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Editorial Formula

"The transcript is raw material; the formula is yours. We just run the still."

Lee Brown

Software turns a public meeting into a news story. That part is mechanical. But someone decides what the software looks for, what it weighs most and how it frames the stakes. Those are editorial choices. This page shows you where each kind of choice is made.

It does not list the current settings for each choice. The editorial team keeps those in working documents and keeps improving them. The structure on this page stays the same while the settings change, as the team learns what makes stronger journalism from primary sources. We keep the two apart on purpose.

Four layers#

Every article you read is shaped by four layers of editorial decisions. Each layer handles a different kind of choice.

4. The six principles. 3. A brief for each community. 2. Standards for every newsroom. 1. The pipeline.

1. The pipeline#

This is the mechanical path from a public meeting to a draft. It takes no side on content. It transcribes the meeting, names the speakers and sorts what was said. It pulls out facts and quotes, writes the draft from them and checks the result. Every draft passes an automated review before it can publish, and editors review nearly every article, most after it goes live. How It Works walks through it step by step. It is the same for every newsroom on the platform.

2. Standards for every newsroom#

Some editorial rules apply to every newsroom on the platform. The platform team keeps these rules and gives them to each newsroom as defaults. A newsroom can change a rule if its community has a reason to. It can also choose how strictly each rule is enforced.

This layer covers the editorial discipline that should hold everywhere, whatever community is being covered. The exact rules at any moment are private to the editorial team that keeps them, and they change over time.

3. A brief for each community#

Each newsroom keeps a brief written for its own readers and its own place. The brief tells the drafting and coverage software who the readers are. It says what they already know and how to explain what is at stake for them.

Briefs differ because communities differ. Alaska News covers Alaska. A future newsroom in another state will write for different readers who know different things. The brief is where that difference lives. Each community's brief is private to the editorial team that keeps it.

4. The six principles#

Above the other three layers sit six lasting editorial commitments. They are broad enough to hold steady while the layers below them change. Every rule and every brief answers to them in the end.

1. Public Impact First. 2. Accountability. 3. Proportional Representation. 4. Preserve Tension. 5. Local Context. 6. Uncertainty Explicit.
  1. Public Impact First. What changes residents' daily lives gets the most weight.
  2. Accountability. Every claim traces to its source.
  3. Proportional Representation. Each perspective is kept, not flattened into false equivalence.
  4. Preserve Tension. When statements conflict, the conflict stays visible. It is not editorially resolved.
  5. Local Context. A story is grounded in its own community, not in generic framing.
  6. Uncertainty Explicit. A claim without evidence is labeled a claim, not a fact. Refusals are visible.

Each principle is put into practice in one or more of the layers below it. This page states the commitment. How each one is carried out today lives in those layers.

Why this page describes structure#

Most newsrooms publish a standards page that lists their current positions. Those pages are often defensive. They exist to answer charges of bias. They also go out of date, because the real practice moves as editors learn.

This page describes where and how editorial choices get made, not what the current settings are. That way you can understand the whole system, and the page stays accurate as the settings change. It will not turn into an old snapshot.

If you want to see the current settings at work, read the journalism. Every article on a Communities News newsroom is all four layers applied to one public meeting in one community. The article is the evidence. This page is the frame.

That evidence is also measured in public. The Alaska Media Bias Scorecard scores our newsroom and Alaska's other outlets every day with a blinded panel, our weakest scores included.

What this means for new community newsrooms#

Every newsroom on the platform uses the same four layers and answers to the same six principles. The details differ from one newsroom to the next. Each community has its own readers, its own recurring issues and its own stakes. The structure that holds those details together stays the same.

When a new community starts a newsroom with Communities News, it gets the first two layers: the pipeline and the standards for every newsroom. The new newsroom writes its own community brief. The six principles guide both.