How News Unframed works

Methodology version 0.2 (draft) · September 26, 2026

News Unframed is a short daily briefing for readers in the U.S. who want to know what happened without reading several competing accounts of the same event. Each story has one factual headline, a short summary, and links to the original reporting underneath.

We aim for accuracy and restraint, not perfection. Choosing stories, grouping reports and wording summaries all involve judgment, and we can't guarantee neutrality. What we can do is show our sources and correct our mistakes in public.

What's in the briefing

The 15 most important events of the day, covering U.S. and major world news, in one list ranked from most to least important. The briefing is published around 7 AM and 4 PM Eastern time. The afternoon edition updates the morning one rather than adding 15 new stories. Every reader sees the same briefing. There's no personalization and no endless feed.

How stories are chosen

Each candidate event is weighed on five questions:

• How many people are affected, and how seriously?
• Does it change something concrete: a law, a market, a policy, a scientific finding?
• Is it a new development, rather than a repeat of what was already known?
• Does it matter to readers in the U.S.?
• Is it time-sensitive?

How often a story was shared and how many clicks it got are not part of the decision. Coverage by major wire services and by outlets across the political spectrum counts as a signal of importance, but a large number of articles alone can't put a story on the list. Each story shows a category label, but categories never set quotas: there's no requirement to include a story from any category or political perspective.

Where the reporting comes from

We draw on a fixed list of news organizations chosen to cover a range of perspectives, plus official records where they help establish a fact such as a vote count.

Perspective labels are provisional and will be checked against a current independent rating before launch. Some outlets are paywalled; when only an excerpt of an article was available to us, the story's source page says so.

What “sources” means

“12 sources” means 12 different news organizations whose reporting was used for that version of the story. It doesn't mean 12 independent confirmations: many outlets republish the same Associated Press or Reuters story, so a republished wire story is counted once, as the wire service. Articles we found but didn't use aren't counted.

Perspective labels

On each story's source page, articles are grouped as Left-leaning, Center or Right-leaning. Every outlet, including non-U.S. outlets such as the BBC, is placed on the same scale. The label describes the outlet overall, not the specific article, and says nothing about accuracy. An outlet we haven't rated is shown as Unrated, never as Center.

Some stories are covered mostly by one side of the spectrum. We show that as it is rather than hunting for balance that isn't there.

How summaries are written

The goal is simple: take one event, read what dozens of outlets reported, and state just the facts. Undisputed facts are stated plainly. Claims, estimates and figures that outlets disagree on are attributed to whoever made them. We don't adopt any outlet's angle, descriptive language or implied motives, and we prefer primary documents such as official fact sheets, court orders and transcripts where they exist.

An AI system drafts each headline and summary from the collected articles, following written rules: state what happened, attribute claims to whoever made them, keep uncertainty visible, and leave out analysis, predictions, motives and loaded language. A second automated check reviews each draft against the source articles. A human editor reviews and approves every edition before it's published.

Story labels

Each story carries one label describing the state of the reporting when it was published:

Confirmed (no label)

The core account is reported consistently by multiple outlets or established by an official record. No badge is shown.

Developing

The core event is established, but important details are still changing or incomplete.

Disputed

Credible reports conflict on an important part of the account. The summary describes the conflict.

Claim

The central point is an assertion that hasn't been independently verified. The headline and summary say who is making it.

A label reflects the reporting at the time, not a permanent verdict, and it changes only with new reporting, never just because time has passed. Separately, New marks a story added in the afternoon edition, and Updated marks a story whose facts changed since the previous edition.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we publish a corrected version and note what changed on the story and on the corrections page. Earlier versions stay available. A withdrawn story leaves an explanation in place instead of disappearing.

Changelog

• 0.2 (September 26, 2026): one ranked list of 15 stories; categories are labels, not sections.
• 0.1 (September 25, 2026): first draft.