Best Atomic Notes for Journalists

What Atomic Notes actually asks of you

A note holds exactly one idea, written so that someone who never saw it could understand it alone.

Titles are claims, not topics — "Retrieval beats re-reading", not "Learning". If a note needs its neighbors to make sense, it is two notes, not one.

How journalists put it to work

1. 1

   Sources and what they said, linked

   Every contact's statements are captured as quotes with the conversation they came from. When a story breaks open, what each person said — and when — is a search, not a shoebox.

2. 2

   Story threads that accumulate

   Angle ideas capture as they occur, linked to the evidence that supports them as it arrives. The piece you write in March was mostly gathered in January.

3. 3

   Chronology on demand

   Events, statements, and documents captured with their dates reconstruct into a timeline. In reporting, the order things happened in is often the story.

The capture habit, the linking, and the retrieval are the parts tentus automates — atomic notes without the daily upkeep.

Other methods worth trying