Building a Bundle That Holds Together

Reporters who work mainly from documents tend to accumulate them the way most of us do — a folder here, a scanned letter there, a spreadsheet someone forwarded months ago. That's fine at the start. It becomes a problem the moment you try to write, because a story built on a disorganised pile of paper is very hard to defend when someone, rightly, asks you to show your work.

Assembling in a defensible order

A bundle that holds together is usually ordered chronologically, sometimes with a second grouping by theme where a story genuinely has several strands. The point of the order isn't neatness for its own sake. It's so that anyone reviewing your work — an editor, a lawyer, or eventually a reader with questions — can follow the sequence of events the same way you did, using the same documents, in the same order.

As you assemble, resist adding a document "just in case." Every item in the bundle should earn its place by supporting something specific in the story. A bloated bundle full of tangential material is nearly as hard to work with as no bundle at all.

Indexing so claims can be traced

Every factual claim in your draft should be traceable back to a specific page in a specific document. An index that lists each item with a short description and a page or entry number makes this possible. When you write a sentence, you should be able to point to the exact line in the index that supports it — and if you can't, that's usually a sign the sentence needs to be softened, cut, or checked further before it goes anywhere near a draft.

Where two documents disagree — a report and a letter, say, giving different dates for the same event — note the discrepancy rather than silently picking the version that fits your story. Reconciling conflicting documents honestly, including in the published piece where relevant, is part of what makes the eventual story hold up under scrutiny.

Comment from those named or concerned belongs at a specific point in this process: after the bundle is assembled and the claims are clear, but before the piece is finalised. That sequencing gives the people involved a fair and accurate account of what you're asking them to respond to, and it gives your editors confidence that the piece has been prepared with appropriate care before it reaches legal or editorial review.