"Modern audiences expect content distribution at a break-neck pace. The publishing model has changed from “let’s put print content online” to “let’s think in web terms first”. Revenue numbers indicate that readers are fleeing print publications for web-based news1. A publisher’s ability to respond to trends in online news and information delivery is critical to success with readers.

Modern Content-Management Systems (“CMS”) help you keep up with innovations and trends. In particular, the developer communities of open-source CMSes have aggressively adopted new technologies and audience patterns in ways that vendors of proprietary CMSes — with their comparatively small developer resources — haven’t been able to match.

Publishers who previously adopted commercial or home-brewed CMSes are now considering open-source replacements. They want to:

• Lower total costs;
• Avoid reliance on a single vendor or key staffers for support; and
• Take advantage of current and emerging publishing standards such as the SemanticWeb.

Among the hundred or so open-source CMS options2 3, Drupal has emerged as the leader for enterprise-grade publishing4. It’s a stable platform for managing and growing a news website that also allows publishers to interact with its reader community. It allows content-sharing among multiple properties, and integrates well with outside sites and tools such as Facebook and Twitter.