An investigative story filetimeline, documents and claims to verify

Method

1. 1

   Have your assistant open the file

   Connect your assistant to know.sh once, following the support page. Then ask it to make a shelf for the investigation, with the question you are trying to answer as its line — “How did Keystone Civil Works get the 2026 sidewalk contract without a bid?” — and four documents:

   • Timeline: one finding per dated event.
   • People and companies: one finding per person or entity.
   • Documents obtained: one finding per record in hand.
   • Claims to verify: one finding per thing you have been told but not proved.

   The Timeline’s overview is yours: two sentences on the story as you currently understand it, rewritten as that changes.

2. 2

   Give it the public records to file

   Attach the records you hold that are already public: agendas, minutes, the procurement notice, the state business filing, the county’s campaign finance reports. Ask the assistant to log each one in Documents obtained — what it is, who released it, the request number, the dates you asked and received it, and where the file is kept on the newsroom drive — and to pull every dated event into the Timeline and every person and company into People and companies, each with the record as its source.

   Tell it to title timeline findings date first — “2026-03-04 — Emergency declaration signed by city manager” — and to quote the record rather than paraphrase it. Forty records become a working file in an evening.

3. 3

   Check every entry against the record

   Now open each document in Edit with the records beside you. Check every date, name, dollar figure and quotation against the record it cites; a misread date is exactly the error a correction is made of. Drag the timeline into date order, delete anything the record does not support, and file requests that are overdue or denied as Problem findings, with the statutory deadline and what you did next.

   Put the names that matter in each finding’s title or first lines, where the index reads them. When the same surname turns up as a company’s registered agent and in a council member’s campaign filing, the index lists both findings under it, and that is often the first sign of a connection worth checking.

4. 4

   Write the claims to verify yourself

   Claims to verify is the discipline of the file, and you write it, because it comes from your reporting. Each claim is a Question finding: what you were told, how many independent sources have said it, and what record would prove or disprove it. Attribute it only as your newsroom’s policy allows.

   When a primary record confirms a claim, add the record to its sources and write “Confirmed” with the date and the record in the first line. Claims that fall apart stay in the file, marked as such; they explain why the story does not say something.

5. 5

   Ask your assistant for public-record leads

   Ask your assistant to research on the web what public records exist about Keystone Civil Works LLC and its officers — state business filings, other government contracts, court cases and liens — and to file what it finds as a new document on the shelf, one finding per record with its source link. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it, and most local set-ups do not.

   Every one of those findings is a lead, not a fact. Go to the official record each one points to and pull it yourself. What checks out goes into the file with the official record as its source; what does not gets deleted. Never quote a model’s summary of a filing as if it were the filing.

6. 6

   Check the file before the story runs

   Once a week, ask your assistant which claims rest on a single source and which confirmed facts cite nothing but other findings. Before the story goes to your editor, read every sentence of the draft against the file yourself. Each fact should trace to a finding with a primary record in its sources. Anything that does not trace goes back to Claims to verify or comes out of the draft.

   Revisions show when each finding was added and changed, and whether you or an assistant wrote it. Anything an assistant wrote is checked against the record before you rely on it.