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Who Got the Good Seats in September

The big-ticket September slate puts the billionaire seating chart in plain view — the US Open at Flushing Meadows, NFL opening weekend, the Mets and Yankees home stands — and we have no photo file of any of it. This is event coverage, not person coverage: shoot the public boxes and courtside rows from the bowl or the press position and file what the venue actually held on the day, sessions already played included. The names below are an identification key for captioning frames you come back with, not a list to go and find. Nobody gets tracked between venues, nobody gets followed once the event ends, and no frame of a child gets filed.

Deliver A filed photo set from ticketed or credentialed public coverage — minimum 10 usable frames — each with venue, date, session/game, and a caption naming only people you can positively identify from the frame itself.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 10+ frames plus caption sheet

Ken GriffinMichael BloombergBill AckmanJamie DimonSteve CohenRobert KraftDavid TepperBrian Chesky

You are covering the event, not a person. Shoot from the public bowl or the press position, file what the venue actually held, and stop when the event does — nobody gets followed to a car, a restaurant or anywhere else afterwards. Ticketed venue rules apply; if the venue bars long lenses in a section, that settles it. No identification by guesswork: if you cannot name them off the frame, caption them as unidentified.

The walk out of the hearing room

Every bad week in Washington ends the same way — a corridor, a scrum, and a principal walking to the elevator. Those corridors are credentialed press positions and we are not standing in them, so we have no exit file at all. We want the first tranche: hearings already on the published committee notice, shot from the gallery position we are given, captioned with what was actually said on the record that day.

Deliver A rolling photo file from credentialed Capitol Hill and federal-courthouse press positions: the entry, the exit, the hallway. Each frame captioned with hearing, date, and what was actually said on the record that day — no mood language the record does not support.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · Rolling file, 6+ frames per sitting

Pete HegsethRobert F. Kennedy Jr.Pam BondiSam AltmanTulsi Gabbard

Credentials first — you shoot from the position the gallery gives you and nowhere else. This subbeat is a mood read, so the caption stays factual: we publish what happened in the room next to the frame, and we do not write a diagnosis onto someone's face. Elected officials, confirmed appointees and testifying executives only — no staffers, no family.

Is Warren Buffett still doing the Omaha routine?

Greg Abel took the Berkshire CEO job at the start of the year and Buffett, still chairman, has gone quiet — barely anything from him since beyond the occasional shareholder letter. The Omaha routine was the most photographable thing in American finance: the McDonald's breakfast, the unshowy Cadillac, the Nebraska games, the Dairy Queen. We want the record of what he has actually turned up to in public over the last twelve months, and which of those appearances have quietly become Abel's instead. Build it from dated, already-published sightings and from events that were announced and open to the public — no waiting at a venue or on a route for him to appear.

Deliver A timeline of verified public appearances over the past 12 months with dates and sources, original photography from public places where you can legally get it, and 500–800 words on what the routine looks like now versus the one that got written about for 30 years.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 500–800 words plus timeline and frames

Warren BuffettGreg Abel

Retrospective only — documented past appearances, never where he is now. Public commercial premises and public streets. Nothing at or near a residence, no doorstepping, no approaching him or anyone with him. If a business owner asks you to stop shooting inside their premises, you stop.

The box seat ledger: who sat with whom

We keep publishing sightings one at a time and never adding them up. Take twelve months of already-published photography and publicly released attendee, credential and honoree lists — courtside, owner boxes, the Kennedy Center, the F1 paddock, printed gala programmes — and build the verified ledger of who sat with whom, then test which pairings track an actual business, donor or regulatory relationship. Every row comes from material already published or publicly filed: no seating charts from venue staff, no leaked guest lists.

Deliver A sourced pairings dataset with a photo or attendee-list citation per row, plus 1,200–1,800 words on the two or three pairings that turn out to mean something — and an honest note on the ones that turn out to mean nothing.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,200–1,800 words plus dataset

Ken GriffinRobert KraftStephen SchwarzmanLachlan MurdochDavid SacksHoward LutnickBob Iger

Built entirely from material already published or publicly filed — licensed wire photography, event programmes, FEC and lobbying filings, corporate disclosures. Nothing bought from a source, no seating charts obtained from venue staff, no leaked guest lists. Sitting next to someone is not a relationship: every claim of significance needs a filing or an on-record quote behind it, and a pairing that stands up to nothing gets written up as exactly that.

When were these six last seen in public?

Six of the highest Bunker Scores on the index — power with almost no public audience attached — and we cannot answer the simplest question on the board about any of them: when were they last seen in public? Fill the column. One filed piece, all six names, the fee for the piece whatever the answers turn out to be.

Deliver One entry per person: the most recent verifiable public appearance — date, venue, city, what the occasion was, and the source that proves it (photograph, broadcast, transcript, programme, attendee list, contemporaneous local report). A second line for the appearance before that, so we can see the cadence. Where the honest answer is 'nothing verifiable in X years', say so and show what you checked.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,000–1,400 words as a running card set

Jeff YassHarold HammPaul SingerCharles KochJulia KochThomas Peterffy

Public record only: court and regulatory appearances, conference programmes, university and hospital donor events, team and league events, obituary and funeral coverage, local newspapers. Retrospective sightings only — nothing about current or future location. A verified blank is a publishable result and is paid the same.

