September 5, 2026

Week of 29 August – 4 September 2026

1,364 stories across four markets, 30,467 articles.

On this page

Between 29 August and 4 September 2026 this project collected 30,467 articles and grouped them into 1,364 stories across four markets. A story is a cluster of articles close enough in meaning to be the same event³; independence is counted in owners, not outlets⁴. Superscripts link into the method page, where each measurement is defined once.

Volume

Counts are after duplicate feed entries are merged², and they are not flat across the week: a weekend day runs about half a weekday¹.

Market	Articles	Stories	In a story	Baseline share
us-national	12,417	497	33%	18%
uk-national	6,166	277	27%	27%
uk-regional	7,145	350	24%	32%
intl-state	4,739	240	38%	22%

What the week was about

Stories ranked by the number of owners carrying them — The ranking is by owners, not by article count: what matters is how widely a story travelled, not how much was written.

The three widest stories in each market, with the words that separate each from the rest of its week⁶:

us-national. JD Vance Says He Wouldn’t Call Iran Conflict a War — 23 owners, 40 articles, published over 11 hours (Fox, Vance, Bartiromo, Maria). Key things to know about Lindsay Clancy's case after judge declares mistrial — 21 owners, 102 articles, published over 23 hours (Clancy, Lindsay, mistrial, trial). U.S. Strikes Iran in First Military Action in a Month — 21 owners, 71 articles, published over 23 hours (Iran, Island, Iranian, strikes).

uk-national. Keir Starmer’s resignation statement in full as he stands down as MP — 12 owners, 50 articles, published over 21 hours (Keir, Starmer, prime, Commons). Zack Polanski announces he will stand in Holborn and St Pancras by-election — 12 owners, 18 articles, published over 12 hours (Polanski, Zack, Holborn, Pancras). Reform UK conference LIVE: Nigel Farage to deliver speech as two key party figures step down over 'foreign donations' claim — 11 owners, 55 articles, published over 22 hours (Reform, Farage, Nigel, party).

uk-regional. Aigburth Road closed after woman hit by car - live updates — 5 owners, 23 articles, published over 19 hours (closed, collision, traffic, emergency). Seven arrested over death of newborn baby girl in Sheffield - everything known so far — 5 owners, 22 articles, published over 20 hours (murder, baby, newborn, girl). Keir Starmer to resign as MP as he confirms what he will do next — 5 owners, 22 articles, published over 17 hours (Keir, Starmer, Prime, Commons).

intl-state. Ukrainian lawmaker says Russian drone struck planes at Kyiv airport ahead of US envoys' visit — 9 owners, 54 articles, published over 19 hours (Witkoff, Kushner, Kyiv, envoys). 27 killed, over 40 injured in Russian drone strike on warehouse near Kyiv, says Ukraine — 9 owners, 44 articles, published over 20 hours (Kyiv, Russian, district, attack). Putin, Modi highlight expanding Russia-India ties, economic cooperation — 9 owners, 44 articles, published over 21 hours (Putin, summit, Modi, Kyrgyzstan).

The same day in four markets

Stories are clustered inside a market and never across them⁷. The boundary is worth reading on its own, because most of what a market carries never crosses it.

Market	Stories	Also carried in another market
us-national	497	27%
uk-national	277	54%
uk-regional	350	30%
intl-state	240	46%

The match behind that last column is deliberately loose⁸: the claim being made is “nobody else ran this”, so it should fail towards saying a story travelled. At the strict threshold the same shares are 19%, 41%, 24% and 34%, in the order above.

Where an event did cross, the wording is the interesting part. The same day, the same event, as each market ran it:

Friday 4 September

Market	Headline as it ran there	Owners	Articles
us-national	Key things to know about Lindsay Clancy's case after judge declares mistrial	21	102
uk-national	Lindsay Clancy mistrial declared after jury deadlocks over deaths of her three children	4	12
uk-regional	Mistrial declared in Lindsay Clancy child killings case after deadlocked jury	1	3

Tuesday 1 September

Market	Headline as it ran there	Owners	Articles
us-national	Miracles in the mud: Crews still finding survivors of Nepal-China flood disaster	13	59
uk-national	Briton rescued in Nepal after deadly floods, army spokesperson says	8	22
uk-regional	Death toll from catastrophic flooding in Nepal and China passes 1,000	2	8
intl-state	Death toll from Nepal-China floods tops 1,000, around 4,500 still missing	7	19

Wednesday 2 September

Market	Headline as it ran there	Owners	Articles
us-national	U.S.-Iran war escalates as Iran claims a wedding party was hit in strike	17	51
uk-national	Iran retaliates after US strikes reportedly kill wedding guests - The Latest	4	6
intl-state	Iran, US exchange new attacks: Who was hit in latest strikes?	8	45

