Last fall, Tech Review—on outlet I’ve written for and gotten fact-checked at— retracted a story about a company that serves the ‘faith ecosystem.’ The writer seemed to have made unsubstantiated claims that got past the magazine’s usual editorial processes, all the way to publication.

Then, there was Margaux Blanchard, an AI agent that trickster Andrew Frelon admitted to create (Frelon has also allegedly created other fake profiles). who managed to land stories in Business Insider and Wired. After BI and Wired discovered that the writer was likely an AI, each retracted Blanchard’s work.

And just before I headed out on summer vacation this year, I learned that a slew of local papers published a syndicated summer reading list, written by AI, full of fake titles. High Country News amended a recent print feature on ‘pinecone cowboys,’ after discovering the author misrepresented details of his reporting. The editorial team annotated the original story with findings from a second fact-check.

As a journalist, I’ve been trained to notice trends. And as someone who has made fact-checking a substantial part of their profession, I’m starting to realize that the traditional way we have thought about magazine fact-checking is starting to crack in our AI-adled, fast-paced news environment. There are probably countless other stories similar to the ones I’ve shared and linked above that received less publicity.

Fact-checkers are meant to be discerning. But if they’re the only ones to exercise factual discernment in the editorial process, especially during a step that is exceptionally close to story publication, then a writer who’s duping the team had already done their job. Not to mention the myriad times I’ve pointed out inaccuracies or discrepancies in my report only for the writer to ask to ‘stet’ the text. Just because you have a step in your editorial process for a fact-checker to assess a story for accuracy doesn’t necessarily save you anymore.

Earlier this year, I launched a new training to help newsrooms that didn’t have fact-checkers to start incorporating new editorial practices into their workflow that could help sub in for the critical editorial step.

If you’re a newsroom who uses fact-checkers and wants to get ahead of AI agents or deceptive writers, lots the same philosophies apply. I’d love to talk to you about how to strengthen discernment in your newsroom. Email me at wudan@factual.work to find a time to learn more!

Here’s a short Q&A with Simone.

Q: Where did the idea of the book come from?

A: It was born out of my own indecision about whether or not to leave journalism: I was working for a trendy magazine in New York, and I got a job offer to leave journalism to work for a design firm in San Francisco. I was completely insufferable trying to make up my mind. I talked to everyone I knew and my Uber driver and my yoga teacher, made endless pro/con lists. I was looking for certainty where there was none to be found. I wanted someone to say: “This is the right job for you,” or “I’m 100% sure this will be the best path for your life.” I wrote the book as an exploration of how I, and others, can get better at dealing with what they don’t know. In the words of Rollo May: commitment is healthiest not in the absence of doubt, but in spite of doubt. I hope the book helps people make choices even when they’re not sure.

Q: Putting the conceit of your book alongside the concept of fact-checking feels ironic. How do you think about the relationship between fact-checking and not knowing?

A: I love this question, I thought about it a lot, especially in terms of science and the scientific method. There’s a chapter in the book that’s about how do we know what we know. One quote stood out to me: a researcher told me ‘even the laws of physics change around a black hole.’ So, there are certain facts: is the earth a sphere or is it flat? That’s provable. yet, there’s lots of information out there we consider to be a fact that’s more of an asymptotic approximation of a fact. Lots of research can’t get replicated. What do you make of that? Do you throw away the scientific method completely? Or do you have the humility to say: ‘this is what we know to the best of our knowledge based on the information that we have?’ We don’t need more people out there undermining science or what it means for something to be a fact. It’s more important than ever in the age of AI slop. But academics and researchers should have the humility to admit what it is what we know and what we don’t. So the fact-checker’s job becomes more important.

Q: Speaking of fact-checking. This isn’t your first time getting a book checked. Why did you decide to use checkers for your books, and how did you approach fact-checking different this second time around (if you did)?

A: Fact-checking is an author’s best friend: you have someone else who is thoroughly going through your work to cover your ass. Journalists or nonfiction writers likely aren’t intentionally misleading or lying to their readers, but over the course of 60,000+ words, there are bound to be things that could use a second pair of eyes. Between the first and second book, I tried tomake the job for the fact-check a little easier by being more explicit about sourcing for as much as I could and opening up a dialogue about other things that I feel insecure or uncertain about that I would love another perspective on.

