Editor’s note: this article is part of Toolbox, The Fix’s series on digital tools used by news publishers. The goal is to help managers pick the most appropriate tools for themselves by speaking with media practitioners. In the previous editions we looked at Dennik SME, elDiario.es and Zetland.

Contexte strives to provide clarity to the lawmaking process. Founded in 2013, this subscription-based publisher provides analysis and reportage about public policy with a focus on France. Their readership includes professionals and the general public alike.

Background

Publication	Contexte
Type	Political reportage and policy analysis
Country (population)	France – 68.4 million
Readership (MAU)	12.000
No. of paying members	Same as readership
History and presence	Contexte was launched in 2013 by Jean-Christophe Boulanger, Clémentine Forissier and Chloé Moitié who were former managers of Euractiv. This subscription-based platform scrutinises various policies and powerplay behind it with its 9 editions – Energy, Transport, Powers, Agro, Environment, E-Health, Health, Tech and Media. Digital, another edition, was discontinued in 2023. Their team is split between their two offices in Paris and Brussels.

[For the complete list of the tools with pricing and links scroll to the end of this article]

Building a custom collaborative editorial tool for the daily newsletter

Contexte sends a daily newsletter which collects information from its nine editions. Since 2013, their team has grown and is currently more than 50 journalists spread across their offices in Paris and Brussels. “With the team growing in the last decade, we needed a strong collaboration system between different stakeholders like journalists and editors in our two offices,” says Cédric Raud, a developer at Contexte.

Making their newsletter was an orchestra which started in the afternoon with the journalists writing their news briefs. By evening, the proofreaders would start their work. At dawn, the editors would make the final touches. The entire process is time-sensitive as they need to send the newsletter to their subscribers by 8:00 AM sharp.

This orchestra was earlier played out on Google Docs which was pre-formatted with ArchieM, a markup language. The final result would then be exported to Django. This process did not allow for multiple people to work simultaneously on Docs. Having this process split into two separate software services made it difficult for the team to make any last-minute changes and deterred them from experimenting.

This pushed Raud into building a custom collaborative editor, one that allowed multiple people to edit simultaneously in a briefing format. The end product, Echo, took three months to build.

Raud and his colleague spent the first two months in the discovery phase. Raud recalls 10-12 products that he found useful. The two that caught his eye were Prosemirror and Tiptap.

“I didn’t look at the whole package solutions because they were expensive. For a small journal like us, we didn’t want to buy something off the shelf,” says Raud. In the end, they decided to use Tiptap and Yjs as building blocks for their proof of concept. They then used API to bind the process together.

The team of two had split their responsibilities, recalls Raud. “I was responsible for the core editing feature and my colleague was responsible for the collaborative discussions and the history of modification.”

Before Echo, the team of production editors used different tools than the journalists. “By integrating comments inside the tool, journalists, reviewers and production editors can all work in the same document at once, discuss in threads and suggest modifications, without switching tools.”

They then took one month to check the validity of their software. “We ran a lot of demos and user tests to ensure that our tool was the right fit between the needs and the intended solution.” Echo was finally made available to the whole editorial team in January 2024.

With Echo, the Contexte editorial team now enjoys a better editorial experience. “The entire process is more fluid and pleasant,” says Raud. Echo has also helped them gain roughly 20% on their productivity.

Echo has eliminated bugs and incidents that could block or waste their time
Cédric Raud, a developer at Contexte

It has also helped them reduce their chance of errors in formatting.

Raud attributes this lessening of errors to Echo’s design. “It is a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), so the document looks closely to the published version on the website, which simplifies the detection of layout issues or formatting mistakes.”

Echo has not only brought the tech and redaction team on one page, but has done so while reducing errors and improving the productivity and editing experience of the Contexte team.

External tools

Type	Tool / App	Description	Pricing per month (prices are per user per month unless clarified otherwise)
Analytics	PostHog	PostHog is an open-source product analytics tool.	Free for core functionalities, different prices for each of their products
	Matomo	This Google Analytics alternative offers complete data ownership and privacy features.	Free on-premise servers Cloud feature varies depending on your monthly traffic
	In-built	Their own Data Lake Analytics based on BigQuery, built with dbt Labs and consumed with Metabase
Audio	Verbatim	A homemade solution based on Gladia which transcribes audio and video into text
Communication	Slack	Slack is a work messenger and communication platform	Free plan with limited features Basic plan starts from €8.25 (per organisation per month)
	Notion	Notion is a collaborative platform for note-taking and task management.	Free plan for the basic version €9.50 for Plus €17 for Business
	Linear	A project planning tool that helps streamline issues, sprints and product roadmaps.	Free plan for the base version $8 for Basic $12 for Business
Workflow / Project Management	Notion	See above	See above
CMS	Django Backoffice	An application Django to easier create backoffice dashboard integrated into your project
	Webflow	Helps create custom websites through collaboration	Site Plans Free plan for starter pack $18 for Basic plan $49 for Business plan (per organisation per month) Workspace Plans Free plan for starter pack $28 for Core plan (for 3 users)
Subscription	Django Backoffice	See above	See above
	Salesforce	Helps keep track of customer interaction and sales data	$25 for Starter Suite (per organisation per month) $100 for Pro Suite (per organisation per month)
HR	Lucca	Tools for HR in time and activity management, HR management, finance and payroll	€8.90 for HR Essentials Suite
	Google Workspace	Offers collaborative work tools in an online environment.	$6 for Business Starter $12 for Business Standard $18 for Business Plus
Video	Livestorm	Video conferencing software for virtual meetings, conferences and webinars	Free plan for basic version €79 for Pro version
	Datawrapper	Helps create interactive charts, maps and tables	Free plan for basic version €599 for Custom version per organisation per month (includes 10 users)
Visualisation	D3.js	An open-source JavaScript library tool for visualising data	Free
	In-built solutions
Web Design Tools	Figma	A collaborative designing tool for websites, apps and other digital products	Figma plans (Price per seat per month) Starter plan free to use €12 for Professional plan €45 for Organization plan FigJam plans (Price per seat per month) Starter plan free to use €3 for Professional plan €5 for Organization plan
	Canva	Designing and visual editing tool	Free for the basic version €12 for Canva Pro
Newsletter	Intercom	An AI-based customer service platform	$39 for Essential plan (per seat per month) $99 for Advanced plan (per seat per month) $139 for Expert plan (per seat per month)

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How Contexte built a custom collaborative editorial tool