Media Matters for America

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Media Matters for America monitors, analyzes, and corrects conservative misinformation in the media.

Founded in 2004, Media Matters systematically monitors a cross section of print, broadcast, television, radio, and internet media outlets for unreliable, inaccurate, or non-credible conservative news and commentary.

We worked with Media Matters for America to completely redesign its flagship website, a platform that delivers in-depth reporting and analysis with articles, long-form narratives, and interactive media.

With hundreds of thousands of pieces of content, over a petabyte of media files, and a wide variety of target audiences, the website delivers Media Matters’ stories in a visually compelling, user-centered experience that is responsive and adaptive on all platforms.

Key Challenges

  • To create an effective, user-centered design strategy, we needed to clearly understand MMFA's target audiences and the organization's communication goals.
  • Authors and editors needed fine-tuned control of editorial workflows and content presentation for a broad spectrum of contexts.
  • Hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of content, including more than a petabyte of media, needed to be migrated from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

The Solution

  • We ran a series of on-site workshops, focus groups, and user interviews to help define Media Matters’ target audiences and communications goals. Using the collected data as a guide, we created a clear and compelling user-centered design.

  • We built tools for granular, site-wide control of how articles are displayed. Editors can provide alternate titles, images, and other fields for different contexts and pages throughout the website, as well as social media channels. Further, editing options and workflow states are tailored to specific user roles, streamlining the experience for both authors and editors.

  • We provided technical architecture, a detailed migration plan, and development support for Media Matters’ internal team to programmatically migrate hundreds of thousands of distinct pieces of content into the new Drupal 8 platform.

User-Centered Design

Media Matters' in-house design team had already established a unique aesthetic for their custom, staff-created illustrations. We developed a bold design system to serve as a powerful backdrop for their compelling illustration style. 

A completely re-tooled navigation provides fast, intuitive access to content organized by topic and format. MMFA editors can promote specific collections or topics as trending.

Drupal 8 Migration

We built the new MediaMatters.org in Drupal 8, collaborating closely with the MMFA in-house development team to migrate their content. Leveraging MMFA's technical staff was an important component of the process from day one. We established a collaborative team between their developers and ours, running a cohesive Agile process throughout the project. Further, we provided a detailed migration plan, development support, and Drupal 8 training to assist their team's role in the migration. 

With new content published every day, and new features slated for ongoing development, we are thrilled to continue supporting Media Matters for America.

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