Q: What was your expreience of getting fact-checked for HOW NOT TO KNOW?

A: Great! Incredibly straightforward. I liked there was process certainty around how it would work the timeline, and what I could do to set the fact-checker up for success. It felt like the checkers were my colleagues: they’d question something in the text, I’d respond, and there would be another response. It felt more like a conversation than just a vendor I was outsourcing work to and the book is so much better because of that. I remember a particular study I wrote about, and new data came out after I submitted the book back to the publisher. Even though [the checker] was no longer on the clock, they sent it to me and said, ‘how do you want to address this?’ We ended up changing the text, and so the relationship continues even beyond the book’s publication itself.

Get your copy of HOW NOT TO KNOW at your local bookseller or online!

PS: If you’ve hired Factual to check your book and want us to give you a shoutout when your book publishes, we’d be happy to do so. Get in touch with me via email.

Every so often, I see posts on social media that someone I follow has accepted a full-time job or created a program as part of their freelance business that encapsulates all their skill sets. I absolutely believe that my new program, Improving Newsroom Accuracy (Without Dedicated Fact-checkers), is a synthesis of everything I have ever known.

Yes, it contains everything I have learned about fact-checking over the last twelve-plus years of my career— spanning print, audio, video; serving on a board that aims to bring fact-checking standards to journalists all over the world, and as the owner of a fact-checking agency. It is an extension of my enthusiasm for teaching anyone to become a fact-checker. It combines my love of educating and empowering people with skills that they can encapsulate into their workflow.

But just as importantly, this program synthesizes everything I know from being a business strategist and coach for freelance creatives (I have coached over 100 folks in the last seven years!): in order to make change, we need to be clear on our motivations and understand our limiting beliefs in order to make small, attainable tweaks to how we work in order to achieve our goals.

If you work as part of a newsroom who wants to improve the accuracy of what you publish but are overwhelmed of how to achieve that, let’s talk. I know this offering is an investment, and you want to know it’s right for you. Email me at wudan@factual.work, and I’ll send you a link for a discovery call.

Newsrooms are differently resourced and staffed, and often have specific concerns with regards to accuracy. The training that is now live today speaks to these differences, and will be tailored for varying concerns.

This training is for newsrooms who may not have dedicated fact-checkers, or those who wish to comprehensively level-up their fact-checking practices. I’m super excited about this program because of the impact it can have, especially for local newsrooms around the world.

What folks are saying:

“This was one of the most useful workshops for newsrooms I've ever attended. We have regular fact-checking practices in our newsroom and have some resources and material that we use to onboard new reporters, but we have always felt we needed to up our game. Wudan presents sourcing and fact-checking concepts in a way that's easy to understand and easy to apply. She helped contextualize and prioritize things for us. And the tools she introduced us to (from the "fact hierarchy" to the "guide to bullshit prevention" to "fact auditing") will soon be staples in our newsroom. I think every newsroom should bring Wudan at least once a year to offer this workshop to new reporters and anyone who needs a quick refresher. It was fantastic.” - Shereen Adel, Director of Impact, KALW

“This webinar was incredibly useful in helping me understand how strapped teams can implement a fact checking ethos in their daily work. The suggestions on auditing facts and how to triage facts was the most helpful part of the seminar. It's really interesting to think about how the (arguably) most important part of journalism is often left to the wayside and I was incredibly grateful to hear about Wudan's own experiences fact checking and to learn about how this work has been shaped by magazines which are unfortunately disappearing. It's given me so much to think about and also made fact checking feel like an endeavor that feels manageable.” - Hanisha Harjani, Community Journalism Director, KALW

“Wudan gave a robust webinar on fact checking. While some of it was knowledge I already knew, Wudan shared it in a fascinating way that stuck with me. Her tips on how to improve accuracy without an assigned fact checker were helpful and made me think a little more out of the box on how a small newsroom can fact check.” - Kamila Kudelska, News Director, Wyoming Public Media

Read more about what this offering entails here.

