Newsroom Budgeting System

The Challenge

Before a centralized budgeting tool existed, newsroom teams tracked their work independently with no reliable way to see what anyone else was working on. For a news organization trying to coordinate coverage across multiple teams and sections, that lack of visibility created real coordination challenges.

The Work

The path to a solution involved several iterations. When the CMS launched, a budgeting tool was developed alongside it as part of the rollout, but the compressed timeline meant it launched before it was fully refined and adoption was slow as a result. Supplemental external tools helped bridge the gap, but they were manual and difficult to maintain at scale. The eventual solution required working closely with the product team to build and configure a library of custom budget views within the CMS, organized by section, date, and content type, giving editors direct access to the specific views most relevant to their work. That work was followed by an active adoption effort to bring editors across the L.A. Times newsroom through the transition.

The Result

The budgeting system is now used across the L.A. Times newsroom for both daily news planning and longer term project planning, giving editorial leadership a consistent, shared view of coverage across all sections.