Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

CNN stress-tests its publishing platform using breaking news dress rehearsals

Upasna Gautam · An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam · Feb 23, 2023 · at 32:27

Upasna Gautam, product manager at CNN Digital, describes how CNN tests its CMS and editorial infrastructure under simulated high-speed breaking news conditions.

0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We run the whole thing from the minute the email is sent to, and of course, since we're testing the platform with this breaking news dress rehearsal to the minute you hit publish on that page. And there's a lot of stuff that goes on in there and it all happens in the span of Minutes. And so while that is happening, while that dress rehearsal is happening, we have our engineers and our editorial support team on hand as well.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Upasna Gautam

Insight
News product managers must thrive in chaos over ambiguity
“We hear a lot about having the skills to thrive in ambiguity in order to be a successful product manager, but to be a successful product manager in news, you have to be able to thrive in chaos.”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 4:22 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Opinion
Product management within the journalism industry remains in its infancy
“Compared to the rest of product management as a discipline and the tech industry. Product management in news is still in its, I will say infancy. And that's just because it hasn't been an integrated role for as long as it has been in big tech”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 44:17 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Insight
Defining initiative-driven outcomes signals high agency in job candidates
“The whole point of the question is like, do you have and can you exhibit high agency? And especially again, working in news, it's so important. And so There's not like a specific answer. I think the ability to actually define something specific and tangible in…”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 53:32 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Disclosure
CNN manages editorial intake with dress rehearsals, demos, and working sessions
“And after a lot of observation and learning, I implemented a system to manage that kind of intake with four different touch points or events. So we have weekly demo days, working sessions, breaking news, dress rehearsals, and office hours.”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 11:12 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Assertion Not checkable as stated
CNN's unreleased CMS served as an infrastructure fallback during 2020 election
“And so it actually did happen a couple of years ago in the 2020 election. And one of the fallbacks at that time, because we were not, we are, you know, we're still on our current content management platform, but we had our new one as we're building it as one o…”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 30:04 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Disclosure
CNN product teams build buffers for daily breaking news disruptions
“Anytime we're planning, we build in buffers for all of that chaos that's happening on a daily basis.”
Upasna Gautam Feb 23, 2023 ▶ 7:34 An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.