Who has a dated photo of Miriam Adelson at a public event?

She is the controlling shareholder of Las Vegas Sands, holds the majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks and is one of the largest political donors in the country — and our file does not contain a single verified, dated photograph of her from the past year. We want the last-seen record: where has she actually turned up in public over the last two years, who was standing next to her, and what is the evidence for each sighting.

Deliver A dated, sourced timeline of her verified public appearances over the past 24 months — Mavericks home games, Sands investor and property events, Republican Jewish Coalition gatherings, award ceremonies, funerals and openings — each entry tied to a photo, a video, a broadcast, an attendee list or contemporaneous reporting. Plus any legally obtained photograph taken in a public place or a venue where photography was permitted.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 600–900 words plus the timeline

Miriam Adelson

Retrospective only — documented past appearances, never where she is now or where she is expected. Public places and permitted venues only; no approach at home, no family, no children. We commission the reporting and the photography, never the purchase of anyone else's material.

Where is Melania?

Establish where Melania Trump has actually been appearing publicly, what she has been doing, and how that compares with the public role she held before.

Deliver A dated appearance timeline with sources, and a short piece on how the current public presence differs from the previous one.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 600–1,000 words plus timeline

Melania Trump

Retrospective public appearances only. We are asking where they have BEEN seen, not where they are now. No home addresses, no doorstepping, no approaching family. Photographs must be taken in public places and legally obtained.

Profile the least-known name in the top ten

Our Bunker Score ranks who holds the most power with the least public visibility. Take the top name and do what nobody has: a full profile of someone who has spent a career not being profiled.

Deliver A profile built from filings, court records and interviews — not a clip job.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 2,000–3,000 words

Jeff Yass

When did Kathy Warden last appear in person?

Warden is chair and CEO of Northrop Grumman — the B-21, the Sentinel ICBM and a large share of US nuclear modernisation run through her company — and we cannot produce a clear picture of when she is actually in a room with other people. An audio earnings call is not a public appearance. We want the record: when has she been seen in person, in public, by people who could photograph her, and how often?

Deliver A verified list of her in-person public appearances over the last three years — congressional testimony, Reagan National Defense Forum, AFA and Sea-Air-Space conferences, air shows, plant and facility openings, university and commencement events, industry award nights — with dates, venues, sources, and whether an image or recording exists. Flag the appearances that were announced and then quietly did not happen.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 700–1,000 words plus the list

Kathy Warden

Everything comes from public record: hearing transcripts and witness lists, conference programmes, company press releases, local press, event photography. Retrospective appearances only. No site visits that require access to secure facilities, and nothing that involves approaching a home.

Sergey Brin came back. What happened to Larry Page?

Two founders stepped back from Alphabet's day-to-day on the same day in 2019. One of them has since turned up inside the building again during the AI race and started talking in public about long working weeks. The other has barely surfaced. Establish what Brin's return actually consists of — an operational role or a set of cameos — and build the documented public record of Page over the same period, including any appearances that cut against the idea that he stayed away.

Deliver A reported piece that establishes the shape of the return from evidence, not vibes: dated public appearances and on-record remarks, conference and developer-event billing, patent filings and paper credits, Alphabet proxy and 10-K language on founder roles, share class and voting position, and interviews with people who have worked with him since. Set it against a documented account of Page's public record over the same period.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,800–2,500 words

Sergey BrinLarry Page

The thesis has to survive the evidence — if the return turns out to be mostly staged appearances with no operational substance, that is the better story and we will run it. Nothing sourced to material obtained in breach of an NDA or an employment agreement. Page's absence gets reported through the public record, not through his home or family.

Where has Rupert Murdoch actually turned up?

Lachlan Murdoch fronts the companies now, and we have no verified record of what his father has actually done in public over the past year. Establish it: appearances, not speculation about his health, his intentions or where he is today. Fix the start of the timeline at the reported settlement of the family trust and source that date rather than assuming it. If the most recent verified sighting turns out to be months old, that is the story. If he has barely stopped, that is the story too.

Deliver A sourced timeline of his documented public appearances since the trust settlement: shareholder meetings, News Corp and Fox events, weddings, funerals, awards, vineyard and estate business appearances covered by local press, plus any on-the-record remarks with the date and outlet. Note where Lachlan Murdoch has appeared in his place. Include images only where they were legally obtained in public.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 800–1,200 words plus the timeline

Rupert MurdochLachlan Murdoch

Absolutely retrospective — where he has been seen, never where he is now or will be. No health claims we cannot source to him or to an official statement; absence is not a diagnosis. No residence detail beyond city or region.

Which words did the CEOs quietly stop saying?

