt should know and automatically unlock if someone hasn’t touched if for a couple hours
- Hot Seat Editors and Prime Editor agree
- “Everything that Asia produces is locked when I get in the morning.” – Hot Seat Editor
- People leave the Toolbelt tab open, and it appears locked even though they are not editing
Workflow
- Video Producer
- Put in sponsored elements in the Video asset that conflict with the story’s sponsor elements, e.g. Bottom Line or Closing Bell
- Got a call because an ad the sponsor’s biggest competitor showing up in the story
- Suggested Solution: Get a heads up when a video is added after the fact in the story, to make sure the sponsorships are consistent
- Suggested Solution by Hot Seat Editor: Display the sponsored content’s contemplate in different color in the search result
- Put in sponsored elements in the Video asset that conflict with the story’s sponsor elements, e.g. Bottom Line or Closing Bell
- Video Editor: Request videos
- Duplicating the data in both Toolbelt placeholder and clip request form leads to miscommunication
Hot Seat Assistant Managing Editor
General
- Need to refresh the page when someone else is editing it, to see their recent changes. If that person published her change and you publish another change, the previous version gets lost.
- Photos matter a lot with the new, more visual homepage
Workflow
- Talk to everyone except for TVE Tagging
- Slack is the main means of communication – more useful now with the archive function
Most common issues
- No communication between Prime and .com Editorial teams
- People leaving the documents open even when they are not editing, locking others out
- Overriding other people’s published changes when saving your change – need to refresh a lot
- Toolbelt is not connected to ad system, so there is no control over the content of the ads except for turning them off via Catastrophe tag.
- Ads showing up in catastrophes and sensitive material. There should be tighter communication with the ad-ops team to set which article or Franchise doesn’t get ads and pre-rolls.
- Duplicate usage of photos
Prioritization Ranking
| Features | Prime | Hot Seat: Morning Shift | Site Production | Strategic Content | Hot Seat: Manager | Group 1 Average | Overall Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google-like search for stories/assets | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.8 |
| Quickly publishing stories | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.7 |
| Easily replacing the assets in the text editor | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.2 |
| Easily navigate to different parts of the CMS | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4.8 | 4.5 |
| Quickly knowing the status of a specific story | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4.6 | 4.11 |
| Easily see what the latest published stories are | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4.6 | 3.8 |
| Understanding what each field does (e.g short description vs. shorter description) | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4.6 | 3.8 |
| Fast saving | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.4 | 4.8 |
| Being able to tell if the videos that are ready to be used | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4.4 | 4.3 |
| Ability to edit CMS from mobile | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4.4 | 4.2 |
| Easily copy and paste stories from other sources | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.4 | 4 |
| Easily embed social media into a story | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4.4 | 3.9 |
| More organized search results | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.2 | 4.6 |
| View the performance of a particular story | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4.2 | 4.4 |
| Fast loading search results | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4.3 |
| Easily embedding assets in the text editor of News Story content type | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4.1 |
| Story autosaving | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4.1 |
| More visual representation of the assets | 5 | 3 | 5 | – | 3 | 4 | 3.33 |
| Easily apply search filters | 1 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3.8 | 4.1 |
| Easily rearranging the embedded assets in the text editor of News Story | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3.8 | 3.9 |
| Ability to do basic edits on photos, e.g. crop, level, contrast | 5 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3.8 | 3.7 |
| Receiving notification when the status of a story changes | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3.8 | 3.67 |
| Efficiently handing off stories/assets to the next team | 1 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3.4 | 4 |
| Not seeing the fields that are irrelevant to the content type | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3.4 | 3 |
| Ability to do basic edits on videos in the CMS, e.g. trim | 5 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3.2 | 3.6 |
| Ability to predict which story/topic would go viral via analytics | 1 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 3.2 | 3.56 |
| Easily prioritize the list of things to do | 1 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3.2 | 3.56 |
| Easily share the stories to social media | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 3.2 | 3.5 |
| Visual appearance of the CMS | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3.2 | 3 |
| More visual search results of media items | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3.6 |
| Ability to edit from networks other than NBCU_Corp | 5 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3.5 |
| Quickly getting the list of things to do | 1 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3.44 |
| Easily look at what other news sources are saying | 1 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3.33 |
Prioritization Details & Blue Skies
Hot Seat Assistant Managing Editor
Top 3
- Easily rearranging the embedded assets
- it’s a 4-step process to move a video right now
- Google-like search for stories and assets
- sounds like a dream come true
- Hot Seat Editor and Strategic Content Editor agree
- Quickly publishing stories
- It’s already pretty fast, but it’s important
- Streamline the process
Blue Sky
- Ping others in Toolbelt
- Every time they publish, it should go to social
- Video team can ping them when the video is finished
- Hot Seat Editor: Getting thousands of emails every morning because she’s on DLs, and there is Slack
Other
- There are things that she can do right now, but rated 5 because she values them, e.g. Embedding social media
Strategic Content
Top 3
- Autosave
- When Toolbelt crashes – there’s no way to go back
- Like Google Doc or Microsoft Word
- Edit from Mobile
- Viewing the videos that are ready to be used
- Can preview stories, but can’t preview videos
- Hot Seat Manager agrees
Blue Sky
- Back-up CMS for when Toolbelt crashes
Other
- Even if he searches with ID, the result doesn’t show up if it isn’t part of the filter that he applied already – wants it to clear out the filter and get the item
Site Production Director
Top 3
- More organized search results
- Huge findability problem
- Visual representation of assets
- e.g. if you place a video in the story, then you can watch the video inline
- Get a better sense of placement as you are editing
- Mobile editing
- It’s 5 if it’s down the road, but now it’s not as important
Blue Sky
- Should be able to communicate the current technical status to anybody that who is a content creator
- Lot of communication happens to learn the status
- Hot Seat Editor: Help Desk can’t help if they can’t replicate the problem and always tells to clear cache
Hot Seat Editor
Top 3
- Quickly publishing stories
- That’s what she does
- It’s very quick now, but still takes long to save and publish
- Click and immediately gets published is her ideal
- Copy and paste from other sources
- e.g. Copy Reuter’s article that’s Breaking News
- Site Producer: There’s Wire Story content type that gets automatically fed in from AP and Reuters, but search doesn’t work well enough to find them
- Ingested stories don’t hit the server immediately
- Google-like search
- Everyone says that they are using Google and put in “cnbc.com:”
Blue Sky
- A single place to communicate, and within Toolbelt, simply see the gist of the notification and authorize the publishing
Other
- When copying over from other sources like Wire services, wants to auto-format, e.g. hard return to become soft return
Prime Editor
Top 3
- Visual appearance of the CMS
- Nesting makes the process too many steps
- Copy and paste stories from other sources
- Currently pasting in plain text editor
- Removes formatting, and still need to edit it
- Ability to basic edits on photos
- If there is breaking for Prime, don’t need to Photoshop
Blue Sky
- Batch uploads
- ~40 photos
- Currently takes 4 minutes per photo
Other
- Everyone agreed Omniture and Chartbeat are working really well.
Stray Observations
- Participants seemed to enjoy the Workflow activities a lot.
- Participants seemed to know the other teams they interact with by name, not by their departments/team names.
- .com Editorial teams learned a lot about what Prime team does and vice versa, as they don’t interact with each other generally.
- No one knew what or who TVE Tagging team was.
- There was a discussion on what counts as a catastrophe and when the Catastrophe tag should be used. Adding the tag will remove all the ads and pre-rolls, but Prime Producer thought that was not an appropriate tag for events that are not current or big. Site Producer thought ad-ops should be the main team who should be concerned about the ad’s content.