If you’re a newsroom leader interested in learning more before committing, send me an email at wudan@factual.work for a link to my calendar; I’m happy to discuss on a 15-min introductory call!

*I do not earn any commissions from this. My general MO is to elevate people who do really good work!

Some other reminders:

• Factual is hiring for project managers. The application is open until April 13, 2026. Full description for the position is linked above!

• Looking for our AI for fact-checking webinar? Buy a copy of it here!

• One of the first resources Factual released was a guide on how to annotate anything for fact-checking. This is equally useful for clients who want to hire fact-checkers, as well as fact-checkers who want to learn best practices for creating reports. Buy a copy here. If you’re a newsroom interested in licensing this, shoot me an email to negotiate a licensing agreement.

If you have experience working as a fact-checker or managing fact-checkers, and would like to expand that skillset to working with a fact-checking agency to deliver standardized, high-quality report to our clients, we’d love to have you apply.

Please see the job posting for more details.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Next week’s webinar, on how nonfiction authors can best work with fact-checkers is going to be chock full of amazing intel.

You’ll be getting a two-fer: The knowledgable Jaime Green is going to tell us how Scrivener can help us organize our book projects — however sprawling, cumbersome, and research heavy — in a way that makes it easy to track your facts. I’m going to be sharing information about the book fact-checking process that so many authors have no idea about, until they end up in my Zoom room, discussing how the fact-checking process will work.

Whether you’re a first time author, or you’re a x-time author looking for tips and tricks to make the process of publishing a factually airtight work of narrative nonfiction easier, this webinar is for you. If you can’t make it live, no worries - register anyway! Everyone will get the event recording delivered to their inbox.

Personally, I’m excited to learn about Scrivener, just for tracking research on narrative nonfiction projects of my own. My friend, Tessa Hulls, who won a Pulitzer for her graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, even used Scrivener to organize her drafts and research! You learn more about her process here.

More details / register here.

PS: If you’re interested in continuing your education on Scrivener, or are generally eager for a deeper dive on how you can organize your research with the software, Jaime is offering her signature Scrivener for Creative Writers' class on May 3rd. More info here.

I hope to see you next week! Wudan

You’ll learn from me and Jaime Green best ways to organize your reporting so you’ll be able to track down your facts later, how to write with fact-checking in mind, best annotation practices for fact-checking, and what to expect should you choose to get your book fact-checked.

No matter where you are in the book writing process, this webinar is for you. If you’ve got just a nugget of an idea, you’ll be able to keep our suggestion in your mind as you get started with research in earnest. If you’ve been published a few times but are looking for better ways to organize your work, I’m sure you’ll come out of this with fresh ideas, too.

We record all our webinars, so even if you can’t make it, you’ll get a recording the day of.

Get your tickets here. See you then! Wudan

I love teaching because I believe skills can be learned, new mindsets be adopted, and workflows be implemented. It’s always fun to see people light up with new ideas during these workshops.

If you’re looking to learn from Factual, here are some upcoming and previous trainings:

• March 24, 2026 | 12-1pm PST: How nonfiction authors can best work with fact-checkers. Join me and Jaime Green, science journalist and writing teacher, for a 75-min webinar on how to bulletproof your nonfiction book for accuracy. Writing a book takes years, so how do you manage the research in a way that still makes sense later on, when the book moves to fact-checking? No matter if you’re working on your first book or your fifth, you might come away with new ideas on organizing book research. More details and get your tickets here.

• Earlier this year, I offered two lucky teams a webinar on how to fact-check in newsrooms without a dedicated fact-checker. You bet I’m still working out the kinks of that and I hope to have something more concrete to announce in the coming weeks.

• My workshop last year, Level Up Your Fact-Checking With AI turned out to be wildly popular. We covered how to use AI to find sources, detect errors of omission, unearth conflicts of interest, and corroborate superlatives and absolutes. I described this workshop as, “I f*’d around on AI and found out some stuff and I’m here to share it with you.” So, if that interests you, nab a copy of the recording here.

I’m always interested in hearing what folks want to learn about fact-checking. If you’ve got an idea or want to co-host an event, feel free to reach out - wudan@factual.work.

