An editorial instrument for reading the work before the reader does.
ORLA (Optimized Reporting and Language Advisor) evaluates your article across three constructive journalism pillars (solutions, nuances, and democratic debate) so you can strengthen it before publication.
What can be done?
Mechanisms, evidence, limitations, realism. Who should act, and does it work?
How complex is the story?
Historical context, causation discipline, affected voices, counter-narratives.
Who is in the conversation?
Named stakeholders, cross-dialogue, civic framing, paths to engagement.
Two tools, one feedback loop
Before filing an article, a journalist pastes it into ORLA. ORLA scores the article on three pillars and returns notes tied to specific passages. The journalist revises based on those notes and publishes.
An editor uploads the newsroom's published articles as a CSV. The batch report shows aggregate scores by section, topic, and time period, making it possible to spot where the team needs to focus.
Individual article feedback and newsroom-level patterns both use the same three criteria, making it possible to connect individual improvements to newsroom-wide trends.
From article to assessment in four steps
The criteria come from constructive journalism research, not general AI defaults. The analysis is calibrated to the article's genre and grounded in what is on the page.
ORLA reads the article and determines its genre, subject area, and language. The evaluation is calibrated to the genre: a news brief is not held to the same standard as a feature investigation.
Three pillars structure the analysis, each built on sub-questions from constructive journalism research: solutions coverage, nuance and complexity, and democratic debate framing.
For each sub-question, ORLA first locates a passage or quote in the article — present or absent. The score for each pillar follows from that evidence, not from a general impression.
A final pass converts the evidence and scores into two or three suggestions. Each one names what is missing and where — a note about this article, not a checklist.
Developed with the Constructive Institute
The Constructive Institute is a Danish non-profit that trains journalists and newsrooms in constructive journalism. It works with media organisations in Scandinavia and internationally.
Constructive News Mirror is a tool developed in connection with that work.
Visit constructiveinstitute.org