Case study
A newsletter built from the newsroom’s own posts
- Client
- The Badger Project
- Year
- 2026
- Built
- Custom WordPress plugin (Mailchimp API)
- Context
- The Badger Project is a nonprofit investigative newsroom in Wisconsin. It publishes its reporting on the site and sends it out in a regular email newsletter.
- Problem
- Every issue meant rebuilding the same thing by hand in Mailchimp: copying each story’s headline, blurb, link, and image out of WordPress and laying it back out in the email, one article at a time. A standing tax on a small team, every single send.
- Approach
- I built a WordPress plugin that turns published posts into a finished Mailchimp draft. The editors pick the stories in the admin, add an intro, and the plugin assembles the newsletter, their sections, article blocks, and branding, then creates the campaign in Mailchimp through its API. They review and send the way they always have.
- Outcome
- The newsletter that used to be rebuilt from scratch each issue now starts as a finished draft in a click. It runs inside the site the newsroom already owns: no new subscription, no monthly fee, nothing else to learn.
