What it is
Any news story can be broken into four layers:
- Fact. What verifiably happened: who did what, when, where, with what consequences. Boring on purpose.
- Context. What you need to make sense of the fact: background, precedent, what’s disputed, what’s at stake for whom.
- Framing. How it’s presented: metaphors, adjectives, what’s emphasized or buried, whose voices are quoted and whose are missing, who’s the implied hero and villain.
- Activation. What you’re being asked to feel or do because you read it.
A healthy piece is heavy on the first two, honest about the third, and light on the fourth.
How it shows up for me
I built it because I couldn’t read the news anymore without feeling played. Now I read with the layers in mind, and when a story is mostly layer four, I close the tab.