Project
Independent Media
Media · Investigative journalism
Investigations for readers. Tools for the newsroom.
Independent Media is an online publication focused on investigative journalism, fact-checking and analysis. We built the reader site and the editorial CMS: from the home page, articles and the investigations archive to a block-based article editor, a news calendar and newsroom analytics.
Scale and technology
The project withstands powerful DDoS attacks and high load, staying available to readers and the newsroom.
The home page: opinion pieces, the lead story of the day and the news feed on one screen.
A half-screen photo, section, headline, author and date. A bar below the header links to the investigation topic the article belongs to and shows how many stories it has. View count and share buttons on the right, “Popular” next to the text.
News uses the same grid as articles: section, headline, author, date and time. Source links in the text, “Popular” on the right.
A large section title and story cards with photo, author and date. The side column holds the newsletter sign-up and fresh opinion; arrows in the header switch to neighbouring sections.
Stories from different years on one subject are collected on a single page over the topic cover. Readers see the whole story, not a single piece.
Search across all stories with section and date filters, relevance sorting and exact match. Results show cover, section, author and date.
Readers choose the morning brief or the weekly digest and subscribe with a single field. A sample email shows what will arrive.
Publication counts and views for news, articles, opinion and live blogs by week, month, half-year or all time, plus author rankings by output and views. CMS data in the screenshots is illustrative.
The week of the news feed by day: how many stories went out and how many views they got, with time, headline and author of each. Today is highlighted, and free slots can be used to schedule a story.
A table with date, section, authors and views, search and filters. The “Locked?” column shows who is working on a story right now, so editors don’t overwrite each other.
Status, publication date, headline and lead with character counters, section, authors and cover. While an editor works, the story stays locked to them and fields save automatically.
An article is assembled from blocks: rich text, images, video, embeds, quotes, related stories, accordions and maps. Blocks can be reordered, switched off and placed in the text by code.
The accordion tucks methodology and notes under headings. The Map block colors regions by a chosen scheme, takes a comment per region and imports data as JSON.
How a map from the block looks in an article: title, colored regions and legend.
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