# MSI Analysis Style Guide

*A Main Street Independent framework specification.* *This is the reader-clarity discipline Main Street Independent applies to its analyses — the standard that keeps an analysis not just careful, but clear. It is published so the analyses can be held to it. CC0 — copy, adapt, and reuse it freely.*

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This guide sits on top of the publication's factual floor. The floor keeps an analysis **careful** — every claim sourced, every hedge intact, no motive attribution. This guide keeps it **clear** — readable by someone who does not already speak the house vocabulary. Where the two ever pull against each other, the floor decides what may be claimed and this guide decides how it is said.

## The job, in one line

An analysis takes a single news story and shows how it was built — its sources, its words, its omissions — and how that construction shapes what a reader takes away. It is reader-facing media literacy, not an op-ed. The reader should finish able to spot the same machinery in the next story they read on their own.

Design against one failure mode above all: **the encyclopedia entry** — accurate, complete, and dead on the page because it explains everything except why any of it matters to the person reading.

## §1 — The lede explains the technique, not the mission

The Summary bullets carry the bottom line. The lede paragraph that follows them opens on *why this particular framing matters on this particular story* — for a frame audit of a war report, the stakes of the frame itself: in a war, how a story is framed shapes who readers hold responsible.

Do **not** open by explaining what Main Street Independent is, what an analysis is in general, or why analysis matters as a mission. A regular reader meets that boilerplate on every piece and tires of it fast.

- **Wrong (mission):** "Most of what we publish is the news. This is different — we take a story apart to show how it was built…"
- **Right (this technique, this story):** "In a war, the way a story is framed shapes who readers will hold responsible. This report on the Kuwait airport strike reads as neutral, yet built the way it is, it leads the reader toward one side."

## §2 — The standing explainer goes in a footnote

What an analysis is, the no-motive disclaimer, and "the facts are not in dispute" are worth saying once for a first-time reader — as a single italic line at the **foot** of the piece, never in the opening. Repeat readers skip it; newcomers find it. Keep it word-for-word identical across pieces so the eye learns to pass over it.

## §3 — The motive line (hard rule)

An analysis describes what a text **does** and the **effect** it has on a reader. It never asserts, implies, or insinuates what the outlet or journalist **intended**. Readers may infer motive on their own; the analysis must not hand it to them. This is the single rule that keeps an analysis from sliding into an op-ed.

The factual floor already bars motive theories about **named people in the news**. This guide extends the identical discipline to **the news outlet itself**. In practice:

- **The subject of your sentences is the text:** *the report, the story, the framing, the sentence, the arrangement.* Not *the editors, the reporter, they.*
- **Banned when applied to the outlet:** *in order to, designed to, wants to, intends to, makes sure, sets out to, deliberately, spin, agenda, push a narrative.*
- **Describe function and effect instead:** *the framing advances one side's account; the sentence files the blockade under "lawful"; the reader is led toward.*
- **A source's incentive is allowed — as structural position, not desire.** "U.S. Central Command is a combatant describing its own battle" — yes. "CENTCOM is eager to spin the day" — no.
- **The propaganda audit is a function claim, not a motive claim.** It asks *whose account a given way of telling advances* — not whether anyone meant to mislead. Say so explicitly when you reach it.
- **Model the discipline you're auditing.** A recurring finding is that a report pins deliberate intent on one party on ambiguous evidence. An analyst who then pins deliberate intent on the newsroom has committed the very same error in the mirror.

The tension to hold on purpose: explaining why a frame matters often *is* explaining that it functions as propaganda. That is allowed — propaganda-as-function is a property of the text. Propaganda-as-purpose, a claim about a mind, never is.

## §4 — Name the technique when you invoke it

When a piece first applies a technique, name it in passing — a parenthetical or short clause — so the reader knows what kind of move they're watching: *"where the conclusion outruns the evidence (an argument audit)," "what follows is a frame audit," "the question a propaganda audit asks."* Name each technique once, in plain reader-words; never thread raw internal register-phrases ("from a cui-bono perspective") through the prose.

## §5 — Plain language: translate the house vocabulary

Keep the concept; drop the term. The substance survives translation — it is the vocabulary that loses readers. A living banlist (extend as new offenders surface):

| Don't write | Write |
|---|---|
| epistemic architecture | where the facts come from |
| not-at-issue content / presupposition | stated as settled background; a word the sentence treats as already true |
| lexical asymmetry | the words don't match across sides; watch the verbs |
| nominalization ("the attack") | turning an action into a thing |
| episodic framing | starting the clock late; cropping to the moment |
| kinetic event | strike, blast, the physical fighting |
| communiqué | official statement |
| corroboration | independent confirmation |
| verification loop | one side vouching for the other |
| operational salience | emphasis; prominence |
| counterframe foreclosed | the other side's account is left out |

## §6 — Structure

- **Headings name the payoff, not the method.** "Whose account the telling advances," not "Strategic Alignment and Information Flow."
- **One concrete analogy per finding, mandatory.** Everyday, not technical — a referee drawn from the home team; verbs in opposite registers. This keeps a piece rich without going simplistic; the analytical sections need *more* motivation, not less.
- **Lede-first paragraphs, short sentences, one idea per sentence.**
- **Bottom-line findings near the top** (the Summary bullets already do this — make them plain, not jargon).
- **Close with the portable skill** — the three or four questions a reader can carry to the next story. This converts one critique into media literacy and answers "why do I care" structurally: now you can do it yourself.

## §7 — Keep the machinery off the page

No internal identifiers in reader-facing text: cluster ids, mode ids, framework versions, source-cluster slugs. The reader should never see how the work is tracked — only the analysis.

## §8 — Facts vs. frame (credibility rule)

- When the facts are not disputed, **say so** (in the standing foot-note). That admission is the foundation of the critique's credibility.
- Be **unhedged** about the framing findings — single-sourcing, mismatched verbs, omissions, contested words printed as neutral. State them flatly.
- Be **scrupulous** that no framing finding reads as "the story lied." The claim is *accurate but incomplete*; never *false*.
- Mark genuinely open questions as open. The verification ledger ("Confirmed / Open") is a feature, not a hedge. Preserve every source hedge.

## §9 — The distilled checklist

The whole discipline, compressed to nine lines:

1. Open with why *this* framing matters for *this* story. No mission boilerplate.
2. Standing "what this is / no motive / facts not disputed" → foot-note, not lede.
3. Never state or imply intent. Subject = the text; describe function and effect. Propaganda = whose account the telling advances, not who meant to mislead.
4. Name each technique once, in passing, when first applied.
5. Translate house jargon to plain English (the banlist, §5).
6. Headings name the payoff. One everyday analogy per finding. Short, point-first sentences.
7. Bottom-line near the top; close with the reader's own checklist of questions.
8. No internal identifiers in reader-facing text.
9. Unhedged on framing findings; never imply fabrication; mark open questions open.

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*Main Street Independent — CC0 / public domain. Copy, adapt, and reuse freely.*