How CurrentWire Ranks the News

No single signal determines placement. The ranking system is designed to distinguish between something that is merely new and something that is genuinely important. Every story receives a score from 0 to 100 built from the weighted signals below.

Freshness — 35 points

Recent coverage scores highest, decaying smoothly over time. Stories published in the past 24 hours dominate; major developing stories can remain prominent for 48–72 hours; nothing older than 72 hours is ranked. Time decay means an old story never stays on top purely because it once mattered.

Source authority — 20 points

Publications are grouped into configurable authority tiers reflecting journalistic reputation and reach: major wire services, public-service broadcasters and national publications; strong regional and specialist outlets; and smaller credible publications. Authority measures journalistic standing — never political orientation.

Coverage breadth — 20 points

A story independently reported by ten credible publications generally matters more than one reported by a single outlet two minutes later. Duplicate reports of the same event are clustered into one story, and the number of distinct publications covering it feeds this signal.

Geographic relevance — 10 points

CurrentWire focuses on the United States and Canada. Classification is based on what a story is about — its institutions, places and topics — not on where the publisher happens to be headquartered. A wire-service story about the Canadian government is a Canada story.

Story prominence — 10 points

Completeness signals — a usable summary, imagery, identifiable institutions and places — indicate substantive reporting and improve a story’s presentation score.

Velocity — 5 points

How quickly new reports are accumulating. A story attracting several new reports within a few hours is developing; one that stopped attracting coverage is settling.

Duplicate clustering

Multiple publications reporting the same event are grouped into a single canonical story using headline similarity, shared entities and publication timing. The story page lists every publication’s report with a link to the original.

Breaking and developing labels

Breaking is reserved for at most one story at a time: the top-ranked story, only while it is very fresh and broadly covered. Developing and Updated reflect observable coverage patterns — never editorial dramatization.

Ranking systems can make mistakes. CurrentWire continuously evaluates and improves its methodology.