Editorial workflows · Content models
Shared stories and independent channel versions
A shared story can keep facts together, while each publication channel needs room to develop its own version. This prototype explores that relationship, with explicit links between versions, revision history and a way to handle corrections without silently replacing channel-specific work.
Two possible states of a web version
Source content and revision history
Follows the story
The body follows the shared source.
Edited for its channel
Its own wording, with its source relationship recorded.
A later source change can be made visible to the editor.
A story may appear on several channels. They share facts, but their wording, structure and timing can differ. Keeping every version tied to one master can restrict editorial work. Allowing unrelated copies makes later corrections harder to follow.
In an independent software prototype, I explored a shared story with explicit relationships to its channel versions. A version can follow the source, be adapted from it or be written specifically for its channel. The relationship is recorded, rather than inferred from matching text.
An important question was whether editors would maintain the shared source under newsroom pressure. That changed how the source and channel versions were presented, and where the editor needed a clear choice.
The prototype includes revision history and recoverable publication steps. Technical checks exercised conflicts, retries and corrections. It remains an independent prototype, with newsroom validation still to do.