The Chicago Public Media challenge
Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of the Chicago Sun-Times in 2022 created one of the nation’s largest nonprofit news organizations. Already the owner of public radio’s WBEZ, this acquisition brought together the Windy City’s leading newspaper and radio station.
It also presented both a challenge and an opportunity: how to bring together the best of both organizations while serving their different audiences and channel needs.
Initially hosted on the Vox Chorus content management system (CMS) platform, the Chicago Sun-Times had first partnered with Brightspot for its website’s front-end “head.” This partnership evolved with the sunsetting of Vox Chorus and the newspaper’s transition to Brightspot to power both its public-facing site and internal operations.
Likewise, WBEZ migrated into the same CMS instance to combine the power of both newsrooms with greater efficiency, cost savings and shared infrastructure.
The Brightspot solution for Chicago Public Media
The Chicago Sun-Times transition to Brightspot rolled out over the course of only several months in early 2024, with WBEZ following its sister site in May 2024. With content types and modeling mapped from the Vox Chorus implementation, the migration’s heaviest lift was bringing over hundreds of thousands of archival content, including articles and images, into the new CMS.
The multisite setup enabled both the news publisher and broadcaster to use separate themes that adhered to their respective brand styles and needs.
Shared out-of-the-box components, in the form of content types including articles, podcast episodes and live blogs, supported the needs of both newsrooms and their respective media formats.
Brightspot’s system of flexible roles and permissions allowed individual groups and teams to access the publishing toolsets they needed while facilitating the important cross-sharing of content between the two properties.
Utilizing Brightspot’s federated search capabilities, the Chicago Sun-Times was able to seamlessly connect the external digital-asset management platform used for graphics in its print publication, making these assets instantly accessible to staff working on stories for the digital edition.
WBEZ, meanwhile, gained the ability to manage its shows and content across various broadcast-specific content types. The new site also included a new fully customized live audio player for the site, as well as distribution to its apps and third-party audio services.
The outcome for Chicago Public Media
The most significant impact of Chicago Public Media’s move to Brightspot is the ability for the separate newsrooms at the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ to collaborate on one platform.
Content can be shared across sites, reducing the time needed for editorial teams to distribute content once published. Cost savings are also realized through the ability to increase the ROI for journalism that can be reused and monetized across the organization — and channels.
Not only are significant cost savings realized with this approach, but the audience needs of Chicago’s hometown broadcaster and publisher are well-served with high-quality content. With improved content, higher engagement follows, ultimately increasing revenue.
Another revenue-driving benefit of the move to Brightspot is Chicago Public Media’s ability to more effectively service partnerships with other local news outlets that subscribe to its content feeds. Previously requiring a cumbersome manual duplication process via WordPress, editors can now quickly distribute syndicated content to the agency instance within the same platform.
Chicago Public Media in brief
