CoPress

The following spreadsheet was created by our editor in chief to help editors transition to their new roles because there were a lot of misunderstandings with the initial workflow revamp when we switched to WordPress.

1.  Pitching and assigning: Editors and reporters put story pitches into a Google Spreadsheet that contains the following columns:

• Story section
• Story slug
• Reporter assigned
• Deadline
• Publish date
• Graphic/photo ideas
• Assigned photographer
• Notes
  
• Accompanying multimedia?
  • Multimedia deadline
  • Week to go online
  • If related to print story, which section?
  • Photographer assigned?
  • Tease from print to web?
  • Project in?
  • Approved by online editor?
  • Assessment
  • Notes

2. Posting articles: Reporters post their completed articles into WordPress (usually by pasting from a Word Document). Save as "pending review." The reporter then e-mails the section editor the same copy of that article for record-keeping purposes (our reporters are graded based on pre-copy-edited versions of their articles) and to inform the section editor the article is ready to be edited.

3. Day copy editing: The first day copy editor (shifts start around 10 a.m.) logs into WordPress to see what new articles are pending review. The copy editor also checks the Google Doc to determine which articles have priority based on publish date and whether that article has been read by the section editor. After editing articles, the copy editor signs off on the Google Doc with his/her initials.

The Google doc has the following columns for copy editors:

• Reporter draft in?
• Edited by section editor?
• Copy edited? (Three editors must sign off in this column before an article can be posted)
• Online?
• Ready for page?

The second day-time copy editor goes through the same process. If a section editor, editor in chief, managing editor or online editor has also copy edited the article and signed off on it, the copy editor can attach appropriate photos and publish the article to the site.

4. Designing for print: Print designers login to WordPress and pull already copy edited articles to paste into inDesign where they layout pages. They reformat to remove line breaks. After they finish designing, the flats are printed out.

5. Evening copy editing: Evening copy editors read leftover stories from the morning and edit for design and any additional changes on the articles that are already  published to the web. They put their changes into WordPress. Each time the article is updated, the designer copies and pastes again from WordPress to inDesign. Each new import requires re-formatting.

We're still using CP5 and we're doing largely what Andrew said above; however, we'd like to move to a more CMS-first-based solution like what Lauren described where WP is used before design rather than after starting next school year.