Introduction
An interview summary is a decision aid, not a smaller transcript
A transcript records what was said, often with repetitions, corrections, unfinished thoughts, and context that never belonged in a short editor brief. An executive summary has a different job: it gives a busy assigning editor enough orientation to decide what deserves attention before reading the full exchange. That requires selection with a stated purpose. The writer should preserve the source’s account, label its evidentiary status, and keep the next decision visible. If the summary merely shortens each answer in sequence, the reader still has to reconstruct the story’s significance. If it removes every qualification, the reader may get a cleaner but less accurate version. The useful middle ground is a short map of the interview’s relevance, the strongest attributed point, the limits of the available evidence, and what remains unknown. It should save reading time without concealing the work still required. An editor should be able to tell what this brief is for before relying on its contents. That small orientation prevents a generic summary from being reused for a different assignment with a different threshold for proof. A useful brief also signals what it leaves out. The absence of a question or record should be labeled as a limit of the interview, not as proof that the wider reporting file contains nothing relevant.
Imagine a fictional interview with a planner discussing a proposed late-evening bus pilot in Cedar Junction. The planner says two routes are being modeled, the budget has not been approved, and a rider survey received responses from only three neighborhoods. Those statements are not equivalent: a planning exercise exists, a launch decision does not, and the survey may not represent the whole service area. A desk editor needs a brief that preserves those distinctions before deciding whether the interview supports a news story, a follow-up conversation, or no immediate assignment. This example is invented; it describes no actual city, survey, route, or official. The editor-facing summary is therefore not a verdict on transit policy. It is a bounded reading of one interview that marks where the transcript ends and where reporting must begin. If the planner later clarifies that the route model was only a spreadsheet exercise, the summary can be revised without treating the first account as a launch announcement. A short brief should make that kind of correction easy. The summary should not make a reader infer an outcome from the order of details. Put the limited point first, then state what the source says and what remains to be checked.
References: RTDNA, Ethics; AP, What We Fact-Check and Why
Keep the interview’s account separate from the story’s evidence
A source can describe a plan accurately and still be unable to establish whether it has been approved, funded, or implemented. The transcript can support a statement such as “the planner said staff are modeling two routes.” It does not by itself establish that riders will receive a new service. A sound brief keeps attribution attached to the claim and names the kind of support available: interview statement, document read by the reporter, direct observation, or independent confirmation. When the transcript is the only source, say so plainly. This is not a ritual disclaimer. It prevents a reader from carrying a source’s interpretation into a headline or briefing as if the newsroom had verified it. The summary should preserve the line between what the interview says and what the reporting file currently supports. The same sentence may carry a forecast and a fact about current work. Preserve that grammar: the forecast remains conditional even if the fact that staff are modeling options is well supported. When an interview contains a later correction, include the corrected wording or note the change. A brief that preserves only the first answer can be shorter and still be materially wrong.
The distinction also protects the source. A brief should not turn an interviewee’s estimate, opinion, or tentative intention into a commitment the person never made. Labeling the speaker and the basis for each important point makes the summary easier to correct when a document arrives or a later source gives a different account. Source attribution is part of the meaning, not an optional note to be stripped during compression. If a quotation depends on an earlier question or a qualification several minutes later, the summary should point back to that passage rather than treating a sentence fragment as self-contained. A useful locator can include the speaker label, timestamp, and question that prompted the answer. Those details are especially helpful when the source refers to a document or condition elsewhere in the conversation. If the reporter changes the assignment after the interview, record that separately. The original purpose explains why the questions were asked; the new purpose explains how the newsroom may use the material now.
