POLITICO Europe
Understanding how a newsroom really works.
I helped POLITICO Europe turn the realities of its newsroom into a clearer direction for its digital products. I ran workshops with senior stakeholders in Brussels and shadowed editors, getting to know both the organisation’s ambitions and the everyday work behind the publication.
Stories moved between a public news site, specialist subscription products, newsletters and print. I helped separate what a redesign could solve from changes to tools and working practices, and worked on a Trello–WordPress integration that gave editors a shared view of each story’s progress.
Following the story.
The details revealed challenges a redesign alone couldn’t solve. Instructions for homepage placement arrived through email and Slack. Changes made for print had to be reconciled with the CMS. Editors checked through other channels whether someone was still working on a story.
The relationships between products needed care too. Specialist PRO reporting served a different audience from the public site; its depth and terminology couldn’t simply be carried across unchanged. We needed to think about how readers discover and move between those experiences without overwhelming them.
I also worked on the Trello–WordPress integration. It gave the newsroom a shared view of each story’s stage and who was working on it, with assignments and status changes kept in sync between the two tools.
Turning insight into decisions.
I worked with editorial, commercial and technical stakeholders to connect those findings to the priorities for the platform: discovery, a stronger digital experience, subscription growth and a better editorial workflow.
A key part of my role was separating what the redesign could address from improvements to existing tools and larger process changes that needed their own scope.
That kept the work grounded in how the newsroom actually operated, while giving stakeholders a clearer basis for deciding what to do next.