The Athletic is a famous international sports journalism portal. It’s one of the few sports journalism portals that combines solid sports research with an entertaining writing style.
The Athletic features reputed writers and experts from all over the world. Journalists and reporters of the highest quality, all working from different time zones and interacting with different people, but for the achievement of the same cause.
This week I’ve been wondering, how does The Athletic coordinate its highly heterogeneous workforce and all their projects simultaneously? With strict deadlines on many of its content uploads, what is the system that it uses to always ensure everything is on time?
With this in mind, I came up with a mock collaboration system myself.
I created a content pipeline along with an integrated team database for The Athletic. A single integrated funnel for all its projects being made across the globe.
I think having a single, flexible database for the workflow of all its creators can really help solve logistical problems to a very large extent.
This database was made using Airtable,and here is a video explanation of the project.
In the database, I collect and assimilate all the (mock) articles that are being worked on right now in a single place. The example authors are actual authors who write for The Athletic, everything else (including all the blog posts) was my own idea. The primary table gives an easy way to study all the relevant information about the articles currently in the works at a single glance.
With an easy channel of messaging on each primary cell, the table also allows for seamless communication between staff members and authors of The Athletic, along with a working history of every edit made in the field for better context.
Apart from the primary database built in a spreadsheet, I used some of the data to create better, more intuitive views. Thus, I used the deadline dates to build a calendar with all the deadlines of every article pre-marked and color-coded with the current status. As it has two-way linkability, any change on the deadlines could be made on either the calendar or the spreadsheet and will show up in all the other places automatically.
Similarly, I also used the status table in the spreadsheet to create a Kanban board with all the tasks arranged under buckets according to their current status. The Kanban board provides an intuitive way to understand how far along every project is, and allows for simple drag and drop to change article statuses.
I also built a different database for all the team members and linked it with the primary database based on the project that they are currently working on. So, I could assign new projects, delete them or edit them from either of the pages, but the team database also gave me more context on some other information on the team members. This way someone could keep track of the team in the same place as where they keep track of the projects, but without having any unnecessary information crowding up space.
To make the transition easier, I also wrote down an SOP (standard operating procedure) for staff members that can be referenced here.
Happy reading (: