What This Publication Is

The Rest of the World Report is an independent international news publication built for American readers. Its premise is simple: the rest of the world is covering major global events through a different lens than American media, and American readers deserve access to that lens without having to find it themselves.

This publication does not break news. It does not have reporters in the field. What it does is locate, verify, and translate the international press coverage that American readers are not seeing — and present it with the sourcing, context, and labeling that allows readers to evaluate it for themselves.

The editor is not a journalist. He is a researcher and an editor with a background in legal and publishing research — environments where verification is not optional and sourcing has consequences. That discipline is the foundation of every edition.

The publication’s only asset is its credibility. Every editorial decision is made in the reader’s interest.

What We Do

The Rest of the World Report aggregates, verifies, contextualizes, and translates international press coverage for an American audience. The editor reads across a wide range of international outlets — wire services, regional press, specialist publications — identifies what is being covered and how, verifies the sourcing, and presents it in a format that gives American readers the world picture their own media is not providing.

This is editorial work, not original reporting. The distinction matters and we do not obscure it.

Content Layers

The Rest of the World Report produces content across three distinct layers. Each layer operates under different editorial standards, and readers should understand which layer they are reading or listening to at any given time.

Daily Editions

The twice-daily weekday editions — Morning and Evening — are the publication’s core product. These are factual, sourced, and strictly non-editorial. No opinions. No advocacy. No characterizations that go beyond what the documented facts support. The editor’s job in these editions is to disappear — to present the world picture as the international press has reported it, accurately labeled and clearly sourced.

When a daily edition names something, it is because the sourcing supports that name. When it does not name something, it is because the sourcing does not yet support it.

Special Reports

Special Reports go deeper than the daily cycle allows. They remain factual and sourced — the same verification standards apply — but the editor’s analytical judgment is present. Patterns are identified. Context is built across time. The sourcing is documented and the analysis is labeled as such.

Special Reports do not editorialize. They connect documented facts and name what those facts, in aggregate, represent.

Podcast

The podcast is the editor’s voice applied to the Special Reports. It uses the documented facts of the written piece as its foundation and does what reported prose cannot: asks questions out loud, names patterns explicitly, and states what the evidence means. Every claim made in the podcast is anchored in what the corresponding written piece documented.

The podcast is clearly opinion-adjacent. It is not the translation service. It is the editor reasoning in public from an established factual foundation. It is labeled accordingly.

Sourcing Standards

The Hierarchy

All sourcing follows a defined hierarchy:

1. Wire services first — Reuters, AFP, Associated Press. For confirmed facts, casualty figures, and official statements.

2. Established international outlets — for regional framing and sourcing. A full outlet reference list is maintained and available.

3. Primary sources — government statements, UN agencies, international organizations. Always preferred when available.

4. US outlets — for confirmation only. American media confirms what international outlets have already established. It does not serve as primary sourcing for international stories.

5. Think tanks and policy institutes — for analysis only, never for facts. Always labeled with their orientation.

6. Advocacy and partisan outlets — used sparingly, always labeled, and only when they add something neutral sources do not have.

Source Labeling

All sources with a known editorial lean are labeled. State-funded outlets are identified as such, with a note on editorial independence where relevant. Think tanks are labeled by orientation. Advocacy outlets are flagged prominently.

This is not a judgment about the value of those sources. It is information the reader needs to evaluate what they are reading.

The Attribution Rule

No outlet is credited with covering a story in a particular way unless a specific article from that outlet was found and read during that edition’s research. Inference about how an outlet would cover something is fabrication. It does not appear in this publication.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia may be used as a secondary or tertiary source only. It is never the sole citation for any factual claim and is always corroborated by independent sourcing.

Russian and Iranian State Media

Claims sourced exclusively to Russian or Iranian state media require independent corroboration before appearing in this publication. This is not a blanket prohibition — these outlets sometimes break genuine news — but a single state media source on a claim that serves that government’s narrative is not sufficient. If confirmation does not arrive, the claim does not run.

The AI Partnership

This publication is produced with the assistance of Claude, an AI system developed by Anthropic. The editor is transparent about this and has been since the first edition.

Claude functions as a production partner: assisting with research synthesis, drafting, and fact organization. The editor makes every editorial decision — what to cover, what to hold, what to label, what the sourcing supports. Verification of sources is the editor’s responsibility. The editorial judgment is the editor’s. Claude does not determine what is true. The editor does.

This is disclosed because readers deserve to know how the publication is made.