Five of the most quoted executives in America built public identities on a vocabulary — stakeholder capitalism, ESG, climate transition, diversity targets, democratic guardrails. So count it. How often did each of them actually use those phrases, year by year, in documents anyone can pull: shareholder letters, earnings calls, proxies, keynotes. Where a phrase drops away, establish the quarter it happened and what language replaced it. Then report out why — without assuming anyone was told to stop. Some of them have explained the shift in public; Fink said out loud he was retiring the word "ESG". The story is which ones did that, which ones just went quiet, and who was advising them either way.

Deliver A reported piece built on a countable baseline: annual shareholder letters, earnings-call transcripts, proxy statements, sustainability and diversity reports and keynote transcripts across roughly a decade, showing which phrases vanished, in which quarter, and what replaced them. Then the reporting on top — investor-relations and comms people, board members, proxy advisers and the lobbying groups whose guidance changed first. Publish the underlying counts alongside the story.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 2,000–3,000 words plus the dataset

Larry FinkJamie DimonTim CookMary BarraDavid Solomon

Every disappearance must trace to a dated primary document we can link. Silence is evidence of a change in language, not proof of a belief — the piece has to be careful about that, and the reporting is what closes the gap. No documents obtained by breaching an NDA, an employment agreement or a system, and we do not pay for material.

Spotted: the private aviation rail

Public ADS-B data plus airport photography. Where the jets actually go, and which meetings that implies — with the standing rule that we report where an aircraft was, never where a person is now.

Deliver A recurring photo-led column with verified tail numbers.

Fee agreed in writing before you start

Elon Musk

Aircraft movements only, always retrospective. We do not publish anything that amounts to tracking a person in real time.

Tail numbers: we have Musk's. Who else is on the registry?

Our fleet data covers exactly one man. Nine more names on the index are rich enough to fly private, and we cannot put a single aircraft against any of them. Work the FAA releasable registry and the state corporate filings behind it: which of these nine actually surface as an owner — personally, through a trust, or through an LLC — and which surface nowhere at all. A name with no aircraft on the registry is a finding, not a blank; do not pad the table to fill it. Registrant names only. The registry carries the registrant's mailing address and we do not publish it, ever.

Deliver A registry-sourced table, one row per aircraft: registration, ICAO24 hex, manufacturer/model, registered owner exactly as it appears on the FAA row, the entity behind that name, and an ownership-confidence call (confirmed / associated_llc / reported) with the document that supports it. Plus 300 words on which names hide behind the flimsiest shell.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · Table of 15-30 aircraft plus a 300-word note

Jeff BezosKen GriffinLarry EllisonMichael DellStephen SchwarzmanJensen HuangPhilip AnschutzRobert KraftHarold Hamm

Registry rows only. Do not upgrade an aircraft to 'confirmed' on the strength of a tracker account or a press clipping — that is what our associated_llc tier is for. No live positions in this deliverable at all: this is a title and identity job, not a movement one.

Where the old jets went

Billionaires trade in aircraft the way other people trade in a car, and the paperwork outlives the jet. Take a set of jets publicly associated with roster names that have since changed hands — deregistered, exported, re-registered abroad, moved into an owner trust — and follow the chain of title through the FAA registry and its foreign equivalents. Test whether this really shows ownership migrating offshore and behind trusts as scrutiny rises, or whether it is the routine legal plumbing of the used-aircraft market: we will publish either answer. Verify every aircraft association before you build on it and drop any name that will not stand up. Registrant names, entities and dates only — never the address fields on a registry row, no current basing or movements for anything still flying, and where a chain ends with a private buyer, report the structure and leave the individual unnamed.

Deliver A chain-of-title investigation: for each aircraft, the registration history with dates, every registrant name in sequence, the export or deregistration filing, the new foreign registration where one exists, and a plain reading of what the structure was for.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,200-1,800 words plus a registration-history table

Donald TrumpBill GatesElon MuskMichael BloombergGeorge Soros

Documents only — registry rows, dereg and export filings, corporate records. Where an aircraft now serves a government or a protectee, report the paperwork and stop: no operational detail, no current basing, no movements. Everything here is historic by definition.

Name the boats. IMO numbers, not vibes.

The vessels array in our data is empty for everyone. We want the boats identified properly — not "a superyacht reportedly linked to", but a hull with an IMO number, an MMSI, a flag state and a registered owner company. AIS records, classification-society registers and corporate filings are public, and this is a Monday-morning job. Former names count: hulls get renamed on sale, refit or reflagging, so walk the name history back through the register and tell us what the old name attaches to — establish the chain, don't assume a rename was meant to hide anything. And where a name on this list has no vessel on the record, or where the hull turns out to sit with a foundation, a charter operator or a company rather than the man himself, that is a filed answer too. "Nothing here, and here is the register entry that shows it" is worth as much to us as a hull number.