References: SPJ, Code of Ethics; RTDNA, Evaluating Sources
1. Define what the editor needs to decide
1.1 Name the reader and the decision horizon
Before drafting, identify who will read the summary and what they may decide after reading it. An assigning editor deciding whether to commission a reported feature needs a different brief from a standards editor reviewing a sensitive claim or a newsroom leader preparing for a budget meeting. “Executive” should describe the reader’s role, not imply that the brief must sound grand. The decision horizon might be immediate—whether a claim merits a same-day check—or provisional, such as whether an interview belongs in a reporting plan for the next week. State that horizon in the brief’s working note. Without it, ChatGPT may produce a generic overview with no sense of which facts matter now. A summary for an editor should help that editor choose a next reading or reporting move; it should not make the choice on the editor’s behalf. A decision horizon also limits what belongs in the opening. If the editor only needs to decide whether to assign verification today, background details that do not affect that choice can move to the linked transcript. A decision brief is strongest when it distinguishes information that changes the story from background that merely makes the conversation easier to follow. The latter can remain available through the transcript link.
A practical test is to ask what the reader should know after ninety seconds that they could not infer from the title alone. If the answer is only “the interview discussed transit,” the brief has not yet found its job. If the answer is “a route model exists, but no budget or launch decision is recorded,” the brief has surfaced a material distinction. Keep the reader’s next decision specific enough to guide selection but narrow enough that one interview can inform it. This is why an executive brief should not begin with a compressed chronology. Chronology may explain how a statement developed, but the reader first needs to know which portion changes the assignment decision. A model may group two related points together even when they come from different speakers or different dates. Keep each source and time attached rather than implying one continuous account.
References: AP, Telling the Story; Reuters, Standards and Values
1.2 State the question that produced the interview
An interview can be useful for many reasons: testing a timeline, understanding a proposal, hearing a source’s account, or identifying gaps in public records. The summary should name the question the reporter brought into the conversation, not retroactively reshape it into the most dramatic possible angle. A one-sentence purpose statement helps the editor judge relevance. It can also reveal when a transcript is being asked to answer something it was never designed to answer. A conversation about how routes are modeled may explain a planning process; it cannot settle whether a service will launch. The purpose statement should be descriptive rather than persuasive, and it should reflect the assignment as it existed when the interview occurred. If that assignment has since changed, record the new question separately rather than rewriting the old context. If the assignment question is still broad, state that plainly and keep the summary provisional. A model should not resolve a reporting disagreement by silently selecting the most fluent interpretation. A source's explanation may be complete within the interview but incomplete for the story. The summary can respect that answer while still marking which records or perspectives remain outside the conversation.
The fictional Cedar Junction interview began as a request to understand which service options planners were comparing. It was not a public announcement, a rider consultation, or a budget hearing. That distinction matters because a short executive summary can otherwise imply more public authority than the source had. A brief can say the conversation provides context on route planning and still explain that it is not evidence of an approved timetable. The editor can then see both the interview’s usefulness and its boundary without reading a sweeping claim into the source’s role. The purpose statement should be short enough to scan and precise enough to expose a mismatch. If the interview did not address the question, say so rather than stretching a related answer to fit. Do not call a source statement a document or a public record unless that material has actually been found and reviewed. The wording of the summary should reveal the evidence type.
References: AP, What to Expect When You’re Interviewed; RTDNA, Using Confidential Sources
1.3 Keep the scope and permission visible
Before sending a transcript to any tool, confirm that the newsroom is allowed to use that text in the proposed way. The check may involve a source agreement, an embargo, a confidentiality promise, a newsroom policy, a data-handling rule, or the terms governing an interview recording. Removing a name does not automatically make a detailed account anonymous: route, date, job title, or quoted wording may still identify someone. A summary workflow should use only an approved excerpt or transcript and should minimize details that the editor does not need. If permission is unclear, stop before upload and ask the responsible editor or standards contact. A model’s privacy setting cannot change a source agreement, and de-identification does not grant rights to disclose material. The summary brief should record any relevant restriction without copying sensitive terms into a broad-access task system. A transcript may contain names, locations, or circumstances that are not necessary to the editorial decision. The approved excerpt should omit those details where policy permits and retain only the context needed for accurate interpretation. If an editor cannot reproduce a candidate sentence from its locator, the sentence should not remain as a factual finding. The editor can ask the reporter to retrieve the surrounding passage or remove it.