Great, I thought. An intern loves to know what good work looks like.

Minutes later, at my desk, the email arrived. It was easy for me to decipher where each fact in the draft came from. But I was most struck by the author’s organization. Here, I had folders upon folders of Russian nesting dolls.

Getting trained up as a fact-checker didn’t just teach me how to report. It taught me how to organize my reporting from day one. It’s served me well when I’ve spent months in the field working on different projects on the same theme, and it’s served me well on long reporting trips. I learned if I compartmentalized each day’s of reporting material (notes from my notebook, audio files, any multimedia I took that could help with telling the story), I could prevent the days from blurring together in my head once I got home. Developing this strategy that worked for me while reporting allowed me to better remember where information came from, and where exactly to find it when it came time to outline and write.

If you’re producing a nonfiction book, this organization becomes all the more important, because you’re likely dealing with much more material spanning a longer period of time.

Not everyone who decides to write a book is necessarily trained as a fact-checker, nor is everyone naturally organized. However, it can be taught and it can be learned.

If you’re thinking about producing a nonfiction book (or are in the process of doing so!) and want to learn how to organize your work in the reporting process so you can best work with a fact-checker, you’ll want to tune in for March 24’s webinar. Jaime Green, who I think of as a book research organizer extraordinaire will be showing us how Scrivener can support these goals, and I’ll be sharing my expertise on how book authors can work best with fact-checkers (or factual accuracy, more generally).

We record our webinars for all attendees, so don’t worry if you can’t make it live!

Get your tickets here.

It made me realize how little is known about the machinations of how a nonfiction book gets fact-checked, which led me here.

In March’s webinar, Jaime Green and I are going to demystify the book fact-checking process for you so you can best work with a fact-checker.

I’ve touched dozens of books with my expertise as a fact-checker, and Jaime is a published author (who has been fact-checked!) and happens to be super passionate about teaching Scrivener to creative writers. We’ll be teaching you best practice organizational skills for a book project so you’ll be able to help ensure its accuracy.

Whether you’re in the ideation phase of a nonfiction book, working on a proposal, or you’ve got a few books in the hopper but want to learn better ways of staying organized to protect your reputation, this webinar is for you.

Details and registration this way!

As always, Factual records these webinars, so even if you can’t make it live, you’ll get this wisdom delivered to your inbox the same day.

Even if this webinar might not benefit you directly, share it with the nonfiction authors in your life.

Hope to see you there!

Wudan

I’m offering a free 75min webinars to two lucky newsrooms on how to improve the accuracy of what you publish without fact-checkers.

News move fasts, and in fast-paced newsrooms, we sometimes need to sacrifice accuracy for speed. But inaccuracies erode trust from the readers we need to reach. How can you strike a better balance with accuracy and speed?

I’m going to teach you — and up to six people from your team — how to develop sustainable practices on improving the accuracy of what you publish without fact-checkers.

Date and time will be negotiated directly with me.

In return, I’ll ask for you to provide testimonials and feedback

The deadline to slide into my inbox about this opportunity is Friday, Jan 23! Email: wudan@factual.work

Deadline to send me your interest: Friday, Jan 23, 2025

(And just to set a few things straight: No, volcanos do not erupt every x number of years, and no, a huge earthquake will not absolutely cause a volcano like Mount Rainier to go off.)

If you, like me, can’t get past factual inaccuracies in nonfiction books, you’ll appreciate this list of fact-checked books (some new, mostly forthcoming) I’ve put together for you. All of these are fact-checked by me, the agency, or fact-checkers I trust with stellar track records.

Pre-orders help authors tremendously; please use the provided pre-order links below where applicable and provided.

Disclaimers: I do not get commissions on any of these sales. I am sharing these titles out of the goodness of my own heart and because I believe it’s important to amplify fact-checked works of nonfiction in a publishing environment that is otherwise based by fame/followers/who you know. In some cases, I use summaries provided by others, which I quote appropriately.

WHY FASCISTS FEAR TEACHERS by Randi Weingarten | Already out!