Deliver A vessel table: name (and any former names), IMO, MMSI, flag, builder and year, registered owner entity, and the most recent publicly recorded port call with its date and source. Plus a short piece on what the flag states and holding companies say about who is really on the paperwork.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · Table of 8-15 vessels plus 600-900 words

Jeff BezosLarry EllisonRay DalioKen GriffinRupert MurdochDavid Geffen

Retrospective AIS and port-authority records only — last publicly recorded call, never a current position and never a heading. Name changes matter: half of these hulls have been renamed to break the paper trail, and the old name is often the story.

What are the car bosses actually driving?

Two of them run America's legacy carmakers and the third runs the electric upstart that rearranged the industry around them. What any of them personally turns up in has never been pinned down as a record — a few scattered anecdotes, no systematic picture. So settle it with pictures: what Barra, Farley and Musk have been photographed driving or being driven in at public events over the past year, and whether it is their own product. Where one of them has said publicly what they drive — Farley has talked about this more than once — check the claim against the frames.

Deliver A photo-led piece, 6-10 usable frames shot in public places, each captioned with date, city and the event. Make, model and trim identified; number plates blurred. Plus 500 words on the gap between what they build and what they get out of.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 500-700 words plus 6-10 photos

Mary BarraJim FarleyElon Musk

Auto shows, plant gates shot from public land, conference valet lines, product launches — public places only. Nothing near anyone's home, no following a vehicle, no plates published. If the only frame you can get requires proximity to a residence, we do not want it.

Who has a photo from the 2026 resort season?

The Caribbean season (December 2025–April 2026) and the Mediterranean season (June–August 2026) have been and gone, and we have no record of who was where. We are not asking where anyone is now, and we are not asking where anyone goes next — we want the receipts from a window that has already closed. Verified public sightings in resort towns: restaurant terraces, marina quays, public streets, town squares. A name you cannot stand up is a finding too — tell us who came back empty and what you checked.

Deliver A dated sightings ledger — person, date, town, what they were doing, and the photograph or the named eyewitness that stands it up. Minimum eight entries, each independently checkable. Photos legally obtained in public places.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · Ledger of 8+ entries plus 400 words of framing

Jeff BezosKen GriffinBill AckmanBrian CheskyMarc AndreessenDavid Solomon

Retrospective and public only. No villas, no private docks, no children in frame, no photographing anyone's family, no chartering a boat to shoot a house from the water. Town-level location at most — never an address, never a coordinate. Anyone who is not a principal on our index is out of frame.

The Sun Valley ramp count: who stopped showing up

Every July the media business flies into one small Idaho airport and pretends it is a coincidence. The field is Friedman Memorial (SUN) at Hailey, the week is Allen & Co, and the ADS-B history for it is public and retrospective. Count the roster-associated aircraft on the ground across the last three editions of the conference — tail numbers and dates only, entity names off the FAA registry and never the addresses on those registry rows. Then work out who quietly dropped off the ramp, who turned up new, and whether anything actually happened to their companies in the twelve months after. An aircraft is not a passenger: attendance only gets claimed where separate reporting or a public photograph puts the person there.

Deliver A reported piece with the arrival ledger as its spine: aircraft by tail number, date on and off the ground, the entity on the registry row, and the named executive that entity belongs to. Attendance charted across three years, with the drop-offs and the debutants called out and matched against deal announcements and departures.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,500-2,000 words plus the ledger

Bob IgerTed SarandosBrian RobertsLachlan MurdochShari RedstoneMark ZuckerbergTim Cook

Aircraft movements, historic, at an airport. An aircraft on a ramp is not proof a named person was aboard — write 'the aircraft associated with X was on the ground', and only claim attendance where separate reporting or a public photograph puts the person there. Nothing about anyone's current or future location.

Ken Griffin bought a stegosaurus. Where is everything else?

Griffin buys objects at prices that break the category — the Apex stegosaurus, a copy of the Constitution, wall-sized art. Some of it turns up on public display, some of it has not been publicly seen since the sale, and nobody has laid out which is which. Where each object physically sits, who lent it to whom and for how long is answerable from museum press material, annual reports, public filings and the wall labels themselves — and where the terms are not public, we want what the institution will say on the record, not a copy of the contract.

Deliver A verified inventory of his headline purchases: object, price paid, current location, whether it is on public display, the loan or gift terms, and the source for each. Plus photographs made in the galleries where photography is permitted, and a line on the pieces that are not on show and what the institution says about them. Convert each price into that museum's own annual acquisitions budget.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 900–1,300 words + inventory

Ken Griffin

Only publicly displayed or publicly documented objects — nothing about what sits in any private space, and no attempt to establish what is at any residence. Photograph only where the institution permits it, and honour their credit terms.

The 19 with no price tag

Nineteen of our hundred carry no net worth figure at all — and every one of them is an officeholder who files a public financial disclosure. That blank is our gap, not their secret: their money is on paper, in public, and we have never gone and got it. Federal OGE Form 278e filings, House and Senate Clerk annual disclosures, judicial financial disclosure reports, and state ethics filings for the governors are all obtainable for free.

