Upbeat
How we work
How we choose stories
Upbeat only publishes verified good news. That sounds simple; doing it honestly is not. This page is our attempt to show our work — what we cover, how we check it, and where our blind spots are.
What we look for
Every story must be genuinely positive, verifiably true, and worth your attention: scientific breakthroughs, human kindness, institutional good work, new records, recoveries, restorations. We write every summary ourselves, in plain language, and link the original source on every card.
We never publish a story that asks you to imagine trauma, violence, or violation in order to feel the good news — no matter how positive the outcome. And some subjects are simply off the table for us: US immigration, the Israel-Palestine conflict, migration debates, and anything that frames one country against another.
How we fight our own bias
Any selection of "the good news" is biased by who does the selecting. We'd rather measure ours than pretend it doesn't exist:
At least 4 continents, 8 countries. No more than 40% US stories. At least 2 from Africa, and at least 1 each from South Asia, Latin America, and East/Southeast Asia.
No single outlet may supply more than 25% of an edition. We prefer outlets rooted in the story's region over Western wires rewriting it.
We actively commission from African, South Asian, Latin American, and Southeast Asian outlets — and unfamiliar outlets get more verification, never less.
An automated audit measures the whole library against these targets and against world baselines. If a quota can't be met without lowering the bar, we run short and say so.
The library, by the numbers
Verification, every time
- Exact source URL. Never a homepage or search page — the article itself.
- It must open. Every link is fetched and checked; bot-blocked publishers are verified in a real browser.
- It must support the story. Headline, figures, and date are checked against the article before anything publishes.
- Original words only. We never reproduce article text. Facts are free; prose belongs to its author.
Questions about our standards? [email protected]