Research Guides
Learn to read the news the way a newsroom does
The methods behind every report on this site, written out step by step: where to find primary sources, how to verify a claim before sharing it, how to read the economic data behind the headlines, and how to build a career doing this work. Everything is free, and everything comes from the reporting we do here every day.
How to Become a Data Journalist: Skills, Portfolio and First Jobs
A career guide to data journalism in 2026: the skills newsrooms actually hire for, how to build a portfolio without a job, where the jobs are, and how to break in from journalism, data science or neither.
19 September 2026 · 3 min read
How to Read Sanctions Like an Analyst: OFAC Lists, Shadow Fleets and Secondary Sanctions
A working guide to understanding sanctions: what OFAC designations actually do, how secondary sanctions reach third countries, why the shadow fleet exists, and which public sources let you track it all yourself.
19 September 2026 · 3 min read
Where to Find Free Economic Data: The Datasets Behind the Headlines
The free databases economists and financial journalists actually use — GDP, inflation, trade, debt, energy and market data — organised by what you want to investigate, with notes on definitions, revisions and common misreadings.
19 September 2026 · 3 min read
How to Fact-Check a News Story Before You Share It
A practical checklist for verifying news before sharing: tracing claims to sources, checking images and video, reading dates and locations carefully, and knowing the difference between a correction and a rumour.
19 September 2026 · 3 min read
How to Find Primary Sources for News Research: A Working Method
A step-by-step method for locating the original documents behind any news story — government databases, court records, company filings, central bank statements and statistics agencies — with the exact search techniques newsrooms use.
19 September 2026 · 5 min read
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