Deliver A sourced wealth range for each of the 19, one line per person, with the specific filing (form, filer, year, page) cited for every figure, plus a 1,200-1,800 word methodology piece explaining why disclosure bands are ranges not numbers, what they exclude (primary residence, federal retirement, spousal detail), and which three names the filings genuinely cannot settle. Flag anyone whose disclosed range moved sharply between filing years and say what the filing attributes it to.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,200–1,800 words plus a 19-row sourced table

Scott BessentClarence ThomasPete HegsethGreg AbbottGavin NewsomRon DeSantisHakeem JeffriesChuck SchumerJohn RobertsJD VanceMarco RubioRobert F. Kennedy Jr.Tulsi GabbardChris WrightPam BondiMike JohnsonJohn ThuneSusie WilesStephen Miller

Public filings only, all free to obtain — we do not buy documents or pay anyone for a copy. Every figure lands as a cited range with the filing named; anything the filings cannot support gets published as 'not established', not as an estimate. The ranges are the story, not a failure of it.

Cost the Bezos wedding in Venice, line by line

The figures floating around the Bezos–Sánchez wedding in Venice are round numbers repeated between outlets, and we have not seen anyone build the bill from the bottom up. Do it from public material: Venice publishes its permits and tariffs, water-taxi fares are regulated, hotels publish rack rates, several venues publish hire prices, and some suppliers have spoken on the record. Where a line will not stand up, say so and show the gap.

Deliver An itemised cost reconstruction with a citation on every single line — venue hire, hotel blocks at published rates, water transport at regulated tariffs, security and city permits, catering at vendor-quoted per-head, flowers, the dress, private aviation handling fees from public airport tariffs — and a defended total range with the assumptions stated. Close on the Rich Person Math: what the range equals in Venetian median annual salaries, and in the city's annual tourist-tax take.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,000–1,500 words + costed table

Jeff BezosLauren Sánchez

Published rates, public permits and on-record vendor statements only. We do not pay for invoices, contracts or a look at anyone's books, and nothing sourced from a vendor breaching an NDA. Where a line cannot be stood up it is published as a range with the reason given.

House Call: the company town around Starbase

Musk reportedly lives in company-owned housing near the launch site. Work out what the corporate ownership of housing in that area actually looks like from county records, and what it means for the people who live there.

Deliver A reported feature grounded in county property records, not press clippings.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,500–2,000 words

Elon Musk

Public street addresses and coordinates are allowed when provenance documents them (B-006). Vague neighbourhood-only claims stay city/area without inventing a pin.

He bought the island. Show us the town.

Larry Ellison bought roughly 98% of Lanai in 2012 — an island with a town, a school, a hospital and about three thousand people on it. That is not a house, it is a company town with a coastline. Lanai has been written about before; what nobody has filed is a current, street-level account tested against the records, from the town where the people who work for him live. The question to answer: what has the ownership actually changed — housing, water, jobs, prices, who can still afford to live there and who can afford to stay. Everything needed is public: Maui County property and permit records, state water use filings, the resorts' published nightly rates, the ferry and inter-island air schedules, the hospital, the school, the job listings.

Deliver 1,800-2,500 words plus 12-20 photographs made in public places in Lanai City and on public roads and beaches: the town centre, the commercial frontages, the resort gate, the harbour, the clinic. A night at the Four Seasons and at Sensei priced against the median local wage. On-the-record interviews with residents, business owners and county officials about what changed. County records cited by document number.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,800–2,500 words + 12–20 photos

Larry Ellison

Town, island and commercial level only. No residence, no private property, no coordinates, no aerials over anyone's home, and nothing shot from a place a member of the public cannot lawfully stand. Residents quoted on the record and by consent; anyone who works for the estate and does not want to be named does not go in the piece.

Follow the political money, name by name

Our profiles show aggregate political spending but almost no named recipients. Pull FEC filings for a set of Power Index donors and build the actual list — who got the cheque, which race, which cycle, how much.

Deliver A sourced spreadsheet plus a short written piece on the pattern it exposes.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 800–1,200 words plus data

Charles KochJeff YassMiriam AdelsonPaul Singer

Everything must trace to an FEC filing. This is the single biggest evidence gap on the site right now.

What does one MrBeast video actually cost?

The budgets get quoted constantly and traced to a document almost never. There is a real production economy in Greenville, North Carolina with public edges — city and county permits for the builds, commercial property records, posted job listings with pay bands, whatever state film and production incentive filings exist, and the publicly reported terms of the streaming deal. Whether those records add up to the numbers that get repeated is the open question. Nobody has assembled them into a per-video number.

Deliver A costed breakdown of one named, already-published video — build, crew, prizes, location, post — with a source per line, then the annualised run rate against headcount and the disclosed incentive filings. Finish with the math box: cost per second of finished footage, and how many years of the Pitt County median wage that equals.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,000–1,400 words + cost table

MrBeast

Public filings, permits, listings and on-record former crew who are free to speak. No NDA breaches, nothing bought, no shooting on private production property. Every number carries its source or it is cut.