Scope should also describe what the summary is allowed to include. A confidential source may be named only within a restricted newsroom channel; a public official may be quoted under a different agreement. Keep access controls tied to the actual policy and account configuration, not to assumptions about what a generic chat tool retains. A clearance check precedes convenience: if the newsroom has not approved the transfer, use a manual summary or a safer approved system instead. The newsroom should decide where the brief can be stored, who may see it, and how long it remains active. Tool defaults are not a substitute for those local decisions. A brief can use a single sentence for relevance and a separate sentence for evidence status. Combining them may save space, but can obscure whether the source stated the point or the newsroom confirmed it.
References: UK Data Service, Transcript De-identification; OpenAI, Privacy Center in ChatGPT
2. Choose points that belong in the brief
2.1 Identify the interview’s central attributed account
A useful executive summary does not give every answer equal space. It identifies the most consequential account relevant to the reporting question, then states who made it and what kind of statement it is. In the Cedar Junction example, the planner’s central account is that staff are comparing two possible evening routes. That is more precise than “the city is expanding service” and more informative than a list of every route mentioned. The summary should preserve what the speaker actually said, including whether the point is a current fact, a forecast, an opinion, or a description of work in progress. If the transcript is long, a model can help locate candidate passages, but the reporter must compare each sentence with the surrounding exchange. When introducing the source material, distinguish the transcription step from the editorial analysis; no tool in that step decides what the interview proves. Use an exact locator for the central account and keep the source's words distinguishable from the summary writer's paraphrase. That makes it easier to catch a shift from possibility to certainty. A status date matters when an interview summary is reused days later. New reporting may change the meaning of a once-current caveat, so the reader should know when the snapshot was prepared.
A compact brief can carry a central account and its support in the same sentence: “The planner said staff are modeling two evening routes; no launch decision appears in this interview.” The first clause is attributed; the second marks the transcript’s limit. WhisperAITranscribe is an audio and video transcription tool in that upstream step; this article does not claim it produces executive summaries or integrates with ChatGPT. The summary should not replace that careful wording with a stronger claim than the passage supports just because a stronger phrase fits in a headline. The editor can later compare it with the record and other sources. If the interview is one input among several, the brief can state that other records are reviewed separately. It should not imply that the interview itself supplies a complete evidence base. An editor can send the summary onward without exposing the full transcript, but only if the brief contains no restricted detail and links remain within the approved access boundary.
References: AP, Telling the Story; RTDNA, Ethics
2.2 Keep evidence status attached to each point
Editors need to know whether a summary point comes only from an interview or has been checked elsewhere. One paragraph can contain several kinds of evidence, so a single label such as “confirmed” may be too broad. A useful working distinction is: the source stated it; the reporter located a document; an independent source confirmed it; the point remains unresolved; or the interview did not address it. These labels describe the reporting file, not the truth of the claim in all circumstances. The brief should make the evidence basis visible near the sentence it qualifies. A link or transcript locator is more useful than an unexplained color badge because it lets the editor inspect the underlying material. If two sources conflict, preserve both accounts and their status rather than averaging them into one apparent consensus. An attributed claim can still be newsworthy even when it is not independently established. Its status changes how it is framed and what verification follows, not whether it belongs in an editor's view.
In the fictional case, the planner’s statement about route modeling remains an attributed interview account until checked against an appropriate planning record or another source. The absence of a budget approval in the transcript does not prove that no approval exists elsewhere. Phrase it as not established by this interview, not “the budget is unapproved,” unless the reporting file supports that wider statement. This narrow language helps prevent the summary from converting silence into a negative fact. A transcript gap or missing answer should be described as a limit of this record. It does not prove that the speaker refused to answer or that no information exists elsewhere.
