Fact-Checking Checklist for Local News Stories: 15 Steps Before You Publish

Every local newsroom has one. The correction that runs three days later, small and grey at the bottom of the page, about a surname spelled wrong or a council meeting held on the wrong Tuesday. Readers forgive a lot. They do not forgive being told something about their own street that isn't true.

Local reporting is unforgiving in a particular way. Your sources live two miles from the person you got the detail wrong about, and they will meet you at the supermarket. Meanwhile the volume of small facts is high: names, titles, addresses, dates, budget figures, the exact wording of a planning condition. A checklist is not bureaucracy. It is the thing that lets you publish quickly and still sleep.

Put the paper in one place

Before you write a word, open a folder for the story. Into it go: the documents you were given, the ones you requested, the ones you found; recordings and your own notes; screenshots with the date and time visible; a contact log listing who you spoke to, when, for how long, and what they promised to send.

This is not tidiness for its own sake. When a reader emails to say the figure in paragraph six is wrong, you need to open one folder and know within a minute whether they are right. You also need it for the less pleasant conversations, the ones where someone disputes what they told you. Notes taken an hour after the call are worth far less than notes taken during it.

Keep the folder after publication. Check your outlet's retention policy, but assume you may need the material in three months, not three days.

Names and titles are where trust leaks first

A misspelled name is the cheapest error to make and the most expensive to explain. It tells the reader that if you were careless about something they can check in five seconds, you may have been careless about everything else.

Verify names against a primary source whenever one exists: an official agenda, a court filing, a business registration, a school board roster, the person's own email signature. Then ask the person. "How do you spell your name for the paper?" is a question almost nobody minds, and it catches the accents, hyphens and second surnames that public records mangle.

Do not upgrade anyone's title

Chair and chairman are not interchangeable if the body's rules say otherwise. "Spokesperson" is not "director of communications" unless that is the job. A retired officer is not a serving one. When in doubt, describe what the person does rather than awarding them a rank they do not hold.

Quotes, and the second half of the sentence

Record when you can, and know the rules where you work about consent and publication. If you cannot record, write the quote down while the person is still on the phone and read it back: "Can I check I have this right — you said…". Most sources will correct you helpfully. A few will discover they did not mean it.

Then read the whole answer, not the good sentence. "I don't recall being told" and "It didn't happen" are different statements, and quoting the first as the second is a fabrication even when the paraphrase feels fair. The same applies to the everyday softeners: "to be honest", "as far as I know", "I'd have to check". If the qualifier changes the meaning, it stays in.

Paraphrase carefully too. A summary that would survive being read aloud to the source is a good summary.

Dates, numbers, and arithmetic you redo yourself

Check the day of the week against the date. It is a two-second check that catches errors which otherwise sit in print for years.

Then rebuild every number from its source. Budget totals rarely add up on the first pass, because transfers, reserves and fiscal years get in the way; a document labelled 2024 may cover a financial year ending in March 2025. Percentages deserve particular suspicion. An increase from five to seven is 40 percent, and it is also two people. Give readers both, especially in small towns where a dramatic-sounding rate rests on a handful of cases.

Do the subtraction yourself. If the story says a project is over budget by a certain amount, take the two figures and subtract them on paper, then check what the official document actually compares.

Claims, and what would prove them wrong

"According to the mayor's office" is attribution, not verification. It is often the right thing to print, but be clear in your own mind which claims you have independently confirmed and which you are reporting as someone's position. For contested facts — who signed what, who was told when — you want a second source or a document.

Superlatives need evidence: first, only, largest, worst. These claims are checkable and often wrong once you go back far enough. Be equally careful in the other direction: if you find a document that cuts against your story, do not bury it. Address it, and say what it does and does not show.

Ask what would change my mind

Write down, for the central claim, the thing you would expect to find if you were wrong. Then go and look for it. If you cannot describe what would disprove the story, you are not reporting it, you are assembling it.

If the piece touches on a court case, a medical claim, or someone's money, have the relevant passage read by someone qualified before publication. That is not weakness; it is the same instinct that makes you check a name.

The 15-step pre-publication checklist

1. Read the story once as a stranger. Ignore what you know. Does the page alone make sense?
2. Check every name against a primary source, then against the person.
3. Check every title against the body's own rules or the employer.
4. Read quotes back, or replay the recording from start to finish.
5. Match each quote to the question that produced it.
6. Verify the day of the week for every date you give.
7. Rebuild every number from the document it came from.
8. Put percentages and raw counts side by side.
9. Trace each document to its origin — who produced it, when, for whom.
10. Note what the document does not say. Absence of a mention is not proof of anything.
11. Give anyone criticized a real chance to respond, with the specifics and enough time.
12. Test every superlative against older records.
13. Confirm photos: who took them, where, when, and what the caption claims.
14. Read the headline and standfirst against the story. They are where most damage is done.
15. Name the thing you are least sure of. Verify it, attribute it plainly, or cut it.

The last hour before you publish

Step away for twenty minutes. Then read the piece on your phone, in the shape readers will see it, and read the first three paragraphs twice. Check the caption on every image and the credit under it. Make sure the person you criticized has your number and knows you will answer it.

And keep one habit above all: if you cannot stand a fact up, either say so in the story or take it out. A published piece with a visible gap is stronger than one with an invisible hole in it.

Photo: USA-Reiseblogger / Pixabay