Research on ‘digital’ journalism has focused largely on online news, with comparatively less interest in the longer-term implications of software and computational technologies. Drawing upon a six-year study of the Toronto Star, this paper provides an account of TOPS, an in-house web content management system (CMS) which served as the backbone of thestar.com for six years. For some, TOPS was a successful software innovation, while for others, a strategic digital ‘property’. But for most journalists, it was slow, deficient in functionality, aesthetically unappealing and cumbersome. Although several organizational factors can explain TOPS’ obstinacy, I argue for particular attention to the complex ontology of software. Based on an outline of this ontology, I suggest software be taken seriously as an object of journalism, which implies: acknowledging its partial autonomy from human use or authorization; accounting for its ability to mutate indefinitely; and analyzing its capacity to encourage forms of ‘computational thinking