How many times did they say "climate" this year?

Annual letters and 10-K risk factors at the biggest banks and asset managers once carried a lot of language about climate, diversity and ESG. Our sense is that much of it has gone. A sense is not a story, so we want the mention counts, year by year, pulled straight out of the documents — and we will publish them whichever way they fall.

Deliver A word-frequency table across each firm's annual shareholder letter and 10-K, at least six consecutive years, for an agreed term list — counts per year with page or section cites so anyone can check them. Then 800-1,200 words on what replaced the missing language, quoting the before-and-after sentences side by side.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 800-1,200 words plus the counts

Larry FinkJamie DimonDavid SolomonJane FraserBrian Moynihan

All source documents are public SEC filings and published letters. Freeze the term list before you start counting so the method cannot be accused of being fitted to the result, and publish the list with the piece. Report the counts even where they cut against the premise.

The defence contractors hit the lecture circuit

Alex Karp runs Palantir and Palmer Luckey founded Anduril, and both have spent the past year heavily booked on the thought-leadership circuit — campus lectures, op-ed pages, long-form podcasts, festival stages. Map that circuit against the same period's announced government contracts, protest actions and critical coverage, and tell us whether the two tracks actually line up. If the dates show nothing, that is a publishable answer and worth the same fee.

Deliver A two-track timeline — public appearances, op-eds and podcast bookings on one track, announced government contracts, protest actions and critical coverage on the other — every entry dated and sourced. Then 1,800-2,500 words on who books these appearances and who pays for them, with on-record comment sought from the company, at least two host institutions, and any speakers' agency involved.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,800-2,500 words

Alex KarpPalmer Luckey

Sequence is not causation and we will not print it as if it were: show the dates, quote the organisers, let the overlap speak. Photography only at public, ticketed or credentialed events. Students and attendees are private individuals and are not the subject of this piece.

Who gets the first call?

Every big AI and platform launch lands somewhere first — one outlet, one byline, hours ahead of everyone else. Whether those first looks concentrate in a few hands or spread around is an open question nobody has answered with numbers. Count them: for OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Meta and xAI, log every announcement, who ran it first, whether it was flagged as an exclusive, how long until the second outlet picked it up, and how that outlet's coverage of the company read in the fortnight either side — scored against a rubric you publish, not a vibe. If the distribution turns out to be flat, that is the finding and we run it.

Deliver A database of 24 months of first-look exclusives across these companies — announcement, date, outlet, reporter, whether it was framed as exclusive, time to second outlet — plus a 1,500-2,000 word piece on the access economy that produces it. Include at least three on-record interviews with reporters or former comms staff about how the list gets chosen.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,500-2,000 words plus the database

Sam AltmanDario AmodeiJensen HuangMark ZuckerbergElon Musk

The finding has to come from publication timestamps, not from anyone's grudge. Reporters named in the ledger get a right of reply before filing. We do not pay for documents, leaks or introductions — the fee is for the reporting and the database.

Who said 'sovereign AI' first?

The phrase is suddenly everywhere — earnings calls, ministerial press conferences, keynote stages, congressional testimony — and nobody has said where it came from. We do not have a first-use date, and without one we cannot say anything about how it spread. For each name below, find the earliest datable utterance on a transcript we can open — or establish that they never used it, which is just as much of a finding. Then test whether the phrase actually spread the way it looks like it did, and whether what people mean by it has shifted along the way.

Deliver A citation table: speaker, date, venue, exact quoted sentence, link to the transcript or filing. Then a per-quarter count of the phrase across earnings-call transcripts and government readouts for the last three years, charted. Plus 700-1,000 words on the diffusion path — who was quoting whom, and where the phrase changed meaning.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 700-1,000 words plus the citation table

Jensen HuangSam AltmanDavid SacksSatya NadellaLarry Ellison

House rule applies hard here: identical language on dated transcripts is the evidence, and shared vocabulary is not proof of coordination. Write what the counts support and stop there. Every row needs a transcript we can open.

Who has the wide shot?

Cabinet secretaries and CEOs run the same hard-hat circuit, and the pictures reach us pre-cropped: the machine, the vest, three attentive workers. We have never seen the rest of the hall. We want independently shot frames of the same announced, credentialed events — from your own archive of events you have already covered, or from press advisories the agency or company publishes itself — paired with the official release, so readers can see what the wide shot holds. Maybe it matches the handout. That is a finding too.

Deliver Matched pairs: the official handout or agency-released image alongside your own frame of the same event, with date, venue, and the URL of the official image. Minimum six events. Plus a 500-word caption essay on what the crop is doing — riser height, press pen position, how much of the room is staff.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · Six-plus matched pairs plus 500 words

Howard LutnickChris WrightPete HegsethJim Farley

Announced, public, credentialed events only — press pens, public sidewalks, publicly ticketed appearances. No secure sites you do not have credentials for, no trespass, no following anyone away from the venue, nothing shot at or near a residence. If you cannot stand somewhere legally, we do not want the picture.

