You don’t know what a story is really about until you begin writing it.
Most writers and reporters are familiar with this idea. Just get started, the thinking goes, and the ideas will follow. At Stacker, creating a Studio story is no exception—but with key variations on a timeless theme.
Stacker’s Studio stories are underwritten by brands seeking quality content that meets high journalistic standards. By crafting data-driven Studio stories with the values—accuracy, impartiality, fairness—that our newswire partners have come to expect, Stacker elevates brand content to a new level. In turn, the Studio clients underwriting our stories boost their authority through authentic media placements, reaching new audiences and further establishing their brands.
Producing the Studio product requires multiple rounds of vetting, with many hands shaping and finessing each article before it hits our wire. In other words, a Studio story has several starts. We dive in, get out of the proverbial pool, dry off, reflect, and then take the plunge again and again.
So where, exactly, do we start? Let’s jump right in.
When new Studio clients come on board, Stacker reporters create topic plans based on their area of focus or function. We start with broad strokes, strategizing topics that align with both a client’s needs and the interests and priorities of our newswire partners.
For a client like WorkTango, an employee recognition platform, our newsroom might consider how specific industry concerns like employee engagement, human resources, and management dovetail with themes of workplace culture, retention, and career growth that appeal to a general audience.
Crucially, client topic plans are not prescriptive. Some clients have more guardrails than others, particularly those in niche industries or that designate some roads of inquiry off-limits. Stacker’s newsroom is editorially independent, meaning our clients don't have final approval on Studio stories. Think of our topic plans as cardinal directions, with our newsroom selecting details, defining the focus, and setting the course based on the parameters laid out in our editorial standards.
A story like “The key to constructive, personalized feedback at work? Check your language bias” hit all the marks because it started with a strong topic plan. Underwritten by WorkTango, it drew from an industry survey to explore how racial and gender bias in feedback impacts retention and morale, appealing to everyday readers and industry professionals alike.
Here’s where we really start. Because we focus on data-informed reporting, our team typically starts generating pitches from reliable data sources that best illustrate the topic. Data, in other words, is brainstorming fodder. Then we look for trends or outliers to drill down to unique angles and niche topics. The intersection of a dataset vetted by our reporters and a topic plan approved by our clients is our sweet spot, where we craft some of our freshest, most compelling ideas.
Take our pitch brainstorming process for Northwell Health, a health care provider. Using reliable data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and KFF, our data reporter started with a trend: Stigma surrounding mental health is decreasing. Then she looked at the outliners: For Black and Latino men, as well as older adults, seeking mental health treatment is still taboo.
From there, we went deeper in a brainstorm session, which also serves as a litmus test for relevance and feasibility. We poke holes in ideas or suggest pivots to ensure each pitch answers three key questions: Why should we tell this story? What should this story include? Can we tell this story—and if so, how?
Our pitch process also covers ideas for visualizations, which help crystallize key ideas for our readers. They’re an essential part of the “how” we tell our story. By combining the outliners found in a dataset with a visual component, we devised a strong pitch that turned into an excellent story. The headline captures all the abovementioned elements: “Mental health stigma is shifting. So why are adults, especially men, less likely to seek treatment?”
Each and every pitch is vetted twice, once by the News Desk’s Managing Editor (that’s me), often with input from a data reporter, and again by the Editorial Partnerships Desk.
“When I read through a Studio story pitch, I’m always thinking about the audience that we hope to reach,” said Elisa Huang, head of editorial partnerships at Stacker. “The story scope and approach have to be authoritative and accurate to meet the standards of our journalism newswire. They also need an interesting or unexpected angle to appeal to our Studio clients and a general readership. So we’re always trying to think of a strategic mix of story types—from data-driven to fun slideshows—that will hit with our various audiences.”
This brings us to another beginning: the writing process. Here, a talented data reporter and a writer—sometimes the same person—transform a pitch into a robust, well-reported story.
Most of our stories include a data element, and production kicks into high gear when a reporter analyzes a dataset that captures or illustrates the story. Myriad datasets from government organizations and private sources are available online for free, but in some instances, gathering and analyzing data requires a lengthy process.
Our reports use everything from simple data downloads to APIs and scraping to dig into datasets for key insights. The data is then translated into a visualization, such as heat maps, line charts, or scatterplots, to make the information accessible to our readers.