References: AP, What We Fact-Check and Why; RTDNA, Evaluating Sources
2.3 Preserve the qualification that changes the meaning
Compression becomes distortion when it removes a condition, timeframe, denominator, exception, or uncertainty that changes what the statement means. “Three neighborhoods responded” cannot become “riders support the plan.” “A pilot could begin next year if funding is approved” cannot become “the pilot starts next year.” Before retaining a sentence, ask whether a reasonable reader would infer more certainty, reach, or agreement than the transcript supports. Keep material qualifications next to the claim, rather than placing all caveats in a final paragraph that may be skipped. If a qualification is only conversational filler, it can be removed; if it changes the scope or certainty, it belongs in the summary. A shorter sentence is not better when it hides the condition that a desk editor needs to evaluate. A qualification belongs close to the sentence it changes because readers often skim only the first paragraph. Putting conditions in a distant note can leave the shorter claim circulating on its own.
The same rule applies to numbers. A count without its population, date, collection method, or denominator may be more misleading than no count at all. If the interviewee says the survey included responses from three neighborhoods, do not infer citywide representation or statistical confidence. Either state the limited coverage or omit the number if it contributes nothing to the decision. A missing denominator is a reporting question, not an invitation for a model to supply one from context. When a detail cannot be supported, the editor can omit it, label it as a question, or seek a record. The summary should not fill the space with a plausible explanation.
References: Reuters, Standards and Values; SPJ, Code of Ethics
3. Compress without flattening the reporting
3.1 Rank points by consequence and support
Once candidate points are collected, rank them for this reader and this decision. Consequence asks how much the point would change the editor’s understanding if it were true; support asks what the reporting file currently contains. These are separate questions. A consequential but weakly supported claim may deserve a prominent caveat and follow-up, not a confident summary sentence. A well-supported but peripheral detail may belong in a link or not at all. The ranking should be editorial triage, not a model score. Avoid asking a model to assign objective importance percentages, since the transcript does not encode the newsroom’s values or assignment priorities. Instead, tell it which decision matters and ask it to surface candidate points with the passage that prompted each one. The human reader can then decide which points earn the limited space. Consequence depends on the assignment. A caveat about a launch date matters greatly to a service announcement, while a small operational detail may matter more to a story about access or reliability.
A two-axis note can help an editor reason without pretending to calculate truth: high consequence/high support, high consequence/low support, and lower-priority context. These are temporary review labels, not scientific measurements. For the fictional route pilot, the budget condition might be highly consequential but not settled by the interview, while a detail about the planner’s office hours may be accurate yet irrelevant. The summary should show why a point is prominent and avoid letting length alone imply importance. Do not convert the two-axis review into a numeric ranking unless the newsroom has an explicit method. A model-generated score can imply measurement where the team has made only a judgment.
References: RTDNA, Ethics; AP, What We Fact-Check and Why
3.2 Include disagreement and the missing perspective
A single interview presents one person’s vantage point. An executive summary should not imply that the source represents riders, operators, or every department unless the reporting establishes that role. If the interview mentions a survey, summarize what is known about its reach and leave the response of unrepresented neighborhoods open. If an official gives an estimate that another source contests, name the disagreement and keep each account attributed. The task is not to manufacture balance by adding an unreported counterclaim. It is to mark which perspective is absent or disputed so an editor can see what the interview cannot answer. A summary that leaves out an affected group may still be accurate about the interview, but the omission matters to how an editor reads the account. Mark the scope rather than claiming broad representation.
“No opposing view appears in the transcript” is safer than “the plan is uncontested.” The first reports the contents of the record; the second makes a claim about the world. If the brief needs a note on missing voices, tie it to the scope of the interview and the reporting file. Do not turn one interview into a proxy for consensus merely because the brief must be short. A concise summary can say what the conversation contributes and what another source would need to clarify. If the source says no complaint was received by their department, retain the attribution and the boundary. That statement does not establish that no rider reported a problem elsewhere.
