In many newsrooms, editorial prioritization used to come down to instinct. Senior editors made calls based on their experience, they knew from gut instinct what to lead with, what could wait, what the audience needed. But in 2026, that model doesn’t scale.
Newsrooms now operate in a landscape shaped by platform fragmentation, shifting production timelines, limited resources, and increasingly specific audience expectations. Editorial prioritization has become a complex, analytical skill—one that balances what audiences want, what the newsroom can deliver, and what each platform's algorithms, formats, and rhythms demand from digital publishing today.
Doing that well requires more than good instincts. It requires a shared editorial planning system that helps teams align decisions across departments, platforms, and timeframes, so that the right work gets done, at the right time, for the right reasons.
Platform Fragmentation Needs Smarter Editorial Planning
In a single day, a newsroom might produce a longform homepage feature, a WhatsApp briefing, a mobile push alert, a TikTok summary, and an evening newsletter, all around the same story. Each platform demands a different tone, format, and rhythm. Editorial instinct alone can’t manage that.
As the Reuters Digital News Report 2025 explains “Younger audiences in particular are increasingly encountering news through third-party platforms such as TikTok and Instagram… These platforms favour short-form video, visual storytelling, and creator-driven content.”
The volume and variation of output have outpaced informal planning methods. Without a centralized system, teams end up duplicating content, misaligning timing, or missing key opportunities. That’s where an editorial planning system becomes essential. It helps clarify what’s going where, and why, before the work begins. But knowing where to publish is only part of the equation. Understanding when and why people engage matters just as much.
Audiences Follow Rhythms and They’re Not Random
Gregor Landwehr from Highberg recently presented a dataset from 30 publishers across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland that revealed consistent audience behavior patterns across time and day.
Mornings are for depth and context.
Midday favors quick updates.
Evenings invite inspiration or analysis.
Fridays bring a spike in weekend planning content.
These trends aren’t new. Landwehr compared them to decades of broadcast scheduling, where audiences learned to expect certain content at specific times. What’s changed is that digital teams now need to plan for these rhythms across multiple platforms, not just one.
“News at 8 p.m. is not a coincidence,” Landwehr explained. “It’s a habit built over time.”
That habit-building opportunity still exists—but it requires deliberate planning, not guesswork. The editorial planning system becomes the place where teams can map coverage to time-based audience intent.
But even if you know when and where to publish, one question still remains: What exactly should you prioritize?
Editorial Prioritization Is About Creating Value
With so many moving parts, the real challenge becomes making smart trade-offs.
You can’t publish every story on every platform, in every format. Prioritization today means asking: Which platforms make the most sense for this story? Where will it connect with the audience? And what version of it is worth producing given the time, resources, and goals in play? That’s why some newsrooms are shifting from content-first to audience-need-first planning.
Kordiam’s planning system supports this shift by letting teams tag stories by user need. This approach draws from the User Needs Model 2.0, developed by Dmitry Shishkin, which helps newsrooms frame content around motivations like “update me,” “give me perspective,” or “inspire me.” These tags help editors define not just what a story is about, but what it’s for.
When you understand the audience need behind each story you can plan smarter. Want to learn more? Check out our blog post Tailoring Content to Audience Needs
This type of tagging helps clarify value early in the planning process. It also ensures that teams aren’t just producing stories, they’re producing the right mix of stories to meet their audience’s needs.
As Shishkin has pointed out, newsrooms often overproduce “update me” content while audiences crave more “inspire me” or “educate me” formats. Without visibility into these gaps, teams risk publishing heavily in one category while under-serving others.
Tagging by user need gives editors a clearer view of what’s already planned and what’s missing. It helps avoid duplication and ensures coverage reflects what audiences actually value, not just what’s easiest to produce.
But recognizing those needs is only one part of prioritization. Teams also need a way to monitor how content performs so they can adapt as audience signals change.
Heise Medien Is Putting Data Where Planning Happens
At Heise Medien, a German specialty publisher, editorial teams are testing a practical way to improve how they prioritize stories by bringing data directly into the planning process.
Through an integration between Upscore and Kordiam, Heise now connects real-time performance metrics, like engagement, scroll depth, and conversions, into the same system where planning decisions are made.This means editors can see, at a glance, how current content is performing and use those signals to guide what to focus on next.
“The best insights support real decisions in real time,” said Nina Berger of Upscore at Kordiam Editorial Days.
Prioritization Is a Team Effort
Another reason prioritization needs structure: it now involves more than just editorial leads.
The Reuters Digital News Report 2025 reflects this trend “There is growing collaboration between editorial, audience, product, and commercial teams to better align goals and avoid duplication.”
This level of alignment can’t happen informally. It requires shared visibility, clear deadlines, and coordination across formats and channels. The editorial planning system makes that collaboration visible. It helps teams stay aligned on what others are working on, avoid duplicated effort, and cut down on emails and misunderstandings before production begins.
Final Thought: Editorial Prioritization Has Grown Up
Editorial prioritization used to be about intuition. But by now, it’s something else entirely: a balancing act between audience behavior, platform demands, and newsroom capacity.
A strong editorial planning system doesn’t remove this complexity. It gives teams the tools to manage it so they can focus effort where it counts, avoid duplication, and move with clarity across platforms.
Because in today’s publishing environment, guessing isn’t sustainable. Planning is.
