How to find, check and pick what's worth writing about.
Guides on monitoring a beat, sourcing a story, finding an angle and keeping your voice. Evergreen, structurally cited, organized by the question you're working on.
Start with a question
Each pillar answers one question a working writer asks. Pick yours.
What should I write about this week?
20 guides →Finding your angleHow do I find an angle no one else has?
8 guides →Sources & credibilityWhere do I find original material no one else is using?
19 guides →Sounding like youHow do I keep my voice and not sound like generic AI?
5 guides →Every guide
Newest first. Filter by pillar.
Decide When a Story Should Not Become a Short Post
Use a dependency check to decide what can stand alone, what needs a companion explanation and what should stay in its original form.
Does Your Niche Have Enough Evidence to Become a Beat?
Test a proposed beat for a recurring reader decision, accessible evidence and meaningful change before committing to a publication rhythm.
Read SBIR and STTR Awards as Research Records
Use award data to investigate a technical question while separating awarded funding, research goals and demonstrated commercial results.
Use a Two-Sentence Pitch to Decide What to Report Next
A short pitch template that joins a reader decision to an evidence path, with examples of what to report, narrow, update or park.
Turn an Interesting Angle Into a Reported Claim
Use an evidence ladder to separate a promising interpretation from a finding you can support, then set a clear drafting threshold.
Read an arXiv Preprint Without Turning It Into a Verdict
A preprint reporting worksheet for checking versions, methods, comparisons and limitations before translating a research claim for readers.
Build a Standing File That Makes the Next Story Easier
Keep a beat question, source record, timeline and unresolved checks together. This standing-file template preserves context without hoarding links.
Find the Follow-Up Story in Your Own Reporting
Track promises, open questions and expected events after publication. A follow-up worksheet helps distinguish a real update from a recycled take.
Map a Publication Archive to Find Your Own Reporting Gap
Use an archive matrix to compare reader questions and evidence, then choose a reporting gap you can serve without copying another publication.
Read a Nonprofit Form 990 Before Writing the Story
Compare a nonprofit tax return with its narrative, reporting period and related records. Use a worksheet that avoids misleading expense comparisons.
Use FOIA Logs to Find Questions, Then Find the Records
A FOIA log shows what someone requested. Use this worksheet to follow a request into released records without treating it as proof of an allegation.
Read Job Postings as Evidence of a Question Worth Asking
Track changes in role descriptions without treating advertised positions as confirmed hires, team size or a guaranteed product roadmap.
Use Google Trends to Investigate Interest, Not Invent Demand
A comparison worksheet for checking search terms, geography and time windows before turning a Google Trends chart into an editorial claim.
Build a Human Source Network You Can Report From
An interview worksheet for finding firsthand knowledge, agreeing attribution and checking accounts without treating people as quote suppliers.
Turn Reader Questions Into a Reporting Queue
A practical question log for separating individual support requests, recurring reader decisions and claims that need independent reporting.
When Your Beat Stops Producing Useful Questions
Use a short editorial audit to distinguish a quiet reporting period from a beat whose question, audience or source access needs to change.
Read Lobbying Disclosures Without Inventing a Motive
A reporting worksheet for matching lobbying clients, issues and reporting periods while keeping spending totals separate from individual bills.
Why Your AI-Assisted Drafts Keep Taking the Same Shape
Audit repeated openings, arguments and endings across your drafts. Change the brief and evidence before polishing individual sentences.
Use Community Discussions to Find Questions Worth Reporting
Turn forum conversations into a question log without mistaking a visible discussion for a representative sample of your audience.
Read Patent Applications Without Inventing a Product Roadmap
Use patent records to investigate a technical problem, with a worksheet that separates a published application from a product promise.
How to Read a Federal Court Docket for Your Beat
Track complaints, responses, motions and orders without treating allegations as findings. Includes a docket log and free-access limitations.
Build a Voice Brief From Decisions You Actually Made
Turn your archive into a practical voice brief: positions, evidence standards, recurring phrasing and examples of what you would change.
Use a LinkedIn Post to Test a Reporting Question
A short post can expose missing context before you draft. Read the replies as reporting leads, with a worksheet that avoids treating reach as proof.
How to Check a Health Story Against ClinicalTrials.gov
Compare a study announcement with its registered outcomes, record history and results. A reporting worksheet that keeps the clinical limits visible.
Find the Recurring Question Behind Your Beat
Use a three-piece audit to connect varied interests without making an unlimited promise to readers. Includes a reusable beat statement.
Build a Content Mix Around Reader Jobs
Replace arbitrary posting ratios with a coverage audit: what changed, what needs explaining, and what readers still cannot decide.
How to Read Defense Contract Awards Without Inflating the Number
Separate contract ceilings, obligations and payments before writing the headline. A source worksheet for defense and government-contracting creators.
