Emergency Mode for News
Emergency Mode for News supports journalists before, during and after climate disasters. We partnered with the Emergency Mode for News team on 0-1 product definition and design, brand identity and website development.
From static playbook to “action pack”
Emergency Mode for News is an editorial and operational resilience program designed to help news and information providers before, during and after a climate disaster. A collaboration between OpenNews, Newspack, and NC Local, Emergency Mode for News was made possible through an infrastructure grant from Press Forward, a national initiative to reimagine local news.
When the Emergency Mode for News team kicked off work in fall 2024, they had a clear idea of the problem to solve. Journalists and the communities they serve face more frequent climate disasters. Storms are worsening. And they’re not always the “expected” disasters. This came into sharp relief during Hurricane Helene, which caused massive, lasting destruction in Western North Carolina.
The team had originally outlined a collaborative program with disaster training, technical tools newsrooms could deploy during an emergency and a “playbook” of best practices. Yet initial research made it clear that playbooks, at least as they’ve been created historically, didn’t really work for this use case. Journalists looking down the literal eye of the storm do not have time or inclination to download a 100-page PDF.
Over a two-day design sprint in New Orleans, we explored a different approach, one that could help newsrooms “run plays,” not just learn abstract concepts. We led the team through a series of exercises to define our terms (what do we mean by a disaster?) and think through the experience of newsroom “planners” — the people that everyone looks to in a crisis — and newsroom “activators,” the people that have to spring to action in real time. We coalesced around the idea of an “action pack” — a customizable package of editorial and operational support that could help newsrooms before, during and after a climate disaster.
Collectivist(s)
Abby Reimer and Jessica Gilbert
Year
2025-2026
“Abby and the team at The Composition Collective helped our three organizations turn experience and ideas into a functional MVP and provided a coordination layer that we didn't know we needed.
Building experimental programs from scratch and on short timelines is always a challenge, and I only wish we had brought them into our program design sooner.”
Jessica Morrison, OpenNews Co-Director
Scoping & prototyping
Coming out of the design sprint, we defined a strategic roadmap, built an interactive, AI-assisted prototype to guide build-out and broke the initial strategy into a detailed build plan.
We worked collaboratively and iteratively with the Emergency Mode team to design, build, launch and iterate on a new website and custom features within the Newspack ecosystem.
Collectivists
Abby Reimer, Marian Chia-Ming Liu and Tiff Fehr
Flexible brand identity
Our brand system prioritized simple graphics and scalability across platforms. Brand elements avoided specific association with climate disasters to ensure the team could scale the program to include other forms of emergency preparedness. We also designed a flexible set of social templates to support social-native storytelling outside the website.
Collectivist(s)
Holly Braford
Website design & build
Program hub website
Emergency Mode’s website serves as a hub for all things emergency preparedness. We primarily used core Newspack functionality to ensure easy maintenance for current and future program members. We were able to extend the functionality of Newspack through a small set of plugins and custom styling.
The quiz has three “paths” for journalists focused on preparation before, immediate needs during or recovery after a disaster. At the end, they receive a list of specific, recommended items in their Action Pack.
Custom “action pack” feature
Emergency Mode’s ‘action pack’ feature a customizable package of editorial and operational support. Backed by an assessment, which can be completed in five minutes or less, the Action Pack is a personalized set of emergency resources, templates and tools for journalists.
Custom recommendation algorithm
We developed a custom content recommendation engine to match users with recommended set of resources based on their action pack assessment answers. All our code is open and integrates with Newspack, so it can adapt for other challenges, like elections and other large scale news events.
The path forward
We created robust training materials and go-forward documentation that outlines a path to maintaining and improving the Emergency Mode for News over time, informed by usability interviews and analytics analysis.
The team will continue to release new tools and resources to meet journalists' needs over the coming year, including two free WordPress-based plugins for newsrooms. Together, these plugins ensure news organizations can maintain reach and access when bandwidth is severely compromised.
Rolling Coverage: a high-performance, reporter-friendly plugin to meet liveblogging needs
Lite Sites: a resilient, text-only “mini-site” plugin for low-connectivity emergencies