In February 2024, State of Digital Publishing (SODP) hosted WP Publisher Success Week – an online event for digital publishing and news media professionals.
This article is based on the summary of key learnings of a presentation by Angelo Paura, Global Editorial Director at Blasting News.
Founded in 2013, Blasting News is both a tech company and publishing platform with a focus on social journalism. Originally based in Europe, Blasting News has expanded its operations to five main markets – the United States, the UK, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and France.
Currently, it publishes around 16,000 news articles and videos each month, providing news to around 30 million monthly readers. This content is created by a network of 2,000 freelance writers and editors.
As a meritocratic organization, Blasting News shares ad money revenue with its independent contributors. In the last 10 years, they have distributed €39 million to contributors who are called “blasters.”
“Our journalistic ethos is inspired by Jeff Jarvis’s insights which emphasize that journalism revolves around communities and is more of a service than a product. We are a community, what we want to do is create a service for the (wider) community. This idea is at the very core of our work,” explained Angelo Paura, Global Editorial Director at Blasting News.
As of 2024, Blasting News is also a member of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) and Eunomia as part of a stance against misinformation. The platform follows The Trust Project quality standards and has a perfect (100/100) NewsGuard score on transparency and credibility.
The Editorial System
Blasting News uses both human curation and algorithms in its editorial process to create original content, spot misinformation, and conduct performance tracking. The editorial system has the following components for a smooth workflow:
- A team of 100 freelance editors
- 10 content managers inside the newsroom
- A proprietary CMS
- Multiple algorithms used before and after publication
- 100+ documents and a comprehensive set of rules
The Workflow Process
As Angelo explained: “We try to publish an article in 30 minutes for more than 90% of articles, with a maximum cap of 3 hours. We don’t want to have articles lying unattended on our platform, without anyone to control or edit them for more than 3 hours.”
To ensure maximum efficiency and content quality across, Blasting News relies on strict adherence to the following process:
- Using Blasting News’ proprietary algorithm, their community managers daily review and distribute a series of topics and ideas to our authors.
- The writers – or “blasters” – craft articles using the internal text editor of the platform. Blasting News requires reliable and fresh sources, not older than three days.
- Each article undergoes automatic SEO standard checks.
- The blaster submits the article for editing, where it appears in a list reviewed by the editors for the first edit. Editors have two options:
- They can send it back to the blaster with a comment for revisions.
- They can approve the article and forward it to the content manager of the respective country.
- If the article is sent back, the blaster can make corrections and resubmit it. After the third submission, the editor can only choose to publish or discard the article.
- Once approved, the article undergoes a final check in the control room by content managers – integral members of Blasting News’ internal newsroom. Only after this final check is completed does the article get published on the site and social media platforms.
Following the completion of the editorial process, another significant aspect of the workflow comes into play: Blasting News’ internal platform called BX. Here, the micro influencers, also known as social blasters, have the opportunity to decide whether they want to share the article and on which platforms. If they choose to share the articles on social media, they are eligible to share potential revenues with the author.
For additional quality control, after this entire process, Blasting News implements a randomized check to identify any errors that may have been overlooked. “We have a rigorous corrections policy in place to address any issues that arise promptly and efficiently,” explained Angelo.
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Download the ebook of learnings from WP Publisher Success Week here.
