Sample investigations · illustrative
From a headline to a dossier.
Four worked examples of one record, followed from a news headline to the sources behind it, a six-axis audit, an impact matrix and a sealed dossier. All four are invented.
Details: What these examples are
What these examples are
Four worked examples
Four worked examples of one record, followed end to end: the headline, the sources behind it, the six-axis audit, the impact matrix and the sealed dossier.
Illustrative These are invented examples. They describe no real client, event or organisation, and the figures are samples.
01 Examples
Four stories, four kinds of work.
A news desk, a compliance team, a researcher and an analyst each follow one claim to its source. Scroll to open each example, then read the one that is closest to your work.
Newsrooms
One closed port, fourteen reports
A desk editor has an hour to say what is known about a port closure. Fourteen reports say it in different words. Three of them are origins.
Risk and compliance
A supplier rumour, traced to one post
A compliance analyst sees a regional supplier named in forty items. The record shows they all lead back to a single unattributed post.
Research and education
Two harvest figures, one season
A research team needs a defensible number. A ministry and a trade body publish different totals, and the press picks whichever it met first.
Investors
A rate hint, repeated forty times
An analyst sees a central bank comment travel across the wires. The record shows it came from one interview, with the hedge left out of most copies.
Details: All four examples, with their numbers
All four examples, with their numbers
One closed port, fourteen reports
Newsrooms. A desk editor has an hour to say what is known about a port closure. Fourteen reports say it in different words. Three of them are origins.
- Reports ingested: 14
- in the first three hours
- Independent origins: 3
- of the fourteen
- Primary documents: 1
- a posted notice
- Contested axes: 2
- where and why
Sample record 7A-D-000731. Read it
A supplier rumour, traced to one post
Risk and compliance. A compliance analyst sees a regional supplier named in forty items. The record shows they all lead back to a single unattributed post.
- Items repeating it: 40
- across eleven days
- Independent origins: 1
- an unattributed post
- Primary documents: 0
- none linked
- Unmarked edits: 3
- to the lead item
Sample record 7A-D-000802. Read it
Two harvest figures, one season
Research and education. A research team needs a defensible number. A ministry and a trade body publish different totals, and the press picks whichever it met first.
- Reports ingested: 23
- over six days
- Independent origins: 2
- ministry and trade body
- Primary documents: 2
- both tables linked
- Gap between totals: 9%
- explained in part by method
Sample record 7A-D-000655. Read it
A rate hint, repeated forty times
Investors. An analyst sees a central bank comment travel across the wires. The record shows it came from one interview, with the hedge left out of most copies.
- Copies of the claim: 40
- within a day
- Independent origins: 1
- one interview
- Copies without the condition: 31
- of the forty
- Edits to the lead copy: 2
- one unmarked
Sample record 7A-D-000890. Read it
02 Five stages
Every example runs the same five stages.
Each one starts with a headline and ends with a dossier, which is a file of the claims, sources and scores, sealed so it can be cited later.
- 01HeadlineOne news headline arrives in many versions.
- 02SourcesEvery report is traced to its first appearance.
- 03Six-axis auditWho, what, when, where, why and how, each scored.
- 04Impact matrixWhere the event reaches across nine areas of life.
- 05DossierEverything is sealed into one file you can cite.
03 Seal
Every example ends in a seal.
A seal fixes what the dossier says and when. A later correction is a new entry, never a rewrite, so the file shows what was known at the time.
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