The problem we're built against
Breaking news has a structural flaw: the moment you most need reliable information is the moment reliable information is scarcest. Feeds fill with recycled footage and unsourced claims. Headlines are written before facts settle. And when the early version turns out wrong, it is quietly rewritten as if it had never been said.
Most coverage asks you to trust the outlet. We think trust should be checkable. When you read an update here, you should be able to see where it came from, when it was published, and how the story has changed - without taking our word for any of it.
Four commitments
Everything on this site is built around four commitments:
Every update carries a source note. "According to" names someone specific, and links go to the original wherever it exists.
Updates are labeled by what the evidence supports, and they only move up when the evidence does. The rules are public.
When we're wrong, the correction is published where the error was. Nothing is silently rewritten after the fact.
Reliable information about developing events shouldn't be a subscription perk. Coverage here is free to read.
The operating rules behind these commitments are written down: How we verify covers the verification pipeline, and the editorial policy covers independence, sourcing, AI use, and everything else that binds our coverage.
What we build
- Live stories Developing events tracked as timestamped timelines. Follow a story once and every verified update reaches you until it closes.
- Alerts Push notifications you control - breaking news, earthquakes read directly from USGS feeds, severe weather, and the stories you follow. Thresholds are yours to set.
- Noteworthy for iOS A native app in development, built around Live Activities: stories you follow unfold on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.
- Noteworthy News AI A research assistant grounded in our reporting. It cites sources, links back to coverage, and says plainly when something is not confirmed.
- Media Literacy Lab Guides and games that teach the same checks our newsroom runs - because readers who can verify are the point, not the byproduct.
What we cover, and why
We are deliberately not a firehose. A story earns coverage here by passing three tests:
- Significance. It affects real people at real scale - disasters, geopolitics, public safety, and the stories that shape them.
- Verifiability. We can trace it to primary sources and stand behind every update. If we can't verify it, we don't run it as fact.
- Follow-through. It benefits from being tracked over time, not just headlined once and abandoned. We stay on stories after the news cycle leaves.
How we're funded
Noteworthy News is independently operated and currently supported by advertising. No advertiser, platform, or outside party has any influence over coverage - the separation is spelled out in our editorial policy. There is no paywall, and there are no plans for one.
Who we are
We are a small, young newsroom with something to prove: that live coverage can be fast without being reckless, and that a reader should never have to choose between knowing quickly and knowing reliably. We'd rather publish one update you can check than ten you have to take on faith.
If that standard slips - if an update is missing its source, or a correction is buried - tell us. Being held to our own rules is the point of publishing them.
RichardCo-Founder, Noteworthy News
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The Weekly Brief covers the stories that mattered, what changed since we first reported them, and what to watch next.