[52-6F-62]

Having worked in publishing, their effort and the NYT (particularly Bostock) to open up the code to the community is notable and admirable. I’ve tried to push for open source projects at similar business scales to no avail. Deaf ears.

It’s a shame that it’s viewed largely as a means to an end. Yet the very same companies used to work with printers to produce innovations. Digital media seems to be viewed much more as a commodity to many in the industry, unfortunately—in spite of it being the most effective and paradigm-shifting medium for mass communication since the television, radio, or platen press.

[toyg]

> Digital media seems to be viewed much more as a commodity [...] in spite of it being the most effective and paradigm-shifting medium

Or rather because: digital media is now so easy to produce and distribute, that its intrinsic value has now dropped to zero.

[52-6F-62]

I’m not sure that’s it. I think that might be the perception, but users often speak out about the desire for higher quality content. Particularly content that is more interactive and engaging.

But many media groups see it as a means to an end, like I’ve noted. Throw up WordPress with a CDN for images and host every brand you own on one to five instances and that’s it. They understand those words: WordPress, CMS, CDN, enterprise-grade. They don’t know anything else about them, and don’t care. They, probably out of sincere financial need, prioritize analytics over all else in the tech space.

I think the split off from what you’ve noted is this:

Where they might have paid attention to improvements in colour mixing in print tech, etc, for the effects it would have on published photography they cannot see the benefits to investing in a more refined digital publishing platform or output. Just put a skin on whatever’s free and out there already—then have your engineers spend countless hours just putting out fires and patching holes with proverbial PHP bubblegum. Don’t get me started on data hygiene...

To wit: I’ve always worked outside of those teams looking in. Except for the data side—nightmare-inducing stuff.

[toyg]

> they cannot see the benefits to investing in a more refined digital publishing platform

Isn't that "our" fault, in a way, as technologists? Ever since the internet appeared, we've told them that the only thing that matters is speed: a fast but pixelated jpeg is better than a heavy one; a fast and simple homepage is better than a detailed one; and this in an industry that already valued "scooping" over everything else... On top of that, we churn tech stack every year or two: Perl! ASP! PHP! Java! Ruby! Python! XML! jquery! React! RSS! Forums! Socials! ...

So they build the fastest way they can, with the minimum amount of quality they can get away with and the minimum of investment in the most "standard" tech available, and then concentrate on their core business -- which has always been advertising.

[52-6F-62]

That's definitely an arguable point. I'm sure it has weight in a lot of ways. We definitely advertise simplicity over comprehensivity because it sells a little more easily.

Alternatively, my experience in publishing has been there's a lot of focus on the quality of photography and images. Compression is attempted, but usually not at the cost of quality. They'll happily serve a 10MB photo, if photography is the purpose of the content.

I guess I'm speaking more to data-based features—mainly content delivery pipelines, general system architecture, and down to integrated interactive featurettes. In my experience there hasn't been a lot of pursuit after trendy tech. Quite the opposite. They're more willing to go for external contracts with "enterprise-grade" companies that offer "we do it all" services that under deliver and are host to poor archival practices for a medium that is traditionally archived.

Your latter point is spot on up until the advertising remark. Editorial and journalistic staff take their stuff very seriously and are often at odds with corporate and other managerial staff and are typically more into innovating (I rather like working with them and art teams... outside of lifestyle brands, anyway). Managing editors tend to want expediency and quality and don't mind one way or the other. The corporate and business management end are certainly consumed with sales, advertising, and analytics.