During 2019-2020, six large German media companies invested in a CUE publishing platform. Digital transformation is at the top of the agenda in the German media industry.
Although TV is still the most widely used source of news in Germany, online news has gained steady popularity since 2017. Online is projected to overtake TV as the top news source in the near future.
Based on this insight, many German media companies are currently gearing up their digital transformation. And as part of this process, they are looking for new tech platforms that can contribute to the further growth of their business.
Stibo DX is currently implementing CUE at Der Tagesspiegel, Handelsblatt Media Group, Verlagsgruppe Ippen, NOZ medien, Badische Neueste Nachrichten and VRM. In all cases, the CUE publishing platform is the foundation for the digital transformation of the newsroom.
Freedom and agility
The German media companies chose CUE because it helps them prepare for a fast-moving market that demands quick time-to-market launches.
“In the future, we will have to use our content faster and on a greater variety of channels,” explains Rainer Haendle, Deputy Editor-in-Chief at BNN. “Therefore, we have been looking for a very flexible system to which we can attach new channels and tools at any time.”
Christian Bigge, Project Manager at Der Tagesspiegel, talks about the freedom CUE gives to developers. In fact, extensibility is one of the platform’s greatest advantages. “CUE is extremely flexible and open. It allows us to experiment with the new digital products that we are planning. Our developers can customize the publishing platform by themselves because of its flexibility,” Bigge says.
In an interview with the German industry magazine, Medium Magazin, Bigge further mentions that they will be implementing new editorial ways of working based on the concept of “story-first.”
Story-first in CUE
Leaving the habits of writing for a printed newspaper behind, many newsrooms are now converting to mobile- or digital-first approaches. But how about focusing on the story instead of the channel? That is what the story-first concept is all about.
The story-first concept requires a publishing platform that moves away from static, printfocused story tem plates and rethinks the anatomy of stories. That is what Stibo DX has done with CUE.
The basic concept behind CUE is that every story can be broken into smaller story elements. These elements can be mixed and matched, just like building bricks. By working with content as a collection of small, individual elements rather than big, fixed entities, content creators are able to manage different storylines from the same set of elements. This allows them to have different variants of the same story for different formats and channels.
CEO of Ippen Digital, Jan Ippen, also likes the flexibility that CUE provides for creating digital content. “CUE is the only solution we could find on the market that is able to provide the granular content structure that is needed in today’s data-driven digital news business to drive our concept.”
Spend more time creating quality content
VRM is the most recent German media company to join the CUE community. For Julia Lumma, Head of Content Development at VRM, it is important to ensure an efficient shift of focus from print towards digital.
"We chose CUE, as we expect the platform can help us achieve this goal. Also, we want to enable our editorial team to spend more time creating quality content for our readers in a user-friendly and modern digital environment instead of having to work with numerous time-consuming systems", she explains.
Julia Lumma, Head of Content Development at VRM. Photo: André Hirtz.
The six media companies join Stibo DX’s already strong customer base in Germany consisting of Axel Springer, dfv Mediengruppe, Focus Online, and more.