Best PARA Method for Journalists

What PARA Method actually asks of you

Every note lives exactly where it can be acted on — Projects for now, Areas for ongoing responsibility, Resources for reference, Archive for the rest.

The weekly work is re-homing: anything untouched in Projects moves down the ladder. The archive grows without guilt; a dead project note is a filed decision, not a failure.

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 — para method without the daily upkeep.

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