Our writers then take the pitch and the data and run with it. They contextualize relevant details from data sources, interview experts or those with lived experience on an issue, comb through Google Scholar for pertinent articles in academic journals, review industry reports from the likes of Deloitte and McKinsey, and search magazine and newspaper archives for background that contextualizes the story in production. In other words, they research—rigorously and thoroughly—using the varied tools in their reporter’s toolbelt.
Our approach isn’t formulaic, but every Studio story includes a few key elements. In the introduction, the writer always summarizes the crux of the story and crystallizes its relevance or importance. This often sets up the methodology, which includes a link to the Studio client’s site and the primary source(s) that anchor the story.
Our process is chronological and streamlined—but it’s also malleable. Every story demands a different level of attention.
Once a story is filed, the first editor must grapple with a not-so-simple question: Does the story deliver on the promise laid out in the pitch?
To get to the heart of this big question, editors ask themselves a series of smaller ones: Where is the story “fuzzy” and lacking cohesion, clarity, and connection? Is there a concise and compelling lede? Has the writer selected reliable sources? Does the work include generalizations or unsubstantiated claims? Is it biased? The latter issue can crop up in myriad ways, like in stereotypes that portray an unrepresented group or in the very lack of detail about race, gender, or region—what’s often called bias of omission.
Typically, editors will leave questions for the writer to address or note what’s working well. Sometimes, a lively conversation between writer and editor plays out in the comments to ensure we’re getting every detail just right.
Stories that resonate with our distribution partners and our Studio clients often explore issues related to money, health, and safety. Ensuring these stories have a service element that offers actionable strategies and helps readers make informed choices is a vital part of our editorial process. We elevate these “kitchen table topics” through data analyses and deep reporting unique to underwritten content—it’s Stacker’s special sauce.
Editors tend to do at least two passes on every story: the first to address issues with content and structure, the second for style and line editing. Our editors buff away all the rough edges, smoothen transitions, and make sure the story shines.
These nuances aren’t always obvious at first—or third—glance. But that’s the editor’s job: to read between the lines.
We’re not done yet. We’re at yet another start, what I like to think of as the beginning of the end.
Every story gets reviewed by the eagle-eyed copy editors who comprise our Copy Desk. double-check the facts and ensure the language aligns with the guidelines of our Stacker style handbook, in conjunction with the Associated Press Stylebook. This also ensures our stories adhere to important guidance that aligns with the American Psychological Association to standardize inclusive language when reporting on underrepresented groups and sensitive topics (race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, LGBTQ+ communities, etc.).
For the uninitiated, copyediting isn’t just a matter of fixing grammar and punctuation errors. Copy editors provide a psychological safety net for everyone working on a story, who can take comfort in knowing all the granular details—which can get lost in big-picture edits—are vetted and checked.
Because Studio stories tend to be data-heavy, our copy editors have the additional task of finding ways to make them even more readable. For instance, they might change “20% of Americans own a pet” to “1 in 5 Americans owns a pet.” The latter is easier to visualize, and smaller, real numbers are more accessible to readers. A small detail, yes, but the details make the difference.
Before our Studio stories are passed back to clients for review, they’ll go back to the Editorial Partnerships Desk for one final check to ensure they align with expectations after multiple rounds of edits.
Before we cross the finish line, I want to emphasize that all this fine-tuning and vetting has another purpose: It builds trust. The more detail, insight, and nuance baked into our process, the more confident our clients feel about our ability to produce a great story. Every instance of vague language or shoddy data, every wordy sentence or overdone idea erodes that trust.
After that, it’s over to our account managers, who interface directly with the client. After a review period, the Editorial Partnerships Desk typically handles any feedback. Once it’s incorporated, it’s ready to publish and hit the wire.
Once a story is live, our publishing partners can sign up to receive notifications of hot-off-the-press stories. They can also search in Stacker’s Story Hub, or customize their own newsfeeds by category, location, and more.
Our newswire is used by over 3,900 news outlets to inform and engage their readers. The typical story reaches hundreds of publishers, ranging from major networks like Hearst, Nexstar, and McClatchy to single, independent outlets. You can read more about our distribution process here.
Our initial ideas have traveled a long and winding way from the starting point. The best Studio stories embody this contraction: They’re exactly what a client wants—and not at all what they expected.
In that sense, the Studio process is a lot like writing itself. The only way to know what it’s about is simply to dive in.
Alizah Salario is Stacker's newsroom Managing Editor. Previously, she was an editor at CNBC and covered arts, culture, and education for local New York City media outlets. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Alizah lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Photo Illustration by Stacker // Canva