SamiaNewsroom
Fridays from January 2027

Progress & Solutions

Good news.
Checked twice.

The other half of the record: things that got better, with a place, a number, a date and the people who did the work. At least one primary source for every item, named under it. A short letter every Friday from January 2027, three minutes to read.

Get the Friday letter ↗Read the first piece ↓

What it is

The other half
of the record.

Most news is a record of what went wrong today. That is its job. But a diet of only that leaves people certain the world is getting worse, when on many of the measures that matter it is not. Progress & Solutions is the other half of the record.

It is not a feel-good letter. No rescued puppies, no vague "hope is rising" pieces. Every item is verified, specific and sourced: a named place, a real number, a date, and the people who did the work, with the sources listed so you can check it yourself.

It arrives every Friday from January 2027, takes about three minutes, and links to a longer Progress piece when an item deserves one. One email a week. No ads, no sponsors, no tricks to make you click.

How it is checked

The document,
not the story.

The same standard as every Newsroom piece, applied to every item in the letter, by someone other than the person who wrote it.

A primary source per item

Nothing goes in on a story about a story. Every item rests on at least one primary source, named under the item so you can open it yourself.

What counts as primary

A government dataset, a published study, a court record, a company filing, a charity's audited report. Where a figure is an estimate we say so and whose estimate it is; where it is contested, we cite more than one source.

Specific, or it is cut

A place, a number, a date and a name. If we cannot say who did what, where and by how much, the item does not run. Corrections are logged in public.

Published

The first
Progress piece.

Before the Friday letters begin, one longer piece to show the standard: three diseases that people decided to end, with every figure sourced to the WHO, the FAO, the World Organisation for Animal Health or the Carter Center.

Progress · Health

Two diseases humanity has ended, and the one that is nearly gone

Smallpox is gone. Rinderpest is gone. Guinea worm went from an estimated three and a half million cases a year to fifteen in 2024. How it was done, and who did it.

Samia Newsroom · 6 November 2026 · 7 sources · not yet checked by a second person Read it ↗

One number from the piece

0
Guinea worm cases in 1986, estimated
0
Human cases reported in 2024

Source: The Carter Center, Guinea Worm Eradication Program, annual case counts (13 human cases in 2022, 14 in 2023, 15 in 2024). No vaccine and no medicine were involved: water filters, larvicide, case containment, village volunteers and a cash reward for reporting a case. Read against the source by the writer on 6 November 2026; not yet checked by a second person.

What a Friday letter contains

Five to seven items.
Four parts each.

Every item in the letter has the same four parts, in the same order, so a reader can check any one of them in under a minute. The shape on the right is the real template the desk writes into; the words in it are the labels, not a sample.

  1. 1
    What got better

    One sentence, with the number in it.

  2. 2
    Where and when

    A named place and a date, not "recently" and not "a region".

  3. 3
    Who did the work

    The people, the office, the organisation. Progress has authors.

  4. 4
    A primary source

    Named under the item, so you can open it.

Progress & SolutionsFriday · 3 min read
1
What got better, in one sentence with the number
Where · whenWho did itPrimary source
2
Second item, same shape
3
Third item, same shape
Items four to seven, then the corrections line and the address to write to.

The Friday letter · from January 2027

Get the
Friday letter.

Five to seven things that actually got better, every Friday from January 2027, three minutes to read. Nothing else, and you can leave with one click.