About us
Q: What do you do?
Post factum is an independent educational website.
Our focus: retrospective analysis of global affairs, backed by the best available evidence.
Our goal: to cultivate your deep understanding of geopolitics, and help you get more value from news-reading.
We publish a weekly newsletter.
Our reports explore long-term trends in global politics, world economy and international conflict.
As our name suggests, Post factum revisits pivotal events, and follows up on their consequences, applying the data and research made available since.
We take pride in our data visualisations and helpful graphics that accompany everything we publish.
Expect us to be concise, accessible and straight-to-the-point.
We now also publish a secondary newsletter, focused on analysing different media angles on one major event.
Goal: to help you get more value from news-reading by breaking down how different media apply their own spin on facts.
You can check it out here: News Breakdown.
We are based in London, United Kingdom, but most of our team is remote.
Q: What is your content all about?
Our mission has always been to bring something new to the culture of consuming news.
We make time work for us by breaking with the daily news cycle and focusing on data-driven retrospective analysis.
We also believe that less is more: we publish one geopolitics report per week, and pack it with thoughtfully selected valuable information.
Here are some of our major principles:
Factual — we stick to data and facts, instead of giving a range of opinions on a topic.
Neutral — we avoid subjectivity, value judgements or emotional characteristics.
Accessible — we use direct, simple language and grammar, giving definitions and context.
Systematic — we report issues in a holistic and structured manner to minimise selection bias.
Curated — we carefully pick our topics and package the essential info into a smooth read.
If you want to find out more about our writing style, or even to contribute to our work, you can check out a version of our Style Guide that discusses our approach in greater detail.
Q: Who are you?
My name is Anton, I launched Post factum in 2023, having left my apprenticeship at The Telegraph earlier that year.
I grew up in a liberal family in Moscow, Russia, and immigrated to the United Kingdom in 2015, later becoming a British citizen.
You can find out more about me on LinkedIn.
Since our launch, Post factum has grown to a small team of collaborators who share our mission.
In particular, I wanted to single out our long-standing contributors:
Elia Preto Martini: an expert in foreign policy, a regular contributor to Diplomatic Courier and E-International Relations.
Naman Habtom, PhD: an expert in security and foreign policy, a contributor to major international outlets, holding positions at Kyoto University, Luxembourg University and Brown University.
Q: How are you funded?
We secured angel funding for our launch, which allowed us to establish and maintain the Post factum website, and gather a small team of remote freelance contributors.
We also began accepting donations that all directly fund the work of Post factum.
Our investors and donors do not have a stake in the project, and have no influence over editorial decisions.
To keep Post factum independent, while also avoiding running ads and wasting our readers’ focus, we have now launched the subscription-based News Breakdown weekly email.
It is a paid newsletter, at under £1 per report, with a free trial, that focuses on analysing media coverage of global affairs.
The goal: to give our readers another way of getting value from news-reading, without stepping into the territory of our flagship reports.
Q: So are you biased? How do you decide what is a fact?
In short, yes, we are definitely still biased.
Our approach helps us naturally stay neutral, and share information that is valuable regardless of the context.
However, from topic selection to editing decisions, the simple fact of including some information and excluding another inevitably introduces some bias or narrative.
Minimising bias is woven into every step of our process:
Topics: with only 52 major reports per year, we carefully pick a balanced selection of international issues and events, minimising omission bias.
Structure: we plan and re-plan the structure of each report to avoid creating a narrative, instead covering all key aspects of the issue.
Sentences: we deliver information in direct, factual statements, to avoid phrasing and grammar that would push the reader towards an opinion.
Words: filtering out any emotional language or opinions makes our reports direct and naturally less biased, by reducing them to verifiable statements.
We take other measures to keep our reports neutral and minimise bias:
Feedback and errors: we are very open to any comments and criticisms. If and when we make mistakes or inaccuracies, whether we find them ourselves, or you point them out, we fix them and add this information to our List of Corrections.
No Hot Takes: while we aim to select exciting and valuable topics to cover, we avoid sensationalism. Keeping with our mission, we stay away from dynamic and developing stories until there is plenty of data.
Awareness: we understand that bias and narratives can arise easily at any stage, and are constantly on the lookout.
What is a fact? Fact-checking is not just about verifying information and data. Any data collection has methodology that affects what it shows. Any “fact” has context (both in the text, and in the reader’s mind) that changes its meaning.
It is our method to act as the most nitpicking reader of our reports, and of every source that goes into them. We don’t blindly repeat findings from trusted sources, instead breaking down the arguments, the evidence and the methods.
There is no shortcut to getting things right — we combine effort with rigour and careful planning to maximise accuracy.
What we share with you is a carefully-crafted product of this method.
Sources: Our data visualisations always have every source noted in the lower-left corner. Most of our reports include a list of key sources and further readings at the end. However, we do not include direct references to all the sources of facts and figures throughout the text.
The reasons for this are quite specific:
We want you to remain critical. While we try to do it for you, we encourage you to question facts and explore their context.
We don’t want to use appeal to authority. We believe that the reputation of a source itself shouldn’t affect your judgement.
There should be multiple sources for everything. Any fact is cross-referenced with other available information to make sure it is consistent and to enrich context.
Q: Can I contribute to Post factum?
Yes!
We are open to job applications and pitches of report topics.
You can reach out to hello@postfactum.co.uk, or to me directly at ank@postfactum.co.uk.
If you are passionate about our mission, and know how you can bring value to Post factum, we would love to hear from you.
We advertise freelance vacancies on LinkedIn. Please refer to our page there for current openings.
We do not currently offer any internships. Thank you to everyone asking, and we hope to provide this opportunity in the coming years.
Unfortunately, due to the limited capacity of our team, and a large volume of daily work, we are often unable to respond to all incoming correspondence.
Please accept our honest apologies if some of your messages went unanswered.
We would do our best to return to them but feel free to ping us again with a follow-up.
You can also share any questions or comments in the form below, but please note that it is anonymous and we would be unable to reply.