Metadata¶
Metadata, shown as Details under Advanced options in Stylebook, enriches a canonical record with structured information your newsroom wants to maintain. Each attribute has a key, a value type, and one scalar value.
Metadata belongs to the shared canonical record, not to any one article mention. Once added, it can be used wherever that Stylebook record appears.
What belongs in Details¶
Each canonical record can hold one value per attribute key. Values are typed as text, number, or yes/no.
Examples include:
- a person's political party, current title, affiliation, or public-figure status;
- an organization's type, jurisdiction, size, or newsroom identifier;
- a town's population, demographics, or other civic data;
- any other maintained category or value that makes the record more useful.
Some common fields appear under the main Details section and others under Advanced options. Attributes can be added or curated by editors, or included when canonical records are imported from scalar GeoJSON properties.
What metadata makes possible¶
Metadata turns a record from an identity into a richer source of information. It allows newsroom tools and queries to combine what an entity is with what appeared in reporting.
For example, if canonical people include political-party metadata, a newsroom could ask:
Show me all quotes by Republicans about issue X.
That question combines maintained information about people with article evidence about quotes and issues. Similar combinations can support source audits, geographic analysis, directories, election products, and other newsroom uses.
What does not belong in Details¶
Article-specific facts belong to the article entity or mention. A person's role as a quoted source in one story, for example, should remain with that story's evidence rather than becoming a permanent canonical fact.
Article classifications such as topic, format, subject, or user need apply to the article as a whole and are reviewed in Agate. See Data model.
Scope and editing¶
If several projects share a Stylebook, a metadata change is visible wherever that canonical record is used. Project filters narrow the mentions shown; they do not create project-specific metadata.
Metadata requires editorial maintenance. Population figures change, political affiliations change, and categories may need clearer definitions over time. The richer the metadata, the more powerful the catalog becomes—but the more important ownership, sourcing, and regular review become.
Use connections when the information is really a relationship to another canonical record rather than a property of this one.