Graphene CMS Launch

The Challenge

When the L.A. Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune came under new ownership and merged into a single company, leadership made the decision to move both newsrooms onto a new, proprietary content management system. The platform they selected was capable at its core, but it needed significant customization before journalists could rely on it for daily work. Digital asset management, newsroom story budgeting, photo and video ingestion workflows, and a connection to the newspaper print production system all had to be built out from the ground up before either newsroom could go live.

The Work

As one of two representatives selected from The San Diego Union-Tribune, the role spanned nearly every aspect of the implementation. Responsibilities included user acceptance testing across the full platform, working directly with engineers to ensure archives and existing content transferred correctly, and helping define what the finished tool needed to look like for journalists doing their jobs.

The San Diego Union-Tribune went live first, and the L.A. Times team built on that implementation as they prepared for their own launch at significantly larger scale.

The Result

Graphene launched successfully across both newsrooms. The workflows and tools developed during implementation became the foundation the platform still runs on today at the L.A. Times.