Toggle Daily · Methodology

How a day's report is built

Toggle Daily produces one report per day. Building it follows six steps, in order. All six are performed by software with no language model involved. A language model is used only afterward, to write the text that presents the results. That use is described on How AI is used and checked.

  1. Select the topics. Software scans the day's news coverage and selects the five to ten topics with the most activity. A topic is the event the articles are about, not any single article.
  2. Collect the coverage. For each topic, the software gathers coverage from wire services, national outlets, and local outlets. It reads each outlet's full account, not only its headline, and every event links to the original reporting.
  3. Identify the information. The software identifies the information each outlet is reporting about the real-world event. That can be a name, a number, a date, or a statement by an official. What is stored is the information about the event itself, together with which outlet reported it, and that attribution is kept through every later step.
  4. Compare the accounts. Each piece of information is checked against what the other outlets report. If independent outlets report the same information, it is recorded as corroborated. If outlets report different versions of the same fact, the disagreement is recorded, with each side attributed. If only one outlet reports it, the information is recorded as standing alone.
  5. Weight the evidence. Each piece of information receives a weight based on the evidence behind it. The weight reflects how many independent outlets report it and whether any outlet disputes it. Agreement adds weight. A dispute records weight on both sides. Information with one outlet behind it carries only that outlet's weight.
  6. Compute the three shares. The weights are combined into three percentages for the event: reported, contested, and developing. Reported is the share of the event that is corroborated. Contested is the share that outlets dispute. Developing is the share that is still incomplete. The three shares always add up to the whole event.

The report changes as the reporting changes

The shares describe the reporting as it stood when the day's report was built. When later coverage adds corroboration or a new dispute, the next day's report reflects it. An event can be mostly developing on the day it happens and fully reported by the end of the week.

Example. A blockade is declared in the morning. By noon, five outlets carry the declaration and none dispute it, so the declaration is corroborated and counts toward the reported share. No outlet yet knows whether the blockade can be enforced, so that part of the event counts toward the developing share. The next day's coverage will move both shares.