I spent some time this year fact-checking the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Year of Hate and Extremism report, and I was really struck by how extremist organizations tend to target education. If you’re wondering why the Trump administration has wanted to dismantle the Department of Education, this book will contextualize these attacks. Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been called ‘the most dangerous person in the world,’ but I suggest you pick a copy of this book and judge who and what is actually dangerous for our democracy.

MASTER PLAN by David Sirota & Jared Jacang Maher | October 2025

Building off an 11-part investigative podcast series, Master Plan digs into the hidden plot to legalize corruption in America.

“For decades, a shadowy network of corporate elites, political operatives, and Supreme Court justices has worked behind the scenes to dismantle campaign finance laws and rig the system in favor of the ultra-wealthy. Master Plan, a new book from The Lever, uncovers the hidden history of how unrestrained money and influence have transformed the United States into a full-fledged kleptocracy — where policy is bought, elections are manipulated, and corruption operates in plain sight.” — The Lever.

FROSTLINES by Neil Shea | December 2025

If you’ve picked up a copy of National Geographic any time in the last, oh, I don’t know, ten years, you’ve probably read Neil’s work on climate change in the Arctic. Frostlines is an extension of that body of work. Neil’s writing is immersive, nearly psychedelic.

“In Frostlines, Neil Shea blends natural history, anthropology, and travel writing to explore how the beauty, chaos, and power of change in the far north are reflected in the lives of people and animals. He sojourns with a wolf pack on Canada’s Ellesmere Island and travels with Indigenous hunters in Alaska, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. He tracks dwindling caribou herds across the top of North America, searches for vanished Vikings in Greenland, and visits the front line of the new Cold War rising between Russia and Europe. What Shea finds is not one Arctic but many—all still linked by shattering cold, seasons of darkness, and a pure, inimitable light.” — Harper Collins

THE ELUSIVE BODY by Alexandra Sifferlin | March 2026

Bodies don’t always make sense, to say the least. More than a million Americans live with a rare disease that evade diagnosis and have to navigate an ever-failing healthcare system. Alexandra has spent years investigating this diagnostic crisis in the US, talking to patients, doctors, and communities to understand how to improve the diagnostic process.

“Weaving the profound, maddening, and uplifting stories of patients seeking answers to unexplainable symptoms, the doctors trying to help them, and the latest research on diagnosis, The Elusive Body illuminates the diagnostic journey, revealing why diagnoses matter and how they have the power to transform lives, the medical system, and even society, one case at a time.” — Penguin Random House

BODY WEATHER by Lorraine Boissoneault | April 2026

Another excellent, factual, bodies-are-whack book. In Body Weather, Lorraine brings us through her own diagnostic odyssey of understanding her myriad chronic diseases. But more than that, she explores the connectivity between the earth’s climate with the ongoings of the human body.

“Visceral and poetic, these braided essays traverse science, history, and memoir.... Boissoneault surveys her own “body weather,” relating her dysregulated thyroid to global temperature fluctuations; her arrhythmic heart to chaotic thunderstorms; her inflamed joints to wildfires beyond control.” - Beacon Press

BEYOND INHERITANCE by Roxanne Khamsi | April 2026

Think back to your introductory biology class—whether in high school or college—and you may remember the canonical idea that our DNA is passed down from our parents. But it turns out that the DNA we are born with can change over the course of our lives and undoubtedly influence our health.

“By letting go of the antiquated idea that every cell in a body has the same exact DNA, we can usher in a whole new era of medicine. Khamsi introduces readers to the scientists who are harnessing our growing understanding of mutation to design better vaccines, treat rare diseases, and outsmart cancer. Beyond Inheritance will open your eyes to the immense and ongoing genetic diversity that exists within each human and its incredible potential to shape your health and well-being.” - Penguin Random House

HOW TO NOT KNOW by Simone Stolzoff | May 2026

It would be a massive understatement to say that we’re living through extremely uncertain times right now: economic instability, political turmoil, climate uncertainty all compound on whatever personal uncertainties we are dealing with at the moment. And humans generally don’t like it! In his new book, Simone argues for ways to sit with what we don’t know, and to live with more questions than answers. Each chapter is a window into uncertain lives, and how couples, countries, and individuals deal.

