Journal Métro Local News App Connected to WordPress
Turning a Montreal Newspaper’s WordPress Content Into a Native Reading
Categories
Media & Digital Content Platforms | Smart City & GIS
Technologies used
iOS | Android | Backend | Web | WordPress Integration
About The Client
Journal Métro is a Montreal newspaper published by Métro Média, with a team of journalists dedicated to local news in the metropolis. With its rich history, it has built a strong brand among Montrealers. It covers the local stories that larger newspapers, focused on national headlines and sensational news, tend to leave aside. Through the Metro newspaper app, that coverage reaches readers directly on their phones.
Project Overview
The Project
Métro Média is going through a major digital transformation and brought in Sidekick Interactive for its mobile app project. Our team developed native iOS and Android apps that let readers follow local news on their phone and receive alerts. The apps rely on the newspaper’s WordPress as their content management system, so authors keep writing in the WordPress editor they already use.
The Context
Before the COVID-19 crisis, Journal Métro was mainly a printed newspaper distributed in Montreal’s public transit. The crisis and environmental concerns made that model unsustainable, and the paper had to reinvent the way it reached readers.
Those readers were already used to the apps of the best-known newspapers around the world. Journal Métro’s local news app had to offer a different formula, with far more targeted information. Like many newspapers, Journal Métro already ran on WordPress, and the goal was to build on it rather than start a new project from scratch.
Challenges and Technical Constraints for a Local News App
The Challenge
WordPress runs the websites of many newspapers, but it isn’t built to serve as a mobile backend. An app can connect to it directly for the basics, yet the user experience remains limited. Organizing articles for a specific purpose, sending push notifications or designing custom categories, filters and buttons quickly becomes complicated.
The services that connect apps to WordPress add their own costs, and they depend on third parties that can stop working. The challenge was to give Journal Métro a native local news app fed by WordPress, without relying on those services.
Constraints
Use the existing WordPress as the CMS for the mobile apps
Display articles that each author formats in a different way
Organize local news by neighbourhood, not by broad area
Bring together content spread across internal teams and partners, including videos hosted by partners
Keep the app close to the look of the Journal Métro website
Our Approach and Solution for Converting a WordPress Site Into a Mobile App
A Mobile Backend That Works Alongside WordPress
Since WordPress isn’t designed for mobile, our team built a gateway that connects to the WordPress backend. It downloads the newspaper’s content and reformats it so the iOS and Android apps can use it. This mobile backend, developed in .NET on Azure, handles what WordPress can’t do well for an app, while each article remains a regular WordPress article on the newspaper’s side.
Translating Each Author's Articles Into Native Components
Journal Métro’s authors write in a rich WordPress editor, and their articles come out of WordPress as HTML. Instead of showing that web content in a window inside the app, we extracted only the components we wanted to display and translated them into native elements, including social media embeds.
Each author formats articles in their own way. Our team planned for every formatting possibility, so each article displays properly without forcing authors to change how they write. The UX/UI design stays close to the newspaper’s website.
Local News and Alerts by Neighbourhood
At Journal Métro, local news works at the neighbourhood level, not just across a broad zone. The newsroom assigns each article to a zone, and the app maps these zones as geographic polygons that follow Montreal’s neighbourhoods. Readers follow the news of their own area and receive alerts about it. They can also save articles to their favourites.
Bringing Partner Content Into One App
Métro Média brings together several internal teams, and part of its content sits with partners. Some partners host the newspaper’s videos, for example. The app aggregates these sources, so readers find articles and videos side by side.
Results and Benefits for Journal Métro's Local News App
Results
Journal Métro offers its readers a local news app on iOS and Android as part of its digital transformation. Readers follow their neighbourhood’s news on their phone, and each article keeps the formatting its author chose. Authors keep publishing in WordPress, and the mobile backend prepares the content for the apps.
For a newspaper, this approach makes it possible to convert a WordPress site into a mobile app with native rendering. WordPress stays in place, and no third-party connection service is needed.
Why Métro Média Chose Sidekick Interactive for Its Local News App
The project called for native iOS and Android development and a backend able to work with an existing WordPress site. Sidekick Interactive handled both, adapting the local news app to the tools Métro Média already used.
“Once again, we took on the challenge of developing a native mobile application while adapting and integrating it with the client’s existing tools.”
Liam Coughlin, Co-Founder, Sidekick Interactive
Sidekick Interactive's Expertise in News App Development
Publishers who want a mobile app often already have a WordPress site. Our news app development work starts with what that CMS can provide, then adds what the app needs, whether that means a dedicated mobile backend or a project built from scratch.
When a WordPress native mobile app is the right fit, we make sure content written for the web displays properly on a phone, even when it comes from many authors and partners. Our team develops native mobile apps for iOS and Android, along with the backend that connects them to existing tools.