References: RTDNA, Using Confidential Sources; AP, What to Expect When You’re Interviewed
3.3 Use labels that make uncertainty legible
Labels such as “reported,” “documented,” “corroborated,” “forecast,” and “unknown” can help an editor scan a brief, provided the newsroom defines what they mean. A label is a reading aid, not a substitute for attribution. “Documented” should point to a document actually reviewed; “corroborated” should identify another source or record. Avoid vague markers like “verified” if readers cannot tell what was checked or by whom. The label must match the evidence process, and if the process is not known, use plain language instead of a color code. A label such as 'forecast' can be useful when the source is projecting a future outcome, but it should not be used for a general opinion or an unverified present-tense claim.
Keep the vocabulary stable within one brief. A model may call a source statement “confirmed” in one paragraph and “unverified” in the next because the words appear nearby, not because it has reconciled the evidence. Build a small approved glossary for the assignment or ask the tool to return neutral candidates for review. Then check the actual passages. If WhisperAITranscribe supplied the upstream transcript, mention that role without implying it reviewed the story. Consistency helps skimming, but consistent labels cannot make the underlying evidence stronger. The editor can review the label list once and apply it consistently, rather than asking the model to invent new terms on every pass. Keep the definitions beside the brief if several people will use it.
References: SPJ, Code of Ethics; AP, Telling the Story
4. Use ChatGPT as a drafting assistant
4.1 Prepare a versioned transcript excerpt
If the newsroom approves using a language model, provide the smallest passage set that can support the task. Keep the interview date, speaker labels, relevant question, and locators needed to interpret each answer. Remove unrelated personal details and mark gaps where content was withheld or audio was unclear; do not silently join two separated passages. Save a version identifier or date so the editor knows which text the draft used. A transcript excerpt is not automatically accurate, complete, or safe to share. Version and scope should travel with the input so a later revision can be compared against the same source material. Preserve the transcript's turn order where later context changes an earlier answer. An isolated excerpt may be shorter, but the editor needs enough surrounding material to understand the qualification.
Official product help can explain what a platform currently accepts or how its stated controls work, but it cannot decide whether this particular interview may be uploaded. A newsroom should check its account, workspace, retention and sharing rules directly, and follow the source agreement. If the answer is no or unclear, do not paste the text into a consumer tool. Permission remains a newsroom decision regardless of whether a file is technically accepted. Record the source version, date of extraction, and reviewer. If a later transcript correction changes a locator, the brief should not continue to point at a stale copy.
References: OpenAI, Privacy Center in ChatGPT; OpenAI, Uploading Files and Audio to ChatGPT
4.2 Ask for candidate language with explicit boundaries
A useful prompt describes the reader, the decision horizon, the output length, the evidence labels, and what the model must not infer. It can ask for a short editor-facing brief with one attributed central account, the evidence currently in the transcript, material qualifications, missing perspectives, and unresolved questions. Require each sentence to carry a speaker or source label and a transcript locator. Tell the model to write “not stated in this transcript” when a point is absent and to leave owner, deadline, approval, and truth verdict fields blank. The prompt should distinguish quoted wording from paraphrase and prohibit invented sources, documents, dates, and consensus. If WhisperAITranscribe supplied the transcript, keep that as provenance only. A precise constraint is more useful than a grand role prompt that asks the model to “think like a newsroom executive.” The prompt should request plain, attributed language rather than a dramatic narrative. It should also forbid the model from assigning a confidence level that has no newsroom definition.
Ask the model to return a draft and a separate evidence map, then compare the two. If the brief feels too certain, revise the instruction to preserve tentative language and ask for passages where the source qualifies an earlier statement. Iteration can improve clarity, but it does not create evidence absent from the input. Do not treat a confident tone, clean structure, or a plausible answer as proof that the model found the right passage. The transcript remains the source of review, while the editor remains responsible for the summary. A separate evidence map can expose missing locators, but the model's map is itself a draft. A reporter should open the cited passage and verify that it exists in the approved version.
