Journalists write long.
The tooling should keep up.
Reported writing lives or dies on whether you can find the quote, the document, and the context under deadline.
What actually goes wrong
A reported piece arrives as recordings, documents, half-legible notes, and three competing versions of a timeline. The draft is the easy part. The hard part is that the sentence you are writing at 4pm depends on a detail you captured three weeks ago and can no longer locate.
Where the work usually breaks
| Stage of a reported piece | Where it usually breaks | What changes here |
|---|---|---|
| Interviews and documents | Files scattered across downloads and email | Sources sit in the project and stay searchable |
| Drafting | The quote you need is in a file you cannot find | Clips carry the document and page they came from |
| Fact-checking | Claims checked at the end, under deadline | Unsupported statements flagged while you draft |
| Filing | Editors read a version that keeps moving | A frozen snapshot with an expiry |
How Strut helps
Every source stays with the story
Import the PDFs, filings and transcripts into the project and question them later with page citations, rather than keeping a folder of downloads no one can search.
Quotes keep their provenance
Clips saved from a source carry the document and page they came from, so attribution survives the gap between research and filing.
Claims get checked before filing
The critique operation flags unsupported statements in your own draft, which is a cheaper way to find them than a correction.
Editors read the version you meant
Share a frozen snapshot with a password and an expiry instead of emailing a document that keeps changing under them.
Guides written for this work
- How to give writing feedback writers can act on — Write feedback that names the editing level, describes the reader's experience, marks severity, and leaves the writer with a change they can actually make.
- Citation management for writers, done early — Capture sources as you read, record the fields that matter, keep quotations exact, and verify every borrowed claim in one pass before you publish.
- Keep one source of truth for a long manuscript — Stop a manuscript forking during revision: declare the canonical draft, give sources and cut material their own homes, and reconcile before each handoff.
Where to start
Start with one reported piece: import the documents and the transcript, keep your notes beside the draft, and see whether filing gets easier. A free account covers one project with three documents, unlimited notes, and 50,000 starter AI tokens — no card required.
Want to see it on a real story first?
The read-only demo shows the editor with a draft already in it, and keeping one source of truth explains the filing problem it solves.
Journalists questions
Can I work from recorded interviews?
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Yes. Record a voice note in the project or upload audio, and it is transcribed into a rough note. For pulling transcripts from a video URL or labelling multiple speakers, we point people to transcript.you on the partner resources page.
Is my source material private?
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Projects are visible only to you and reviewers you invite. Review snapshots are opt-in, can carry a password, and expire. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is stored.
Can an editor comment without an account?
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A review snapshot is read-only and needs no account. Inline comments and resolution require a collaborator account, because they attach to a specific person.
Other ways people use Strut
Give your rough notes
somewhere to go.
Projects, notes, versioned drafts, imported sources, and careful AI assistance in one private workspace.