Research notes
The studies behind this site, as they were written. They are working documents, and some numbers were revised later. For how the site itself works, start with How it works.
Reports
How newspaper attention rises, persists, and returns
A coverage audit of the whole archive and a 24-topic pilot: which themes the papers carried over 41 years, and how much the surviving pages shape what we can see.
Reading an incomplete archive · 1797
A close-reading notebook: how far one can follow a story through the papers of 1797, the case of the seized ship Peace, and a first test of text reuse.
Do stories come back at the same season?
The check behind the Orbit view: yearly rhythms for Independence Day, Thanksgiving, the President's speech, fever, ice and Congress, with fires as a control.
Method and data
Full process introduction
The technical account of every step: topics, story groups, matched stories for every year, data releases, and the pulse and telescope rules.
Data release
The versioned data foundation (currently v0.5.2): tables, checks, provenance, and how to extend it.
The pipeline
The scripts that audit the archive, find and check stories, cut the data releases and build this site, in the order they run.
From proposal to site
The three original project proposals and sketches, and how they became the telescope and the pulse view.