A newsroom’s voice is its articles

Until now, an editorial voice was described in a questionnaire: formal or informal address, register, sentence length, three adjectives “that sum you up”. The model acted out the adjectives, which is exactly what produces the tics we recognise as AI text.

A voice is now a name, three to five complete articles from the newsroom, and a few prohibitions — only what the articles cannot show: taboo subjects, banned words, house rules. The articles are injected as they are into the generation instructions; everything visible in a text (how it opens, how it ends, how it quotes, its rhythm) is imitated from the examples, with nothing to describe. You add an article by searching the site’s own, by link, or by pasting its text.

A writer can also have their own pen, from their profile: from three articles on, it does the writing, otherwise the article type’s voice; the prohibitions of both add up.

Fifteen principles instead of a list of don’ts

The long list of phrases to avoid leaves the instructions. Saying “don’t write furthermore” primes furthermore, and four hundred lines of warnings dilute the voice and the material. In their place, fifteen short, positive principles, placed right before the task: open with the new fact, report rather than qualify, a quote is verbatim and attributed, a precise detail beats an adjective, nothing that is not in the sources, no wrap-up sentence, no sets of three by reflex.

Below the brief’s sources, a “Related articles” field: a pasted link is added, a typed word searches the pages of the site that Analytics has seen. These articles are not material — they give context, and an internal link in the generated text. No other link survives: a link that is not in the brief is removed from the text.

The fact sheet before writing

At the end of the analysis, a quick call draws up a sheet from the angle, the sources and the related articles: the essentials, the quotes with their speaker, the timeline, the facts, the names, what is new, the context with its provenance. Every quote on the sheet is checked word for word against the sources; one that is not there is removed.

Every field — headlines, standfirst, body — is then written from this sheet rather than from the raw sources. The sheet is kept with the brief, sent back with every regeneration from the editor, remembered on the Planner topic, and readable in the editor’s “Sheet” tab. If the call fails, nothing blocks: the fields get the sources as before.