Primary is two things built on one idea. A publication whose reporting is traceable to the source material behind it — and an index that scores journalism on the rigour of the work itself.
Reporting built from the record, and published with it.
Primary publishes articles built from primary-source material — including filings, records, statements, interviews, and other original sources. Every article begins with that material, and the editorial direction is centred on surfacing it clearly, presenting it in a readable format, and keeping a visible evidentiary trail through the piece.
When readers can see the basis for a story, trust improves. Primary is designed to preserve the connection between published reporting and the source material behind it.
Every sentence that states a fact carries the source it came from — named, dated and linked.
Primary is built to connect reporting back to the materials that underpin it. That includes source references, structured article relationships, and a model that makes evidence more legible to the reader.
A filing, docket, release or transcript is logged with its outlet, kind and date.
Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum are two of the largest independent refiners in the United States by capacity.2
Each factual sentence carries a numbered citation to the source it rests on.
The citation lands in the article’s reference list, and out to the source itself.
The same standard, turned on the reporting itself.
Most ways of judging quality in a field are informal, reputational, and slow to evolve. They lag behind who is actually crafting the best work in real time. We believe quality can be scored directly, from the work itself, using a consistent, transparent, first-principles methodology.
The Primary Index is our first product: a public ranking of journalists based on the originality and integrity of their reporting. Every profile is built from a journalist’s public body of work and scored by our methodology — not follower count, not outlet prestige, but the work itself.
A profile shows how a journalist ranks against everyone else covering their category, their region, or their industry: how an entire corpus of work scores across multiple metrics, and how the craft has evolved over time.
The Index is the beginning. It is the first proof point for a broader idea — that quality is measurable, in almost any field, if you build the right rubric. We are starting with journalism. It will not be where we stop.
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Our reporters interview the researchers behind each story and show them the draft before it runs. Anyone we interview sees their words in place before publication, attributed by name, and the full transcript is kept with the story’s sources.
Primary is building toward a model of publishing where source transparency is not hidden in the background. It is part of the product, part of the reading experience, and part of what gives the reporting weight.