“Election 2026: Clayton, Hercules voters to weigh raising sales tax”

45

Sourcing · 25 for the share of facts that say where they came from, 0, 7 or 12 for none, one or two or more public documents linked, 0 to 8 for the people and agencies named on the record

15

Corroboration · 8 or 12 for one or two or more other outlets or sources confirming it, 3 more when one is official; 8 for a telling alone that links two or more documents

20

Record match · 20 × the key facts confirmed or matching the Wire's records ÷ the facts checked; left out when none could be checked

10

Headline · less for a question, capitals, an exclamation mark, a teaser or heated words

10

Transparency · a byline, a date, an update or correction note, the outlet's identity, the kind labelled

No article in this story has a grade: the Wire grades only what it can read.

• Every input is read by rules from the page itself; the arithmetic is shown for every article.
• An article that names no source, links no document and names no one on the record says "No sources cited", and its grade is at most D.
• Where the Wire's own records hold the fact (a vote, a meeting, an amount, a call, a listing), the story and the record are set side by side; a vote the record tells differently holds the grade at most at D.
• An agency's own release is the record itself and is not graded; an outlet that prints it as its story counts once.
• Each story's key facts are checked for independent confirmation: first by rules against the Wire's records and the agencies' own releases, then each morning by research. A confirmation counts only when the Wire read the source's page itself and found the sentence on it; a government page, a public record or another newsroom's own reporting, never a copy of the story or a social post. A source that tells a fact differently is shown beside the story.
• A page the Wire cannot read is never guessed at: it shows only its own headline, quoted, and is not graded.