Abletech has been a trusted partner of RNZ for over 15 years, supporting the delivery of innovative digital solutions. Most recently, we partnered with RNZ to modernise the Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) authoring platform.

Stories first published on the LDR portal, then republished by media partners on their own websites.

What is Local Democracy Reporting?

The Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) programme is a free public-interest news service managed and funded by RNZ, with support from New Zealand On Air. As of September 2025, the programme brings together 16 reporters across Aotearoa, producing stories that collectively attract more than 1.1 million page views each month.

The challenge

The LDR programme had relied on a WordPress-based authoring platform for many years. The system had served reporters, editors, and media partners well, providing a familiar environment for creating and publishing content across Aotearoa. It supported daily workflows and enabled the programme to deliver high-quality, public-interest journalism to communities across the motu.

However, as the programme grew and digital requirements evolved, the platform’s limitations became more apparent. Running on an unsupported WordPress instance, it still functioned reliably but posed increasing challenges for stability, security, and scalability. Making enhancements, maintaining integrations, and ensuring long-term sustainability required more effort than was ideal.

The solution

Abletech partnered with RNZ to re-platform the LDR authoring tool on a modern, sustainable stack. The new solution leverages Sanity for content management and Next.js for a fast, flexible front-end experience. To integrate securely into RNZ’s wider ecosystem, the platform uses SSO for reporters and editors, enabling seamless logins, alongside a secure magic-link authentication mechanism that allows media partners from trusted news organisations to access the portal without a federated identity.

The platform includes enhanced workflow management and approvals, incorporating features that existed in processes, but were previously missing from the system. Automated notifications to newsrooms ensure media partners are alerted whenever stories are published in regions of interest to them.

The development followed an iterative, feedback-driven approach, using real content migrated from the legacy system to validate a prototype, and refine workflows before full deployment and rollout to LDR users. Beginning with discovery and planning, the team progressed through cycles of development, demonstrations, and feedback. Each iteration allowed the platform to be tested, improved and adjusted to better suit the needs of the reporters, editors and administrators, ensuring a smooth transition from the legacy system while optimising processes and functionality.

By combining modern technologies with tailored processes, the solution delivers a stable, secure, and user-friendly platform that empowers the LDR team to continue producing high-quality and public-interest journalism across Aotearoa.

What next?

By upgrading to a modern framework and toolset, the platform is now better positioned to support journalists in their work and to continue delivering trusted public-interest reporting at scale. The modernised architecture also provides a flexible foundation for future initiatives for LDR and RNZ. This allows the programme to expand its reach, integrate new tools, and experiment with innovative ways of engaging communities and sharing news.

The platform powering LDR articles combines modern technologies and streamlined workflows for reliable publishing. Get in contact with Abletech today to discuss building a content management solution like this for your team.

Learn more about the Local Democracy Reporting programme.