Guides
Understand how media, newsrooms and the flow of information actually work, explained simply.
How do you spot fake news?
Effective false information is rarely a big lie: far more often it's a displaced truth. The mechanisms behind it, the markers to look for and the reflexes that defuse them.
How do you verify information?
Get back to the source, date it, cross-check, identify who's speaking: the method newsrooms use, turned into simple steps you can run yourself.
How does a newsroom work?
News conference, desks, subbing, deadline: the path a story takes from the first alert through to publication, and exactly who decides what at each step of the chain.
How does Google Discover work?
Discover is a feed with no query: it suggests before you ask. How it differs from search, why its traffic is volatile, and what nobody outside knows.
How does Google News work?
Google News aggregates, clusters and ranks articles it doesn't produce. What is actually known about how it works, and what no publisher can promise you.
Reuters, AP and AFP: the differences
Three global agencies, three histories and three very different ownership structures. What actually separates them, beyond the flag on the business card.
The difference between a dispatch and an article
A dispatch is a wholesale product written for newsrooms; an article is written for you. Two objects, two authors, two uses — and how to tell them apart.
The difference between news and information
Not everything is information, and not all information is news. A simple distinction that explains how you can follow everything and understand nothing.
What is a digital media outlet?
Publishing online changes the rhythm, the funding and the reader relationship — not the rules of journalism. What digital really transforms, and what it leaves alone.
What is a media outlet?
A media outlet isn't just a website or a paper: it's an organisation that gathers, checks, ranks and publishes. The definition, the functions and the limits of the word.
What is a news agency?
News agencies write for newsrooms, not for you — and yet they supply a huge share of what you read. Their role, their customers and how they work.
What is a newspaper?
Periodicity, front-page hierarchy, separation of fact and opinion: what defines a newspaper lies in its organisation, not in its paper. Here's how it works.