Editorial decisions: how we choose what 'Was News'

This Was News is not a breaking-news site. It’s a memory aid for the news — a slow, nostalgic snapshot of “what led the homepage” on past days.

Because of that, we make some very specific editorial choices about:

• which outlets we track
• what kinds of stories count as “news” for our purposes
• how we pick a “lead” story
• what we leave out on purpose

Below is how it all works.

1. Our sources: where the stories come from

Right now, This Was News looks at the home pages of three major news organizations:

• The New York Times
• NPR (National Public Radio)
• Associated Press (AP)
• Center Square (its national page)
• Washington Examiner

These outlets were chosen because:

• They are rated “Factual” or “Highly Factual” by media-rating services like Ground News, meaning they generally have a strong record of accuracy, sourcing, and corrections.
• Together, they sit roughly across center-left, center, and center-right territory in U.S. political coverage, which helps reduce the chance that a single ideological lens shapes what “counts” as news.

Over time, more outlets may be added, but any new source will be held to the same basic standards: highly factual reliability, broad news coverage, and not too far out on an ideological edge.

We only use publicly visible homepage content — no paywalled back-end feeds, no personalized “for you” recommendations, no social media trending lists. The goal is to capture what an ordinary visitor would have seen as the big news of the day.

2. What counts as a “story” for This Was News

Each day, we look at the top 3–5 stories on the homepage of each source. From that pool, a human editor decides which items qualify as “news” in the sense we care about:

A news story here is a report about something that happened in the real world, on or very near that day, that could plausibly be meaningful in the historical record.

That means we care about:

• Events – something concrete occurred
• Timeliness – it happened “now,” not years ago
• Potential significance – it either is obviously important or could reasonably turn out to be important, even if we can’t be sure yet

We know we can’t predict history perfectly. A story that seemed small may later turn out to be huge, and vice versa. But we try to pick the things a future “What happened that day?” researcher would reasonably expect to find. If, in retrospect, we need to reconsider what was noteworthy, we'll do that and document it on the daily page.

3. Stories we intentionally include

Here are the main types of stories we actively try to include when they show up among the top homepage slots:

Hard news events

These are the bread and butter of This Was News. Examples include:

• Politics & government:
  • A major election result or runoff
  • Passage or failure of a significant law or constitutional change
  • A major court ruling or Supreme Court decision
  • A head of government resigning, being elected, impeached, or overthrown
• Wars, conflicts, and security:
  • The start or escalation of a war
  • A cease-fire agreement
  • A major attack, invasion, or peace deal
• Economy & markets:
  • A financial crisis, bank failure, or market crash
  • A major central bank decision (e.g., big rate changes)
  • Official release of key economic indicators showing a substantial shift (e.g., a sudden spike in inflation or unemployment)
• Public health & disasters:
  • Declarations of public-health emergencies
  • Discovery of a new virus strain of international concern
  • Major earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters
  • Large industrial accidents (explosions, chemical spills, etc.)
• Science & technology breakthroughs:
  • A space mission launch/landing of global interest
  • Discovery announcements with broad implications (e.g., detection of gravitational waves, a major new climate finding, significant new drug approvals)
• Major legal / criminal cases:
  • A widely covered trial verdict involving heads of state, major public officials, or globally significant corporate or criminal cases
• Global diplomacy and international organizations:
  • NATO, UN, or regional blocs making decisions with wide consequences
  • Major international treaties signed or broken

If it’s the kind of thing that might appear in a future timeline of the year — “In 2027, X happened” — we lean toward including it.

Major deaths and obituaries

We normally exclude obituaries (see below), but we make an exception for:

• The death of a head of state or monarch
• The death of a figure so culturally or historically significant that every major outlet treats it as front-page news (for example, a globally influential civil-rights leader, a historic scientific figure, or a world-famous artist whose work defined an era)

These are often turning points that show up in retrospective accounts of a period.

First-order coverage of new developments

We also aim to include “first announcement” coverage of:

• A landmark policy announcement with immediate effect (e.g., a country legalizes same-sex marriage; a nationwide ban is suddenly implemented)
• The initial release of major official reports that shape public understanding (e.g., IPCC climate reports, major government inquiry findings, truth and reconciliation reports)
• Big corporate or tech events that have broad social impact (e.g., a historically large merger, a company collapse that affects millions, or a widely used platform being shut down or radically changed)

Key idea: we focus on the moment the change or event is announced or implemented, not on every later reaction or analysis.

4. Stories we intentionally exclude

News homepages contain many different kinds of content. Not all of it fits our goal of “what happened on this date.”

We explicitly exclude:

Live blogs and rolling updates

• Live blogs / live updates on ongoing events
  • Example: “Live: Election results as they come in”
  • These formats are designed for real-time following, not for later reference.
  • Instead, we capture the summary news article that is usually published after or alongside the live coverage (“X wins election in closely watched race”).