What This Publication Will Not Do

• Publish unconfirmed claims

• Name an outlet as a source without a confirmed article from that outlet in hand

• Present state media claims without independent corroboration

• Editorialize in the daily editions

• Carry advertising or sponsored content

• Allow commercial relationships to influence coverage

• Promote merchandise during active news coverage

• Advocate for any government, military, or political position

Corrections

When this publication makes an error, it corrects it. Corrections are noted in the relevant edition or post. The standard is not perfection — it is accountability.

A Note on Independence

The Rest of the World Report has no advertisers, no investors, and no institutional affiliations. It is sustained by readers who choose to support it. That structure is not incidental — it is the condition that makes the editorial standards above possible. The publication’s only obligation is to the reader.

A Note on Misinformation

This publication exists because official narratives are sometimes incomplete, and because American readers deserve access to what the international press is actually reporting. That is not a conspiratorial premise. It is a journalistic one.

There is a meaningful difference between documented evidence that contradicts an official account — which this publication will report — and unsourced counter-narratives that substitute suspicion for evidence. We cover the first. We do not traffic in the second.

The standard is always the same: sourcing. If a claim cannot be traced to a verifiable, credible source, it does not appear here. That applies to official government statements. It applies equally to claims circulating on social media, in partisan outlets, or in the corners of the internet where evidence is considered optional.

To be direct about it: this is not a platform for theories about financial elites manipulating global events, coordinated deceptions about casualty figures, or any other framework that begins with a conclusion and works backward to the evidence. If that is what you are looking for, you are in the wrong place.

The world is complicated enough. The facts, reported honestly, are sufficient.

This document will be updated as the publication evolves. Last updated: April 2026.

I don’t have a journalism degree. Aside from fixing the printers inside the Akron Beacon Journal, I’ve never worked in a newsroom. I don’t have press credentials or a network of sources or an editor checking my work.

I did work on the school paper in the late 1900s. But I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.

What I do have is years of research experience working in law firms and publication houses — places where getting it wrong has consequences. Where you verify, then verify again, and you don’t move until the sourcing is airtight. And then you verify one more time. That’s not a habit I developed for RotWR. I brought it with me.

I’m also a guy from the United States who has lived in Paris long enough to notice something. The news looks different from here. Not slightly different. Fundamentally different.

When Trump won, my phone started filling up with the same question from friends back home: what is the world saying about this? I’d answer, they’d go quiet for a second, and then: why aren’t we hearing that?

That second question I couldn’t quite answer.

Then the war in Iran started. The messages became a flood.

Fifteen thousand people found this in three weeks without me asking them to. I’m still not entirely sure what that means. But I think it means the question my friends were asking — why aren’t we hearing that? — isn’t just their question.

That’s why I do this. My credentials are right there in the work.

This is me answering that second question.

When Donald Trump won the U.S. Presidency I started receiving a small handful of messages that were all along different versions of the same question: what is the world saying about it?

My friend, Amy, even went as far as to drop hints that I should do Tik-Toks, or reels updating people in the United States on the news as I was seeing it here in Paris. I made half-assed efforts, shared things from smarter people than I.

Then this damn war kicked off in Iran. Again.

For the first few days I was glued to the television and my phone. The messages started coming again. I answered message after message and it was becoming obvious - a little over a year after taking office and now people in the United States believe they aren’t getting the full picture from their own media. When I would tell them what I was seeing on the news here they became certain they weren’t getting the full picture.

So I started a thing.

I AM NOT A JOURNALIST. But I am a massive nerd with some tech skills and a MacBook Pro. So I asked Claude.

Claude said yes and The Rest of the World Report was born.

How it works is really straightforward; every day shortly after noon Paris time I start with a query about news regarding the war in Iran. At first, I keep the search limited to the most recent 12 hours. Then I circle back to previous days searches in case of important updates. I verify my sources, let Claude summarize, then put it all together. Often times I start with a story I am already following. Often I start with a rumor I see online and get verification or debunking.

ALWAYS I make it a point to prompt Claude to NOT editorialize. Just give me the information, ramifications (crude oil price rise leading to gas price rise), and what to keep an eye on. Then I have Claude provide links to sources which I then verify. This is the most tedious part of the endeavor, but imo the most important.

I am not a journalist. I am an aggregator. I think that is the best way to describe what I do with The Rest of the World Report. I tell you all of this because I believe in transparency.

I hope what I do helps.

Postscript - for my own mental health I am going to add a twist on Sundays. Reading and watching the news about horrible things happening in the world is emotionally exhausting so, I am going to apply these same efforts to find good things in the world. Sunday mornings are going to be a break from the ugly and focus on something good in the world.

When the war is over I will likely wind it down to once a day focused on news you likely aren’t seeing in the United States.