#125 – Designing for the demands of media

WASHINGTON – Designing and developing websites for media is something former journalists and media technologists do best. That’s Josh Kadis’ take. He helps media organizations design and manage the volume and content of their product.

Kadis is the director of product development at Alley Interactive. Prior to moving to Alley he was senior technologist at Quartz.

Photo courtesy of Josh Kadis

“We are a full service digital agency. We do technical strategy, user experience and interface design and development,” he says. Working with media organizations, Kadis says his team can use their industry experience to partner with organizations like the Online News Association.

In one of Alley Interactive’s latest projects rebuilding and relaunching the The New York Post, the agency found WordPress isn’t for second tier, smaller news organizations. It in fact is as appropriate for larger publications.

“Historically, there’s been a reluctance on the part of a lot of media organizations to use open content management systems. And I think in part that reflects some genuine things on a technical level specifically in terms of how you connect to the kinds of content management system you need if you’re using the same thing for print and digital,” he says.

They’re finding as they build high volume sites, using a proprietary CMS is unnecessary for anyone. It’s expensive to build and challenging to maintain, Kadis says.

In this week’s podcast, Kadis also talks about designing websites to meet the demands of media outlets and how to analyze metrics to better understand an average reader’s habits on a media website.

— Megan Cloherty

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