"Ask anyone who works on the editorial or design side of a media Web site what the worst part of their job is. After they exhaust themselves on the number of hours they work and how little their options are now worth, talk often turns to the publishing tools they use to manage their site and how much they hate them."

"Tribune Interactive, which runs chicagotribune.com, is in the process of moving off Vignette to a home-grown platform, as is CNet itself. Similarly, washingtonpost.com is said to be walking away from a reported seven-figure investment in customizing the FutureTense product (now owned by OpenMarket) in favor of a system its employees and contractors are building. ''We couldn't wait for them to fix all the problems anymore,'' says one person familiar with the washingtonpost.com decision to build its own system. ''There are profound holes in their system, like workflow, which is the most important part of a content-management system. I mean, come on already.''

The head of product development at one New York-based media site who has supervised development on both homegrown and packaged systems says: ''These programs are huge, expensive and about as useless and clumsy as you can imagine. Never again, I promise you.''

"''We're extremely committed to the Vignette platform,'' says an Internet CEO to me a year ago who had recently signed a large six-figure check for the system. ''What does the Vignette platform do?'' I asked him. After an uncomfortable 10 seconds, he moved his hands in circles and said, ''You know, puts the stuff up.'"'