Get us the actual tech dinner seating chart

The September 2025 White House tech dinner was photographed from every angle and we still cannot tell you who sat next to whom. Wire lists went round on the night; nobody has published a consolidated roster where every single name carries its own citation and a position at the table. Build it. Who was in the room, who sat where, which companies sent a deputy instead of the principal, and who was invited and did not turn up — with the "did not turn up" half held to the same standard of proof as the rest. Reconstruct the seating from published pool photography and video and from the official transcript; any original photography must be the contributor's own, shot from public streets or on credentials. We are not asking anyone to obtain an internal guest list, and we do not pay for documents. Name only people who were there in a public or official capacity — no spouses, no junior staff, no private individuals.

Deliver A verified attendee list with a citation against every name (pool report, official transcript, on-the-record company confirmation, or legally obtained photography placing them in the room), a seating diagram reconstructed from pool photography and video, and a short 'who wasn't there' section held to the same standard of proof. Plus any legally obtained pool or public-arrival photography we can license.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 600–900 words plus the list and diagram

Mark ZuckerbergSam AltmanTim CookSundar PichaiBill GatesSatya NadellaSafra CatzDavid Sacks

Retrospective and documentary only — pool reports, official transcripts, published video, corporate confirmations. Every name carries its own source; a name that appears only on an unverifiable guest list does not go in. Photography must be pool, credentialed or public-street.

Who really controls Fox now

The Murdoch family trust fight settled and everyone ran the headline: Lachlan on top, the older siblings bought out. Far less has been done on the structure underneath it. Test the settlement against the actual instruments — voting share classes, the new trust arrangement, board composition and the succession provisions in Fox Corp's and News Corp's own filings — and establish what Lachlan can and cannot do without anyone else's signature, and for how long.

Deliver A reported investigation with a control diagram: who holds which class of voting stock, through which vehicle, with what expiry, and which board seats and committee chairs sit with whom. Built from SEC filings, the Nevada probate docket, proxy statements and on-the-record interviews with governance counsel — not from clip-file summaries.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,800–2,500 words

Rupert MurdochLachlan MurdochJames MurdochElisabeth Murdoch

Public court records and filings obtained through normal channels. We do not pay for documents, access or introductions — the fee is for the reporting. Where the docket is sealed, say so; do not source around it.

Is there an AI rules lobby? Edge by edge

Our shared-goals model asserts a light-touch-AI-rules push linking venture capital, the labs and the policy seats. Two of its three receipts carry no document at all — they are our own editorial observation with the source pull still pending. So do the network properly: who funds which political vehicle, who sits on whose board, who employed whom, and where those edges actually overlap. Note the subject list is the model's own names plus Alex Karp, who is not in it — establish whether he belongs there or not. Elon Musk is in the model and gets the same treatment.

Deliver A sourced network map delivered as a table first — person A, person B, relationship type, source document, date — then rendered as a diagram. Sources are FEC and state filings for the political vehicles, LDA lobbying disclosures, SEC filings and corporate registrations for board seats, and published employment history. Plus a piece naming the two or three edges that genuinely surprised you, and the ones our current model gets wrong.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,500–2,000 words plus the table

Marc AndreessenBen HorowitzDavid SacksPeter ThielSam AltmanMark ZuckerbergAlex Karp

Every edge needs its own filing or public record; 'widely understood to be close' is not an edge. We will publish a version that knocks our own model down — that outcome is worth the same fee.

Who was actually in the room

We assert a shared goal across the AI buildout — chips, datacentres, capital, policy. Test it. Who has genuinely appeared together, on the record, and where does the alliance framing fall apart?

Deliver A reported piece that either stands the alliance up or knocks it down. We will publish either.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,200–1,800 words

Sam AltmanJensen HuangLarry EllisonDavid Sacks

Genuinely open question. A piece concluding our read is wrong is worth the same fee.

Who's still in the picture with Elon Musk?

Musk and Trump broke publicly and we hold no record of what happened to the room around him afterwards. Establish it: which political and business figures have been photographed or confirmed with Musk on a stage, panel, launch or rope line, and how that compares with the same figures' appearances before the break. Fix and cite the date you are treating as the split, and build the ledger around the named subjects rather than every attendee, or it never ends. If the evidence shows the circle barely changed, that is the answer and we will publish it.

Deliver A dated co-appearance ledger — event, date, who was present, source per row — covering the twelve months either side of the split, drawn from published photography, official event programmes, company livestreams and pool coverage. Plus a short piece on what the ledger actually shows, including where the freeze-out read does not survive the evidence.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,000–1,500 words plus the ledger

Elon MuskDonald TrumpJD VanceDavid SacksPeter ThielHoward Lutnick

Past, public, documented events only. Absence from the ledger is not evidence of a rift and must not be written as if it were. Photography must be public-place and legally obtained — no travel tracking, no residences, no doorstepping.

