As If Pictures: designing the newsroom workflows the industry actually needs
For decades, newsroom technology has often asked journalists to adapt to systems, rather than the other way around. Broadcast teams have worked around rigid workflows, duplicated effort across departments, and technology decisions shaped by legacy assumptions about how stories should move from idea to air.
The result is familiar across the industry, too many clicks, too many silos, too much friction, and too little time spent on the work that matters most, telling stories.
That is the opportunity at the heart of the partnership between Saga and As If Pictures, designing the newsroom workflows that the industry actually needs.
As If Pictures works with broadcasters and media organizations to rethink workflows from the ground up, sitting between editorial, technology, and operational teams to help redesign how newsrooms actually function.
“We define ourselves as the glue between technology, editorial, the journalists, and the users,” says Hossein Sharif, Director at As If Pictures.
Saga, as a story-centric newsroom platform, shares the same core belief: modern journalism needs modern workflows, not legacy processes recreated in a newer interface.
A shared view of newsroom transformation
The relationship between Saga and As If Pictures began through workflow analysis.
As If Pictures was working with a broadcaster facing long time-to-air challenges. Editorial teams were spending too much time navigating systems, repeating tasks, and clicking through processes that had little to do with journalism.
In one workflow study, even a simple graphics pass involved an excessive number of manual steps, a clear sign that the technology stack was shaping the newsroom’s behavior in the wrong way.
The search for a better approach led As If Pictures to evaluate newsroom systems across the market. What stood out about Saga was not only what the platform could do, but what the team behind it was determined not to do.
“What attracted us to Saga was not only what the platform could do, but what the team was determined not to do: replicate the legacy systems and workflows the industry has been trying to move beyond,” says Sharif.
Saga was not trying to recreate legacy newsroom computer systems in the cloud. It was not trying to preserve old assumptions with a modern wrapper. Instead, the product philosophy was aligned with a deeper shift, moving newsrooms toward story-centric workflows where teams can collaborate around the story itself, rather than around disconnected platforms, handoffs, and departmental silos. For As If Pictures, that mattered.
Beyond software – changing how work happens
A story-centric workflow is not simply a product feature. It is an operational mindset.
Traditional broadcast environments often separate work into narrow roles, systems, and departments. Planning, writing, video, graphics, publishing, and production may all involve different teams working in parallel often on the same story, but not necessarily in the same shared context.
That structure creates friction. Media may be ingested multiple times by different people in the same building. Teams may struggle to see what already exists. Journalists may wait on manual steps before they can move forward. A single piece of content may travel through multiple systems before it reaches an audience.
“As If Pictures approaches this problem by looking at the whole workflow from editorial structure, metadata, roles, technology, change management, and long-term adoption. The goal is not to run a training session and leave, but to help organizations understand how work should move, who needs to collaborate, what information needs to be visible, and where technology can remove unnecessary steps,” says Sharif.
Saga fits into that model because it is built around the story as the central object of work. Instead of forcing teams to operate around separate outputs or platforms, Saga enables planning, creation, collaboration, and publishing to happen in one shared environment.
Design before deploying
One of the most central ideas from As If Pictures’ approach is also one of the simplest: design the workflow before committing to the tools. Before a newsroom invests in new systems, As If Pictures encourages teams to map their processes so they can see how work actually moves through the organization. That includes understanding metadata, handoffs, roles, pain points, and the long-term operational model.
This matters because technology alone cannot fix a broken workflow. A new platform implemented around old habits can still leave teams with duplicated effort, poor adoption, and underused capabilities.
But when transformation is treated as a long-term structural investment, not a short-term replacement, the results can be significant.
Across major newsroom transformation projects, As If Pictures has helped organizations identify millions in annual operational savings, remove unnecessary process complexity, and simplify workflows at scale.
In one project, workflow redesign uncovered $23.5 million in annual savings. In another, automation templates were reduced from 4,500 to 450 in just 20 days — a 90% reduction that made the system easier to manage, maintain, and improve.
For teams working in legacy environments, those gains are not just about efficiency. They create the conditions for faster adoption, clearer collaboration, and more time spent on editorial work instead of system work.
Newsroom transformation is not about buying more tools. It is about building a clearer, more sustainable way of working.
Moving the industry forward
The media industry does not need more technology that asks people to work around it.
It needs systems, workflows, and partnerships that reduce friction, support editorial creativity, and give teams more time for journalism. That requires both product innovation and operational change, the technology to support new ways of working, and the expertise to help organizations adopt them successfully.
“Newsrooms do not need more technology that forces people to bend around the system,” adds Sharif. “They need workflows designed around the way stories are actually made.”
That is where Saga and As If Pictures meet. Both organizations are focused on helping broadcasters move away from siloed, legacy workflows and toward a more connected, story-centric model. Not as a cosmetic upgrade, but as a meaningful change in how modern newsrooms are designed.
Because the future of newsroom transformation is not just about what software can do.
It is about what journalists can do when the workflow finally works for them.
Learn more about As If Pictures here: https://www.asifpictures.com/