INSIDE THE BOX by David Epstein | May 2026

When I ran my podcast and learning academy, The Writers’ Co-op, I worked with so many freelancers facing constraints on their business. What I often tried to get them to see was that those constraints were blessings in disguise. Some of those limits, I tried to argue, might be their superpower. So, I was excited to see that David Epstein was coming out with a new book on exactly this.

“David Epstein argues that we can all benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we’re working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation…. Epstein reveals how boundaries create breakthroughs, and how setting the right constraints can help you become the most creative, productive, and satisfied version of yourself.” - Penguin Random House

THE EARTH SAID REMEMBER ME by Jason Mark | Spring/Summer 2026

How can we advocate to protect a world that’s abundant in all the ways we desire, in ways that we may have never experienced ourselves? In his forthcoming book, former Sierra Magazine editor-in-chief Jason Mark argues that the concept of ‘shifting baselines syndrome’ is stalling environmental progress. This is a book about the environment, but it’s also about the psychology of memory. I can’t overstate how beautiful and heart-stopping the writing is (and if you can’t wait this long to experience Jason’s writing, check out his first book, Satellites in the High Country.) Follow citizen scientists tracking monarchs, birds, lake ice, and beyond, for a handbook on how to fight environmental amnesia, and onwards, towards a better, habitable earth.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY by Amy Westervelt | September 2026

In her forthcoming book, climate accountability journalist Amy Westervelt shows us how absolutely warped our information ecosystem is, and has long been, by corporate interests. By scouring the troves in publicly accessible archives across the US, Amy brings us stories about how fossil fuel industry leaders and many, many, many (there are so many, trust me, I checked them out) grifty enablers (think PR firms and think tanks) have delayed climate action. If you, like me, question new information through the lens of who is telling me this and who is getting rich to deliver this very particular narrative, you’ll love this book. I really, deeply believe that investing time to read this book will make you a smarter consumer of information.

A rather big announcement from Factual today: after having rolling applications open for the last year, the agency will be closing its applications to new fact-checkers September 30, 2025. So, if you want us to review your application to be a part of the agency, get those forms in before then. (We will review and select new checkers by January 15, 2026!)

It is possible that we will solicit fact-checkers with certain skills or subject matter expertises down the line, at which time I’ll announce those opportunities here.

Hit me up with any questions over at work.factual@gmail.com!

Wudan

If you were able to register for the event, a recording has been sent to you!

I also have the link to this event available for purchase on Factual’s page, which you can find here. The listed price is for staffers, but if you are a freelancer, use the code FRLNC to get the discounted freelance rate.

If this is something you’d like me to speak about at a conference or for your place of work, please get in touch! I’m very passionate about finding our ways to make our work better and sharing that with others.

Wudan

I’m excited to see you next week for LEVEL UP YOUR FACT-CHECKING WITH AI.

I’ve been busy putting together slides and case studies on how AI can really up-level your fact-checking and fact-finding, and I’m looking forward to sharing best practices with you all.

We’re going to talk about how AI can be a clutch tool for backgrounding, detecting errors of omission, finding sources, and corroborating ‘red flag’ words, and more.

Details and registration here. Even if you can’t make the event live, you’ll get a copy of the event recording in your inbox the same day. (You won’t want to miss this; I won’t be doing this event again!)

I hope to see you there, Wudan

I just returned from three weeks in the woods, walking ~430 miles along Oregon’s Pacific Crest Trail. This expands my continuous footpath along the PCT now into two states. California, I’m coming for you next!

For now, work beckons me back… which brings me here, writing another newsletter.

I’ve had the idea for doing a webinar on how to level-up your fact-checking with generative AI for a while, essentially since my last newsletter in May. I’ve been toying around with GPT-4, often as a last resort, when working through sticky spots while fact-checking.

If you’re a fact-checker, you know: you often feel like you’re asked to turn reports back on a dime, and often times, the drafts you receive are not adequately annotated or sourced. Writers might make claims, and expect you to find the information to corroborate it. (Ideally, btw, this isn’t how it works!)

What’s a fact-checker to do? Again, to me, GPT-4 is a last resort. But, it’s a tool, and it’s often a useful one at that.

