This is the initial list of criteria news credit will capture for each news article:

Unique ID: this should be the globally unique identifier. It should provide a path to get to the original article if you have its provenance information (most likely to be url)

Title: this should be the title of the article (or photograph, video, audio)

Author: the person(s) who wrote the article. This could include job title, contact information and location

Editor: if the article has been edited and, if possible, by whom. This tells the reader someone other than the author has checked the piece before publication

Publisher: the organisation that first published the article. Publisher not required if self-published

Publication date/time: the first time the article was published by this person for this organisation  - necessary in order to establish edit history

Updated date/time: when an article has been changed and, if possible, how (can be multiple entries)

Statement of principles: that the article is intended to be journalism (as opposed to personal information, government information, commercial content etc.)

There are lots of other criteria that could be captured, though some would require extra work on the part of the journalist.

At a later stage, we would like to explore how to add:

Article sources: This could be immensely useful – both to the journalist and the public – but also potentially very difficult to capture, and capture consistently. For example, if an article is derived mainly from a wire service, or from a press release.

We would suggest that this is important enough to justify a separate development process, and for that reason should not be included in the primary news provenance list.

Article subjectivity: e.g. report vs. opinion. This would allow the public to search specifically for news reports and exclude the (necessarily) more derivative opinions

Version history: so that the reader could view each version of the story since it was first published. This would enable the journalist to be transparent about the changes made, and enable the reader to see how substantial the changes were