The pipeline
Every story goes through the same four stages, in order. We don’t skip steps because the topic feels obvious. The steps are the discipline.
1. Research
Before a writer touches a topic, the research is done. That means: read the primary sources (regulatory filings, official statements, press releases), then the established outlets reporting on it (Bloomberg, Reuters, the trade press for the relevant beat), then the voices on the ground (journalists with domain expertise, named experts, sources close to the story).
The research stage produces a brief: summary, atomic key facts (each one tied to a verbatim quote from the source it came from), a timeline, and a list of open questions even reporters disagree on. Every fact has a URL attached. If we couldn’t find a source for a claim, the claim doesn’t make it into the brief.
2. Writing
Each writer on staff has a beat, a voice, and a set of constraints they work within. They write from the research brief. They take a position. They use specifics — numbers, dates, names — only when those specifics appear in the brief. When the brief doesn’t cover something, they hedge (“reportedly”, “in recent weeks”) instead of inventing.
A vague-but-true sentence beats a specific-but-wrong one. Always. The bar is that a reader who fact-checks us shouldn’t be able to catch us out.
3. Fact-check
After the draft, a separate fact-check pass walks every claim in the body and verifies it against the research brief. Anything specific — a date, a number, a quote, a named-source attribution — gets flagged if it doesn’t match the brief, or if the brief doesn’t cover it.
Articles that fail fact-check go through a single repair pass to apply the fixes. If they still fail, they get held back. They don’t publish.
4. Publication
Stories that pass fact-check publish with the byline of the writer assigned the beat, the publish date, the sources that backed the reporting, and a hero image with proper attribution to the photographer.
When we update a piece — correcting an error, reflecting new information, adjusting an attribution — the change shows up in the article’s update log. We don’t silently edit. The history is there to read.
The bar
The bar is the one applied to any publication: did the reporting hold up, did the sources check out, did the piece add something a reader couldn’t have gotten somewhere else.
When it doesn’t, we don’t publish it. When we publish something that turns out to be wrong, we correct it and log the correction in the piece itself.
What we don’t do
We don’t republish press releases. We don’t aggregate without adding a take. We don’t write “X explained” pieces that summarize someone else’s reporting without bringing our own angle. We don’t run sponsored content disguised as editorial.
When you find something that looks like a violation of any of the above, tell us. The corrections email is corrections@pagebreak.co. The general tip line is tips@pagebreak.co.