Case Study: The Times achieves real-time newsroom collaboration and dramatically fewer emails and meetings with Slack

Bridging team communication in the newsroom

The Times and The Sunday Times’ digital strategy and development team set out to modernize a legacy newsroom but faced fragmented, slow communication: follow-ups from daily editorial meetings happened via one‑to‑one emails or desk chats, a daily 30‑minute huddle felt unproductive and micromanaging, and teams were split across floors. The group needed a faster, more transparent way to share progress and collaborate across departments.

They adopted Slack and integrated it with existing tools (Bitbucket, JIRA, Trello, Google Drive/Calendar, Twitter), moving many discussions into public channels so managers could check progress without interrupting work. Email use dropped dramatically, check‑in meetings fell by nearly two thirds, 40% of conversations became public, and editorial teams began using Slack to track stories — boosting efficiency while making day‑to‑day collaboration more transparent and personable.

The Times

Matthew Taylor

Digital Production Editor