4.3 Review each sentence against the source
Review sentence by sentence. For each factual clause, open the cited passage, read enough surrounding context to see the question and any later correction, and confirm that the attributed speaker is right. Check that dates, numbers, conditions, and hedges survived compression. Remove a statement if its locator is missing or if it combines evidence from passages that do not support the implied connection. Keep a change record when the editor materially rewrites a claim. This is especially important when the transcript contains a correction several minutes after the initial answer. If WhisperAITranscribe supplied the text, that does not replace the human source check. Every material sentence needs a traceable basis before the summary can guide an assignment. If a passage is ambiguous, preserve the ambiguity in the candidate draft or ask a human to resolve it from the recording. Re-prompting cannot recover words that are absent from the supplied text.
Then read the brief without opening the transcript and ask what a hurried editor might misunderstand. Could an attributed forecast look like an approved plan? Does a survey sound representative when it was not? Does “no evidence” mean no evidence in this interview, or no evidence anywhere? Make the wording narrow enough that a skimming reader does not gain false certainty. The final review should include an editor who can compare the summary to the source, not just the person who prompted the model. A quote may be accurate as a short string and misleading in context. The reviewer should read the question, the full answer, and any later correction before retaining a quotation or paraphrase.
References: AP, Telling the Story; AP, What We Fact-Check and Why
5. Deliver a brief that can be maintained
5.1 Use a short structure that survives a skim
A one-page brief can start with the assignment question and interview date, followed by a short relevance statement, the central attributed account, evidence status, a material caveat, and unresolved perspective. The order should reflect the editor’s decision rather than the transcript’s chronology. A reader should be able to locate the strongest supported point and the most consequential uncertainty without scanning several screens. Use headings and descriptive labels that say what the field contains. A short structure earns its space when every line helps orient the decision, preserve context, or locate the source. The brief's first lines should answer relevance and status, while links and background support later inspection. That ordering helps a reader move from orientation to evidence without confusing them.
Keep the title descriptive, not interpretive. “Planner explains route-modeling process” is less dramatic than “City prepares night-bus expansion,” but it does not report an approval that the interview failed to establish. A short note can link to the transcript and show who prepared or reviewed the summary under newsroom policy. The final layout should make the source record easy to reopen while keeping sensitive details out of a widely shared brief. Avoid a headline that states an outcome while the body says only that an option is being modeled. The title and first sentence must carry the same level of certainty.
References: W3C WAI, Writing for Web Accessibility; W3C, Headings and Labels
5.2 Restrict access to the transcript and its summary
A summary can be less sensitive than the original transcript, but it may still identify a confidential source or reveal a detail the newsroom agreed not to publish. Store it with the access controls appropriate to the source and assignment. Avoid copying personal information into a broadly visible task tracker simply because the original transcript is stored elsewhere. A public-facing summary and an internal editor brief are different artifacts with different audiences. Access should follow the promise and policy attached to the interview, not the convenience of the tool that generated a draft. The summary should inherit the interview's restrictions and newsroom access rules even when it is shorter than the source. A concise internal note can still expose a confidential identity.
If a source’s status or agreement is not clear to the eventual reader, keep the explanation in a restricted note that the editor can consult. Do not expose raw excerpts, upload history, or private source details in the public version. De-identification can lower risk, but route, job, date, distinctive language, and local context may still identify a person. This applies even if the upstream text was produced with WhisperAITranscribe. Minimize what leaves the approved workspace and retain a clear record of which version informed the summary. A public summary should be written independently for its public purpose and reviewed for disclosure. Removing the raw transcript link from a public page does not erase copied sensitive details.
References: UK Data Service, Transcript De-identification; RTDNA, Using Confidential Sources
5.3 Update the brief when reporting changes
An executive summary is a snapshot of the reporting file at a particular time. When a document arrives, a second source responds, or an editor changes the assignment, update the status and date rather than silently replacing the old wording. Preserve what changed and why. A correction may narrow the source’s original statement; a new record may confirm one part but leave another open. The brief should distinguish a new fact from a changed interpretation. A version history protects context when several people work on the same interview and later need to understand what the newsroom knew at each stage. WhisperAITranscribe can be named only as an upstream audio/video transcription tool; WhisperAITranscribe does not verify any item in the brief. An editor should be able to compare version 1 with version 2 and identify whether the change came from new evidence, a correction, or a wording revision.