How to Turn Congress.gov Records Into a Reportable Story
Follow bill text, actions and cosponsors without confusing attention with passage. A bill-tracking worksheet for political creators.
How to Read Earnings Calls for Stories Beyond the Results
Compare the question, the answer, and the filing. A practical worksheet for finding a business story in an earnings call without guessing at motives.
Voice isn't a prompt problem. It's a beat-definition problem.
AI prose reads interchangeable because the beat behind it has no inclusion or exclusion criteria. The fix isn't a sharper prompt. It's a defined beat with a ref
What FEC Filings Tell Political Creators That Press Releases Never Will
The campaign press release is the story they want filed. FEC and Congress.gov records hold the one they don't. Three public-record cross-joins to run before you
Content Strategy Teaches One Newsworthiness Test. Journalism Uses Six.
Content strategy teaches trending and novelty. Journalism uses six news values. Here are all six, with a creator-context analogue for each, and why selecting on
Your prompt has no sources. That's why the output has no voice.
AI writing sounds the same because the prompt has no sources, not because the persona is wrong. Why named specifics loaded before the draft are what make the ou
Journalists have a word for 'worth covering.' Solo publishers have a feeling.
Journalism named the screen for what's worth covering decades ago. Turn six newsworthiness criteria into a kill filter for your weekly queue, with a two-fail th
You don't have a scrolling problem. You have a beat problem.
Staying current without doom-scrolling is not a willpower problem. It is a missing beat. Name your territory, pick your sources, and the feed gets a stop condit
Every niche has primary sources. Most creators have never used one.
A secondary source reports what happened. A primary source is where it happened. A repeatable method for finding the database, filing, or dataset your niche com
Before the Calendar: The Weekly Editorial Decision Most Solo Publishers Skip
An editorial calendar tells you when to ship, not whether to. The 20-minute weekly ritual that decides what earns a slot, what gets killed, and what holds.
How to Find Your Angle When Everyone in Your Niche Just Covered the Same Story
Five angles for niche creators stuck in a crowded story moment: personal stake, counterintuitive read, proximate example, data point, and so-what reframe. Each
The editorial scan has a stop condition. Your feed does not.
Why solo publishers who ship every week run a bounded editorial scan with a defined beat list and a stop condition, instead of an open feed that eats the mornin
The Solo Publisher's Beat Sheet Is Not a Calendar
A scheduling grid tells you when to publish. It cannot tell you what territory you cover, how often you revisit it, or which angles you have already claimed. Th
Your Beat Doesn't Need 40 Tabs. It Needs Three Sources and a Kill Threshold.
The solo publisher's research problem is triage, not access. A three-layer beat-monitoring stack and the kill threshold that gets you to two owned stories, not
Your AI draft sounds like everyone else's because your story selection does too
AI drafts sound the same because creators pick the same stories and angles, not because of the prompt. The fix is upstream editorial judgment, not better instru
Wikipedia Traffic Spikes Are a Newsroom Early-Warning System
A sharp Wikipedia pageview spike usually leads the news by 24 to 72 hours, not follows it. How creators read the readership tell to find story leads before they
What SEC Filings Tell Content Creators That Press Releases Never Will
A reproducible method for finance-adjacent creators to mine 8-K, DEF-14A, and 10-Q filings on SEC EDGAR for story leads that beat the press release and the earn
You don't have a topic problem. You have a beat problem.
Newsletters that never run dry didn't find more ideas. They committed to a beat: named primary sources on a narrow slice of the world, checked on a schedule.
Angle Ownership: How to Claim a Story Before You Start Writing
Why newsletters covering the same news read identically, and how a pre-writing position lets you arrive with an angle instead of discovering one on deadline.
How to build an editorial calendar with AI
Seven-step editorial calendar method: define beat, set cadence, identify pillars, schedule signal scans, review weekly, draft + queue, track monthly.
How to find content story angles
Six-step method for framing the same story sharper than everyone else: identify story → name existing frame → propose framings → evaluate → pick → draft.
How does AI pick news stories?
AI picks news stories via four steps: gather signal, cluster by event, rank on relevance/recency/source-diversity/audience-fit, surface ranked menu.
What is content provenance?
Content provenance traces published content back to sources, creator, tools. C2PA covers images/video; source-driven verifier patterns cover AI text.
What is signal-driven content?
Signal-driven content starts from raw primary sources (regulatory filings, legislative records, academic preprints), not trending topics. Five-step pipeline exp
What is editorial intelligence?
Editorial intelligence is the layer of judgment between raw signal and finished content. It picks the story worth writing, not just types what you ask.
Niche finds and checks the stories. You and your agent write.
Niche follows your field and emails you a short briefing: the stories independent sources back up, why they matter, the sources. Weekly email free; daily with Pro.