> they cannot see the benefits to investing in a more refined digital publishing platform
Isn't that "our" fault, in a way, as technologists? Ever since the internet appeared, we've told them that the only thing that matters is speed: a fast but pixelated jpeg is better than a heavy one; a fast and simple homepage is better than a detailed one; and this in an industry that already valued "scooping" over everything else... On top of that, we churn tech stack every year or two: Perl! ASP! PHP! Java! Ruby! Python! XML! jquery! React! RSS! Forums! Socials! ...
So they build the fastest way they can, with the minimum amount of quality they can get away with and the minimum of investment in the most "standard" tech available, and then concentrate on their core business -- which has always been advertising.
That's definitely an arguable point. I'm sure it has weight in a lot of ways. We definitely advertise simplicity over comprehensivity because it sells a little more easily.
Alternatively, my experience in publishing has been there's a lot of focus on the quality of photography and images. Compression is attempted, but usually not at the cost of quality. They'll happily serve a 10MB photo, if photography is the purpose of the content.
I guess I'm speaking more to data-based features—mainly content delivery pipelines, general system architecture, and down to integrated interactive featurettes. In my experience there hasn't been a lot of pursuit after trendy tech. Quite the opposite. They're more willing to go for external contracts with "enterprise-grade" companies that offer "we do it all" services that under deliver and are host to poor archival practices for a medium that is traditionally archived.
Your latter point is spot on up until the advertising remark. Editorial and journalistic staff take their stuff very seriously and are often at odds with corporate and other managerial staff and are typically more into innovating (I rather like working with them and art teams... outside of lifestyle brands, anyway). Managing editors tend to want expediency and quality and don't mind one way or the other. The corporate and business management end are certainly consumed with sales, advertising, and analytics.
Isn't that "our" fault, in a way, as technologists? Ever since the internet appeared, we've told them that the only thing that matters is speed: a fast but pixelated jpeg is better than a heavy one; a fast and simple homepage is better than a detailed one; and this in an industry that already valued "scooping" over everything else... On top of that, we churn tech stack every year or two: Perl! ASP! PHP! Java! Ruby! Python! XML! jquery! React! RSS! Forums! Socials! ...
So they build the fastest way they can, with the minimum amount of quality they can get away with and the minimum of investment in the most "standard" tech available, and then concentrate on their core business -- which has always been advertising.