Pew Research Center is one of the world’s most trusted voices on data and insight. But in a landscape where LLMs summarize and repackage content instantly, Pew saw a new challenge: if audiences never visit the site, how can the work have impact?
“The challenge in this LLM-first world is getting people to actually visit your site. Simple articles won’t cut it. It has to be faster, more engaging, and tailored.”
— Seth Rubenstein, Head of Engineering, Pew Research Center
The Challenge
Static content wasn’t enough
Pew’s mission depends on people engaging with their content directly — not just skimming a summary. But building interactive products like quizzes and maps used to take weeks of coding, requiring significant developer time.
This slowed down publishing, increased costs, and left little room for innovation. If Pew wanted to stand out in an AI-dominated future, they needed a way to make interactive content easy to create, repeat, and scale.
The Solution
A block-first approach with WordPress VIP
In 2022, Rubenstein rebuilt Pew’s digital foundation from the ground up with WordPress VIP, embracing what he calls a “block-first perspective.” By treating everything as a block, Pew unlocked scalability, flexibility, and faster publishing.
“Great websites today are highly interactive with WordPress — both with what comes out of the box, and what you can build yourself. It’s not just a CMS. You can build anything on it.”
— Seth Rubenstein, Head of Engineering, Pew Research Center
With this approach:
- Quizzes that once took a month of custom code can now be built in minutes by editors and designers.
- Content can be personalized across the site, including inside interactive products.
- Publishing cadence has accelerated, freeing developers to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.
“Now that it’s visual, editors and designers can do it themselves. The investment is low, but the long-tail traffic is huge.”
— Seth Rubenstein, Head of Engineering, Pew Research Center
The Results
Faster publishing, lower costs, richer experiences
The shift has been transformational:
- Production time for interactive content dropped from weeks to minutes.
- Developers freed from routine CMS maintenance to focus on building interactive tools like quizzes, maps, and databases.
- Higher publishing cadence, with more engaging formats that can’t be summarized away by AI.
- Lower cost per click thanks to long-tail traffic from evergreen interactive content.
“We have a higher publishing cadence now, and it’s freed my team to build all sorts of amazing things. There’s only one CMS that is the whole toolbox for you — and also invites you to open it up, change it, make it your WordPress.”
— Seth Rubenstein, Head of Engineering, Pew Research Center
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