The other side of the same measurement is what one market carried and nobody else did⁹. For intl-state that is 54% of its stories this week:

Carried only by state broadcasters	Day	Owners	Articles
EU foreign policy chief urges countries to give expiring air defense interceptors to Ukraine interceptors, Kallas, Kaja, expiring	Tue	4	5
Turkey: Cargo ship missing after collision off Istanbul coast Istanbul, coast, crew, cargo	Wed	4	5
UNICEF: 1 in 5 youths targeted by online sexual abuse sexual, abuse, UNICEF, online	Thu	4	5
Germany aims to finalize 'return hubs' by year's end hubs, return, Austria, Netherlands	Fri	4	5
Ukraine's ambassador summoned to Turkish Foreign Ministry over attacks on vessels in Black Sea Black, vessels, Sea, summons	Sat	4	4
India must honour water-sharing treaty with Pakistan: international court Treaty, Indus, Pakistan, court	Mon	4	4

How far stories travel

Distribution of owners per story — Most stories stop at three or four owners. The tail to the right is what a week actually shares.

Owner counts here are corrected for wire copy: two owners running one agency text under two mastheads count once between them⁵.

How long a story lasts

Owners carrying each long-running story, day by day — One panel per story that ran more than a single day. The line is how many owners carried it that day, so the shape says whether it spread, held, or faded.

A week-long story is a chain of daily clusters rather than one object¹⁰. Ordering is by how much of this week a story occupied, and it has to hold at least 3 days of it to appear¹¹. The column worth reading is the last one: a story that opens wide was already everyone’s on day one, and one that opens narrow had to travel first¹².

Each owner’s first, middle and last article in one story — The week’s largest story, one row per owner, ordered by when that owner first published. The dot sits on that owner’s first article and its area is how many they ran; the line runs on to their last. The bars along the top are how many articles ran in each 6-hour window.

Counting owners per day says how wide a story got; the rows above say how it filled up¹³. It is one story, though, not a claim about how these owners behave¹⁴.

Story	Where it ended	Market	Ran	Articles	Owners, day 1 → total
Ukrainian drones strike two Russian aircraft, eight radar systems and S-400 Russian, Kyiv, region, attack	Russian forces attack civilian infrastructure in Odesa region, one killed,	intl-state	23 Aug – 4 Sep	282	2 → 9
Nepal floods, mudslides kill dozens, leave hundreds missing near China border Nepal, missing, floods, toll	Two trapped workers rescued from mud-clogged tunnel 9 days after Nepal floods	intl-state	26 Aug – 4 Sep	299	9 → 9
Prosecution rests in Lindsay Clancy murder trial. Defense now gets its turn Clancy, Lindsay, jury, trial	Key things to know about Lindsay Clancy's case after judge declares mistrial	us-national	17 Aug – 4 Sep	433	5 → 23
Iran war: US military strikes Iran's Larak Island Iran, strikes, Strait, Iranian	‘Small potatoes’: US President Trump downplays war on Iran	intl-state	30 Aug – 4 Sep	173	8 → 9
Harry and Meghan set for Britain return 'within days' — but surprising catch Harry, Meghan, Prince, Markle	Prince Harry ‘needs to call the King and explain himself’ after sudden move to	uk-national	24 Aug – 4 Sep	88	2 → 7
Trump mulls renaming Lake Ontario as 'Lake America.' Canadians balk at the Lake, Ontario, America, Google	List of Places, Things Donald Trump Wants to Rename After Lake Ontario	us-national	26 Aug – 3 Sep	169	4 → 26
Videos show devastating mudslides in Nepal after flash floods Nepal, missing, flood, toll	Some missing tourists make contact as Nepal flood death toll tops 1,100	us-national	26 Aug – 2 Sep	314	17 → 22
Novak Djokovic knocked out of US Open in first round by Mariano Navone vencen, Djokovic, con, Los	Jensen finishes a single shy of the cycle to help Royals win 7-3 and avoid	us-national	31 Aug – 4 Sep	120	7 → 7

Who moves together

Owner pairs ranked by excess co-occurrence — Measured against a null model that keeps both the size of each story and the output of each owner, so neither big news nor a prolific outlet can produce a score on its own. Computed over the whole archive, not just this week: the signal is longitudinal and a single week is too noisy to read.

A high score means two owners run the same stories more often than their volumes explain, which is not the same as coordination¹⁵. What it cannot say is whether either is following the other; for that the next section uses the clock.

How stories move between newsrooms

Owner pairs that publish closer together than the story explains — Inside every story each pair of owners is ranked by how close together the two published, measured against all the other pairs in that same story. Scoring against the story itself is what keeps big news out of the result: an event everybody reaches within the hour makes every pair look fast, and only a pair that is fast relative to its own story survives.