Join me on September 3, 12-1pm PST, for a one-hour webinar on how to level-up your fact-checking skills. We’ll talk about how generative AI can help

• find sources

• detect errors of omission

• unearth conflicts of interest

• corroborate ‘red-flag’ words.

While this event is mainly geared towards fact-checkers, it’s also useful for journalist who need to source their own facts. (So, every journalist).

Find your details here, and I look forward to seeing ya there.

Wudan

I was so taken aback that I feared my response (“we don’t”) inherently had “you idiot” tacked on the end.

I’ve never used AI — generative or not — to help with fact-checking.

Let me take you behind the curtain.

When nonfiction creators don’t give us a source for a certain fact, fact-checkers look for other primary sources to verify claims during pre-publication fact-checking. Usually, that involves the age-old act of conducting a Google search.

But on Google, those primary sources are getting obscured.

The first thing you’ll notice after you query Google is an AI-generated response. Google’s AI function is annoying, ubiquitous, and hard to get rid of, and it feels like we need to scroll for ages to find a good primary source. (Hot tip: if you add -ai at the end of a Google search query, you WILL get rid of the terrible, inaccurate AI-generated results)

So, as ever, it really helps when writers provide sources. Because fact-checkers might turn up a different primary source from the one the writer used and suggest a change for accuracy—all because the two individuals are not looking at the same thing.

ChatGPT, though, offers a different route to finding sources. Depending on how you query it, and if you have the paid version or not, it can lead you to a primary source that helps corroborate a claim, or offer a counterpoint. That’s awesome! When GPT does that, please make sure it’s not hallucinating and check that the source they gave you is a) real b) a good source and c) actually provides the answer to the search query that you provided.

One note about ChatGPT is that it tends to be a ‘yes man,’ which means the algorithm is more apt to encourage and amplify the worldview that you prompt it for. So instead of saying “Is TKTK true?” it’s likely a better use of computational resources to ask “What is the X of Y? Please provide links to primary sources” . Karen Hao, who just published EMPIRE OF AI (which was fact checked; remember that I don’t recommend nonfiction books that were not fact-checked), discussed this on book tour in Seattle last week.

Technology is a tool, and I think it’s important to know how the tools at our disposal can help solve specific problems. Adding quotation marks around search queries and limiting Google searches with site: and -ai triggers memories from my computer programming class in college that I thought I erased by now, but I guess that’s what we have to do now to unshittify the enshitification that’s ensued.

Ultimately, though, fact-checking requires critical thinking and true discernment around fact, fiction, and context (so much context) that I am doubtful it is something machines can ever replace. It might not surprise you that places are trying to train AI models to conduct fact-checking, however…

If you’re at the health care journalists conference this weekend in LA, come to my Saturday session on how to best use AI as a freelancer (and no, throwing your entire draft in AI to have it ‘fact-check’ it for you is absolutely not anything worth doing)

I was just coming back from a reporting trip and was eager to use a more analytical part of my brain. But I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to check the rest of the essays. So, I recommended someone else. Together, the three of us were able to get it done and right—on time.

People have been asking me a lot recently about what inspired the agency, how I built it up, and how an agency is uniquely set up to help nonfiction creators who need a lot of facts checked on a tight turnaround. Checking All We Can Save was one of those pivotal moments. (Which, of course, I didn’t recognize it then.)

I’m talking about it today because one book that the agency worked on just published this week. Four of our checkers were able to check Arianna Rebolini’s Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die in a week and some change. I got to read some sections as I managed that project and I’m eager to dive deeper into Arianna’s beautiful writing.

I know that some authors I’ve worked with prefer to work with a single fact-checker— which makes sense for continuity. But that’s largely predicated on the assumption that the author has enough time to get a book fact-checked. Sometimes authors come to me saying: hey, can you help check this 70-80k word book in a MONTH? Sometimes less? (Melinda Wenner Moyer, who has an essential parenting book coming out next month that I helped fact-check—pre-order it here— went into the process of what it was like to have her book checked in a month.)

No human has the capacity to process, scrutinize, and re-write facts at that speed, and I think it’s rad that Factual has that capacity to spread out the work to multiple folks when time is of the essence.