Newsrooms need tending.
An editorial operations partner. We modernize your CMS, automate your pipelines, build your investigative tools, and migrate your IT. Patiently. Mostly invisibly.
Four services for newsrooms.
We extend, automate, instrument, and secure the systems your newsroom runs on. Whether it's fifteen years old or just spinning up, the work meets you where you are.
Newsroom modernization
CMS upgrades, custom plugins, editorial workflows (drafts, scheduling, multi-author review), multilingual content, subscriber surface, syndication. For when your CMS isn't keeping up with what your newsroom needs.
Read more →Editorial pipelines
Multi-source scrapers, AI content enrichment (direct Claude calls, no rate limits), newsletter, push, syndication out (RSS / Atom / Apple News), analytics + impact dashboards, republication tracking. Automation that runs your newsroom while editors sleep.
Read more →Investigative tools
Custom public dashboards (interactive maps, search, CSV export), government data preservation (scraping the datasets that get overwritten daily), embedded data visualization. The tools that turn investigative reporting into ongoing infrastructure.
Read more →Migrations & newsroom IT
Email and Workspace migrations (idempotent, dedup-by-design), CMS migrations, editorial-context security consulting (source protection, journalist safety, legal holds), and ongoing IT retainers, typically for newsroom teams of 10 to 30 people.
Read more →Quietly. Carefully. End-to-end.
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A 30-minute conversation.
Call it discovery if you want. We just call it a conversation. A few honest questions, no prep deck required.
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A written proposal, not a deck.
Scope, timeline, what it'll take. One document, three pages. No slides.
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Weekly deploys, not waterfall milestones.
Code in your repo, deploys to your staging, every week. You can pull the cord any time.
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Handoff, or a retainer. We're flexible.
Documentation in your repo. A walkthrough call. Three months of email support included. After that, take it from there yourself or keep us on retainer. Whichever fits your team.
Newsroom security isn't optional anymore.
Phishing, spyware, account takeovers, surveillance. The infrastructure your newsroom runs on is now a target, and your reporters are too. Here are the numbers from the last twelve months.
Assaults on US journalists, 2023 to 2024. From 45 incidents to 68.
Of unauthorized account-access attempts on journalists in 2024 succeeded. 20 of 32 reported cases.
Journalists and civil-society figures hit with Pegasus spyware in Jordan alone, through 2023.
Digital security cases handled by Access Now's 24/7 helpline in 2024. A record year.
The wave is rising globally. Your newsroom sits inside it, not outside it.
Global phishing attack volume, indexed to 2023. The 2024 step is gentle. The 2025 step is not.
This is why we treat security as the floor of every engagement we take on. Workspace migrations include MFA hardening and admin lockdown. Source-protection workflows get designed into editorial pipelines from day one. We don't sell "security packages" because security isn't a separate product. It's the way the work gets done.
Humans taking care of humans.
Anyone can write code. Anyone can run an email migration. Anyone can do the tech.
The part nobody else does is being close to the client the whole way through. A real human in your Slack channel. Someone you can call.
Not a ticket queue, not a chatbot, humans.
Talk to us →Based on a real-life event. We love you, Lupita.
Why choose Rainsystems?
Tech-savvy isn't enough. The hard part is finding people who are tech-savvy and newsroom-savvy. People who understand what "the Friday newsletter didn't send" really means, why it keeps happening, and what it actually costs the team. People who get how nonprofit boards operate, how donations and match campaigns play out in practice, how editorial deadlines actually move. We've spent enough time inside newsrooms to read that rhythm before we start writing code. That's the difference.
We're not sure what to fix first. Can you help us figure that out?
That's where a lot of newsroom engagements start. We run a short discovery, usually a week, where we sit with editors, engineers, and whoever's been building the work-arounds. We come back with a written scope, a content model sketch, and a timeline. You get a real plan for what's worth doing first, what comes later, and what can wait. Fixed fee for the week, no commitment beyond it.
How do we change our editors' workflow without breaking it?
By not asking them to abandon what's working. We start by mapping the current workflow, including the parts nobody documented. Then we build the new system to support those habits before opening it up anywhere the team wants more. Editors notice the change because it's better, not because they have to relearn everything.
What happens when an editor disables a plugin the site depends on?
You ping us in Slack. We look at what changed, figure out the dependency, and either flip the plugin back on or write a quick patch so the site survives without it. Then we send the editor a one-paragraph note about why it mattered, no shame attached. For retainer clients, that whole loop takes minutes. Without a retainer, same channel, same person you've been working with. No ticket queues, no chatbots, no triage line between you and the people who actually built the thing.
A letter we send when we have something to say.
No schedule. No retention metrics. Just an essay every few weeks when one feels ready to write — sent to the people who'd like to read it.
If this sounds like the kind of studio you've been looking for —
Tell us about your newsroom. We'll ask a few questions, you'll answer the ones that feel right, and we'll come back with an assessment and a call. No deck, no follow-up sequence.