Direction is what separates the mechanisms, and it is the part a co-occurrence count cannot see¹⁶.

Pair	Market	Relationship	Typical gap	Stories
Associated Press ↔ Warner Bros Discovery	us-national	both ways	112 min	194
Anadolu Ajansi → TRT	intl-state	one way	84 min	236
IAC → Breitbart News Network	us-national	one way	3.0 h	79
Associated Press ↔ Disney	us-national	both ways	131 min	117
Reach plc → DMGT	uk-national	one way	100 min	310
Lebedev Holdings ↔ Independent Digital News and Media	uk-national	both ways	37 min	142
Warner Bros Discovery ↔ Bloomberg LP	us-national	both ways	100 min	74
Nation.Cymru ↔ Gannett	uk-regional	both ways	81 min	21
Axel Springer ↔ Nikkei	uk-national	both ways	97 min	25

Measured over the whole archive rather than this week, and only after two controls: each owner’s own speed is subtracted, and the pair’s tightest quarter of stories is dropped¹⁷.

The same measurement can be asked of a single owner: is it upstream of the newsrooms it shares stories with, or downstream of them¹⁸?

Market	Upstream of its partners	Downstream of them
us-national	Associated Press z 14.0	Time USA z −6.5
uk-national	Reach plc z 8.4	Peoples Press z −5.7
uk-regional	Reach plc z 2.0	—
intl-state	Anadolu Ajansi z 6.4	France Medias z −2.0

The two ends read differently, and neither is an accusation¹⁹.

What the headline said first

Every version of an article’s text is kept, so a headline that changes after publication is visible. This week 1,985 headlines were rewritten, 940 of them substantially — less than half the words survived — and the median rewrite landed 4.3 hours after the article first appeared. Not all of that is a newsroom changing its mind²⁰: requiring the two versions to be recognisably the same sentence, changed within a day, leaves 703 — and those are the ones below.

This is the one place in the corpus where an editorial decision is observed twice — the same newsroom, the same story, two framings hours apart²¹.

Warner Bros — “US strikes Iranian rocket launchers, official says, marking first attack in a month” → “US and Iran trade attacks, marking first major military escalation in a month”
Warner Bros — “What the jury in Lindsay Clancy’s trial is deliberating” → “Judge urges jury in Lindsay Clancy murder trial to ‘stay the course’ as it enters Day 4 of deliberations”
Warner Bros — “USPS whistleblower says system for Trump mail ballot rules could fail at multiple points” → “USPS whistleblower describes new plans for voting by mail hidden from the public”
News Corp — “U.S. Targets Iran in Fresh Wave of Strikes” → “U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes in Latest Fight for Control of Hormuz”
Disney — “Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey faces younger, more moderate primary challenger” → “Mass. Sen. Ed Markey will defeat Rep. Seth Moulton in Democratic primary, AP projects”
Global — “Doctor colleague of child serial killer Lucy Letby named” → “Lucy Letby's consultant doctor 'boyfriend' named, two months after being found dead in car”

The examples are drawn from stories that at least 4 owners carried, not from the largest rewrites²².

Rewriting is not evenly spread. Emerson Collective changed the headline on 36% of what it published this week; across the owners with enough output to measure the rate runs from that down to a percent or two²³.

What the rewrites do not show is a softening of language. Quotation marks appear in 116 rewritten headlines and disappear from 94; words that hold a claim at arm’s length — so-called, alleged, reportedly — move in 16 and out of 15. At that size neither is a finding. Distancing is thin enough in headlines that it has to be measured across the whole corpus rather than inside its edits, which is the next section.

Words that have to be quoted

This project is named after the Overton window, and everything above measures something else: the shape of distribution. The window is answered by how a word is marked, not by how far it travels²⁴.

How often each term appears inside quotation marks — Counted over headlines and summaries in all four markets this week. A quoted term is one the outlet did not say in its own voice: either it flagged the word itself, or the word arrived inside someone else’s sentence.

Term	Mentions	In quotation marks	Share
genocide	47	16	34%
woke	58	19	33%
terrorist	74	15	20%
illegal	264	19	7%
election	458	16	3%
inflation	154	4	3%
migrant	117	2	2%
police	1,611	21	1%
far-right	122	1	1%

The separation is an order of magnitude and it is not subtle. Nothing about the count knows which words are contested — the list is fixed in advance, and it has to be²⁵. Read the shares as a level, not as a movement²⁶: the window is the change in them over months.

Method

Every measurement above is defined once, on the method page — the superscripts throughout this report link straight into it. Reports are generated without human editing and without a language model²⁷.