Patrick Saliën, Manager at Belgium's Corelio, talked about the search for a working, effective CMS, during the eighth session of the 15th World Editors Forum.

Corelio is the biggest newspaper-publisher in Belgium. When the development of news websites alongside the paper edition started during the 90's, the situation was complelety new and almost improvised. In a few years time, however, the websites became a more serious business.
 
Managers weren't complaining anymore about the websites taking market space from the paper because money was flowing. Instead the journalists were complaining. Publishing a news story on the website had become a hassle since the IT-infrastructure hadn't been updated.
 
The need for a standardized content management system was clear.

Finding the best CMS for Corelio took 1,5 years. The final choice was Polopoly.
It is a flexible and open system that specialises in news sites and is built with a decent architecture prepared for web 2.0. Polopoly took centre position of the news process in Corelio providing paper, website and  mobile distribution.

Saliën mentioned some things that other publishers should consider when changing their CMS: there will undoubtedly be delays, it's a long-term investment, not a short-term and they shouldn't expect perfection; there will be problems and bugs.

In conclusion, be sure of the reasons why you think a new CMS is necessary, how it is supposed to be set to use, be prepared and competent enough to actually work with it and never forget that content is king.