Level 2 · news entry and public facts

Enter the news through public facts

Find the news in a public document and give readers a clear reason to care, while staying precise about what has happened.

A proposal, a decision and a delivered service tell different stories. This course helps you identify the change a document establishes and write an opening that makes its significance understandable.

Course concept and original method: Bjørn Moe Aldema · Human adaptation and editorial development: Experimental Newsroom human–AI collaboration · Published by: Experimental Newsroom · First published: 2 September 2026 · Updated: 16 September 2026 · 18:49 CEST

You begin with one dated public document.

Start by identifying the issuer, date, version and type of document.

You produce a complete and testable news entry.

Produce a lead, a paragraph explaining its significance, a source-status sentence, an uncertainty line, a claim table and one rejected dramatic opening.

You should allow about 45 minutes for the course.

The exercise is short, but the source needs close reading. Explain both what it establishes and where its evidence ends.

You can inspect the course before registering

The six parts turn a public source into a news opening whose limits remain visible.

The preview introduces each stage. The full course includes the sequence, working table, deliberately overstated example and assessment criteria.

You freeze the source set before the story begins to expand.

Record enough information for another reader to find the same source: title, issuer, date, version, access date and document type. Establish whether you are reading a proposal, decision, plan or evaluation.

You choose the verified fact that carries a public consequence.

Identify the change beneath the institutional headline. It may concern an obligation, resource, timetable or person. Name the actor and consequence as precisely as the source allows.

You write a lead and a nut paragraph that perform different jobs.

The opening states the verified change. The following paragraph, often called the nut paragraph, explains why it matters, where the evidence comes from and what needs to be examined next.

You keep each claim close to the source or reasoning that carries it.

Keep the record's findings distinct from predictions, others' statements and your interpretation. Attribution should help the reader understand the basis of a claim.

You write one uncertainty line that can guide the next reporting action.

Choose the missing voice, provisional figure or unfinished step most likely to affect the story. Describe it precisely enough to guide further reporting.

You expose the dramatic lead that the document cannot support.

Write a persuasive overstatement deliberately, then identify the word that changes evidence into prediction or hides attribution. Use that comparison to find subtler versions of the same error in your draft.

TRY

You can try this exercise without registering

Write what one public source establishes and what it cannot establish.

Choose one public proposal, decision, plan, call, report or dataset. Record its identity so someone else can inspect exactly what you used.

Try the distinction on a small example

Fictional practice material: a council decision approves funding to extend library opening hours. It gives no start date and contains no attendance figures.

“The council has approved funding for longer library hours” states the decision. “Residents now have more time to use the library” goes further: it treats funding as an operating service. Before writing that second sentence, you would need to establish when the hours changed.

Use the same test on your own document. Identify the action it records, then ask what further evidence would show that the intended change reached the people concerned.

Write one complete sentence beginning, “This source establishes…”
Write one complete sentence beginning, “This source does not establish…”
Underline the word in each sentence that signals the document’s status, such as proposes, decides, reports or evaluates.

You finish by testing whether the grammar matches the evidence.

Check the verbs. Proposed, approved and delivered describe different stages. Make the wording fit the evidence before refining the rhythm.

The method keeps constructive reporting accountable

You examine the response, the evidence, the transferable insight and the limitation.

Follow what is being tried, its documented stage and what might be learned elsewhere. Keep the costs, limits and people affected in view.

Include other perspectives where they bring relevant knowledge or consequences into the account. Leave an absent person's opinion open until it has been documented.

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