Broadsheet

Broadsheet's existing platform was built on Django — a framework that had served them well but was reaching its limits as the business evolved. New editorial workflows and product requirements, including the ability to implement a content paywall, could not be supported by the legacy system. The publication needed to move to a modern CMS that could handle structured content, flexible editorial workflows, and monetisation features — without disrupting a high-traffic, content-rich site that had been publishing daily since 2009. A critical part of this transition was the content layer itself. Over a decade of editorial content existed in markdown and HTML formats. To support the new block-based editing system in Directus, this content needed to be converted into structured JSON — preserving formatting, media embeds, and editorial intent across thousands of published articles.

We were brought in as specialist contributors to the broader migration effort, responsible for four high-impact deliverables.

Full frontend reconstruction. This was the core of the engagement. We rebuilt Broadsheet's entire production frontend — from the legacy Django + React application to a new Next.js codebase. Every article template, venue listing, city landing page, navigation flow, search interaction, and editorial layout was reimplemented from scratch in a modern React framework. This wasn't a facelift. It was a full-parity migration of a site that serves 1 million readers a month across six Australian city editions — with zero tolerance for feature gaps, because Broadsheet publishes daily and their audience notices everything.

Content editing architecture. We implemented a block-based editing system within Directus CMS that replaced the old markdown workflow with flexible, composable content blocks — a foundation that supports not just better editorial workflow, but allows for more types of content to be published easily by the editorial team.

Content conversion. We built the pipeline that transformed Broadsheet's existing markdown and HTML body content into the structured JSON format the new block editor demands. A structural transformation of years of editorial output, handled with zero tolerance for content loss.

Performance and cost optimisation. At 1 million visits per month, every unnecessary API call to the CMS costs money and adds latency. We implemented a Redis caching layer that ensures frequently accessed content is served from memory, dramatically reducing the volume of API requests hitting the CMS backend. Lower infrastructure costs, faster page delivery — at exactly the scale where both matter most.

The result: Broadsheet now runs on a modern, performant, extensible stack that supports the features their legacy system couldn't.