Do not keep an obsolete summary circulating as if it were current. Add a short status such as “superseded by version 2” and link to the active copy according to newsroom policy. If the story is published, the editor may still need the original interview locator to support a later correction or question. If the brief names WhisperAITranscribe as the transcript source, keep that note in the version history, not as a fact-check result. A living brief should be updated only when there is a material reporting change, not every time a model suggests a stylistic edit. When a point is superseded, retain a pointer to the active version rather than leaving two briefs with the same title in circulation. A stale copy can recreate a claim the newsroom already corrected.
6. Conclusion: concise enough to use, precise enough to trust
6.1 A summary reduces reading time, not reporting work
The executive brief is successful when a reader can see the interview’s relevance, the source’s account, the evidence behind it, and the remaining uncertainty without mistaking the brief for the finished story. It does not verify claims, supply missing perspectives, or decide whether publication is justified. Those jobs remain in the reporting process. If the transcript itself must be created first, WhisperAITranscribe is an audio and video transcription tool; the team still has to review the text against its recording or other records when the assignment requires that check. The summary organizes material; it does not certify it. A clean one-page layout can make gaps easier to see, but it cannot close them. This distinction is especially useful during a fast assignment handoff. The reader can act on the brief while still knowing which questions remain outside its scope.
The editor can use the brief to decide what to read next, which point requires verification, or whether the interview is relevant to the assignment. That is a useful reduction in search time, not a transfer of editorial responsibility. A careful summary keeps the article’s next step visible while leaving the underlying reporting open to examination. If a sentence cannot be traced to the transcript or another record, the brief should mark it as a question, not a settled fact. The source can clarify an account, but the reporting process may still need a document or a second perspective. The summary should not imply that a follow-up task is complete merely because the interview was summarized.
6.2 Four checks before sending the brief
Use four checks before handoff. Step 1: Confirm that the reader, purpose, interview date, and transcript version are clear. Step 2: Check every claim against its locator, including the speaker, qualification, and any later correction; note if WhisperAITranscribe supplied only upstream transcript text. Step 3: Mark what is independently supported, what comes only from the interview, and what remains unknown or absent. Step 4: Have an editor review the wording, source restrictions, and decision the brief is meant to support. If any check fails, return the draft for correction rather than forwarding it with a generic warning. These steps are a newsroom review sequence, not a guarantee of accuracy. They make the decision trail visible and keep a model-generated sentence from moving directly into a published claim. If a human review is rushed, reduce the number of claims in the brief rather than dropping the source checks. A shorter verified note is safer than a complete-looking but unreviewed page.
Keep the handoff modest. The editor should receive a readable brief and a way back to the source, not a confidence score or a claim that the model has completed verification. If a deadline requires a faster decision, narrow the summary to what the transcript supports and record the unresolved point. A clear unknown is more useful than an invented answer when an editor must decide what to commission or verify next. A handoff should state whether the brief is a draft, reviewed, or superseded. These statuses describe editorial workflow, not the truth of the underlying claims.
6.3 Keep the source and the summary connected
A short brief should preserve the interview date, source label, transcript version, locator, and the record or passage behind each material point. These details give a later editor a way to reconstruct how the summary was made. A provenance field does not need a complex system: it can be a link to the approved transcript and a note about who reviewed the brief. When a newsroom uses WhisperAITranscribe for an upstream audio or video transcription step, that tool’s role ends at the transcript category; it does not validate the summary. Keep WhisperAITranscribe linked to its homepage only when describing that input step, and keep the editorial conclusion attached to the evidence the newsroom actually reviewed. Keep a durable trail. The source record remains the reference point when wording, context, or status changes later. The durable link should point to the approved source version, not an untracked copy in a personal folder. That makes later review possible even if staff or tools change.
References: W3C, PROV Overview; Dublin Core, Source