Retrospectives, explainers, and backgrounders

We skip stories that are mainly about explaining, contextualizing, or looking back, rather than reporting a new event.

These include:

• Historical retrospectives: “Ten years since the Arab Spring: what changed?”
• Anniversary pieces: “Five years after the wildfire, residents still rebuilding”
• Context explainers: “What you need to know about the conflict in X”
• Deep background: “How the housing crisis began”

These are valuable journalism, but they’re about understanding a story, not marking the moment it happened.

Lists, guides, and service journalism

We exclude most service or “guide” content, including:

• “Top 10 places to travel this summer”
• “How to save money on groceries: 7 tips”
• “Best phones of 2025, ranked”
• “Here’s how to prepare for a heatwave”

Even when they’re timely or news-adjacent, they’re not discrete historical events.

Consumer reviews and “what to buy” coverage

We do not include:

• Product reviews (“We tested the new iPhone…”)
• “Gift guides,” “What to watch,” “What to read,” “Best streaming picks”
• Restaurant, movie, or book reviews, unless the review itself is front-page news in an unusually historic way (which is rare)

These pieces are often well reported, but they’re not events in the sense we care about.

Opinion, commentary, and editorials

We exclude almost all:

• Opinion columns
• Editorials
• Op-eds
• Personal essays
• Columns labeled “Analysis” or “Opinion” or similar

They may influence public debate, but they are interpretations of events and not the events themselves.

Edge case: Sometimes a major investigative piece is labeled as “analysis” but reveals new, factually significant information for the first time (e.g., a big leaked-document investigation). In those cases, we may treat it as a news event, because the publication of the investigation itself can be historically important.

Pure “color” or human-interest features

We typically exclude:

• “A small town’s quirky festival brings joy after a hard year”
• Lifestyle stories and profiles that are not tied to a concrete, time-bound event
• General “mood of the country” features that summarize feelings rather than report new developments

These can be wonderful journalism, but they’re hard to anchor to a specific date in the way our format requires.

Market snapshots and routine reports (with narrow impact)

We usually skip:

• Daily market roundups (“Stocks rise slightly on Tuesday”)
• Routine economic data updates unless they mark a major shift (e.g., “Inflation hits 20-year high”)
• Minor corporate earnings reports, unless they mark a collapse, bailout, or other big turning point

We’re trying to record inflection points, not everyday events.

How we pick the “lead” story of the day

From the pool of included stories, a human editor chooses one “lead” story for each day. That decision is guided by:

• Scale of impact
  • How many people are directly affected?
  • Is this local, national, or global?
• Historical plausibility
  • Is this the kind of story that might show up in a future timeline of the year?
  • If someone, 20 years from now, looked back on this date, would they be surprised if this story weren’t mentioned?
• Uniqueness in time
  • Is this a one-time turning point (e.g., a landmark decision, a major treaty), as opposed to the third incremental update in an ongoing saga?
  • We favor the moment something happens over later commentary about it.
• Cross-outlet prominence
  • If multiple outlets we track are leading with versions of the same story, that strongly suggests it’s the center of the news day.

This is a judgment call. Reasonable people can and will disagree. Our aim is not to declare “the one true main story,” but to pick a plausible, well-reasoned candidate as a memory anchor for that day. If, after time, we change our minds, we'll show that, too.

6. What’s human about this: subjectivity and limitations

A few important caveats:

• This site is curated, not automated.
  A human editor looks at the top stories and makes inclusion and ranking decisions. That makes the criteria above important — but it also means there is inevitably some subjective judgment.
• We can’t see the future.
  Some stories that looked huge in the moment will fade; some that seemed small will become pivotal. Our job is to capture what felt significant then, not to perfectly predict the future. We'll be open to changing our minds about what’s significant, and document that appropriately.
• We’re limited by what big outlets choose to cover.
  If a major story is underreported by mainstream outlets, it may be underrepresented here as well. We don’t independently report or verify events; we reflect how they appeared on established news sites.
• We’re not neutral in some absolute cosmic sense — but we try to be fair.
  By picking fact-focused, relatively centrist or mildly slanted outlets across a small spectrum, and by focusing on events over opinions, we try to reduce editorial bias. But no selection of sources is completely bias-free.

If you spot something that seems out of line with the criteria above, it’s not a hidden agenda — it’s either an honest judgment call or, sometimes, an error. In either case, feedback is welcome.

7. Why these rules exist at all

The point of all this structure isn’t to overthink the news; it’s to make the site useful. By being picky about what we include, we aim to give you:

• A clean, high-signal snapshot of what was leading the news on past days
• A way to quickly answer questions like:
  • “What was going on one year ago today?”
  • “What were the big stories the week before that election?”
  • “What did the world look like three months before that big event?”
• A record that feels more like a timeline of history in real time and less like a cluttered archive of everything that appeared on a homepage

In other words: This Was News is a hobby project with a historian’s heart. These editorial choices are our best attempt to make that heart visible.