Name every Koch on a board

We say "the Koch network" constantly and cannot produce the family-and-roles chart that goes with it. We have not been able to find a current, filing-backed list of which Koch family members hold officer, director or trustee roles across the operating company, the venture arm, the foundations and the political vehicles. Build it from the documents: start from the adults who already hold named roles — Charles Koch, Chase Koch, Julia Koch — and work outward from the filings themselves. Where a relative holds no such role, say so rather than listing them.

Deliver A one-page family-and-roles chart plus the underlying table: person, entity, role, source document, date. Sources are state corporate registrations, IRS Form 990s, FEC filings for the political entities, and the entities' own published leadership pages. Flag every role you could not stand up rather than guessing.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 700–1,000 words plus the chart

Charles KochJulia KochChase Koch

Adults holding named corporate, charitable or political roles only. No minors, no relatives who hold no such role, nothing about anyone's home or private life.

Who actually signs things at Berkshire now?

Warren Buffett handed the CEO title to Greg Abel and kept the chairmanship, and we still do not have the paperwork answer to what that changed in practice. From the succession announcement to the most recently filed quarter: whose name is on the signature and certification pages of Berkshire's filings, who fronted the annual meeting, and which shareholder questions went to Abel and which to Ajit Jain. Alongside it, a retrospective, public-events-only timeline of what Buffett himself has been seen doing and writing over the same stretch.

Deliver A sourced ledger covering the handover: every 8-K, 10-Q and 10-K certification and who signed it, subsidiary CEO changes, the annual meeting running order with who took which questions, and a dated timeline of Buffett's own verified public appearances and letters over the same window. One page of findings on top.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 900–1,400 words plus the ledger

Warren BuffettGreg AbelAjit Jain

Everything traces to an SEC filing, an official Berkshire release, or a recorded public appearance. The Buffett timeline is retrospective, public-events-only — we document where he has been seen, never where he is.

Trump vs Musk: who said what, and when?

We write about the Trump-Musk falling-out without owning a single primary-source record of it. We want what each man has actually said about the other, on the record — Truth Social and X posts, press-pool remarks, interview clips, official statements — dated, quoted verbatim and archived, running from the first documented public exchange between them to the most recent. Every entry carries the venue, the primary URL and a Wayback or archive.today capture. Deleted posts are flagged and proved with the archive capture, not with a screenshot from someone's feed. Retrospective, already-public statements only.

Deliver A dated timeline of public statements only: Truth Social and X posts, press-pool remarks, interview clips, official statements. Each entry carries the verbatim quote, the venue, the primary URL and a Wayback or archive.today capture. Deleted posts are flagged and proved with the archive capture, not with a screenshot from someone's feed. Pair it with legally obtained photographs from public events where either man spoke about the other, or clearly sourced agency stills. Retrospective only.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · ~1,200 words plus the timeline

Donald TrumpElon Musk

Public posts and public appearances that have already happened. No attempt to establish where either man is now or will be, no location work of any kind, no family. Photography only in public places where photography is permitted.

Newsom v. Washington, counted in dockets

Newsom and Trump fight in public, and it gets covered as a speech contest. The scoreboard is in the dockets: Bonta's office files the suits, Newsom fronts them, and while the state publishes its own list of actions, nobody has assembled the full ledger — every case since January 2025, what it was about, who won, who lost, and what the fighting has cost California.

Deliver A counted, docket-sourced audit of every suit filed by the California Attorney General against the federal government in this administration, plus every federal suit filed against California — case number, court, subject, filing date, outcome or current posture — with a wins, losses and pending tally. Add the state's own litigation-cost figures from published budget documents or a California Public Records Act request, and the matching on-record quotes from Newsom, Bondi and the DOJ press office. Finish with a verdict paragraph: who is ahead on the scoreboard, and on what measure.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · ~2,000 words plus the case table

Gavin NewsomDonald TrumpPam BondiRob Bonta

Dockets, budget documents and public records requests only. The verdict follows the tally, not the other way round — if the count says the fight is a draw, write that. Named public officials only; no staff-level individuals who have not chosen public life.

Musk 2026: how much does he pay to move voters?

Wisconsin already ran the experiment. In the 2025 state Supreme Court race, Musk and affiliated groups poured tens of millions in — including $100 payments to registered voters for signing a petition and million-dollar “awards” he framed as appreciation for turning out. Wisconsin Democracy Campaign v. Musk (civil, now in Brown County) alleges that scheme broke Wisconsin’s election-bribery statute; the Elections Commission found probable cause; a special prosecutor later declined criminal charges. We want the forward piece: map exactly what was offered and paid in 2025, what the lawsuit still claims, and what that playbook looks like if he scales it into 2026 — midterms, ballot measures, or another court race. How much per voter, through which vehicles, in which states, and where the law still has teeth.

Deliver A reported feature with a sourced ledger of the 2025 Wisconsin offers/payments, a clear status of the civil case and regulatory findings, and a forward section on 2026 — what he can legally do, what he already tried, and what to watch. We publish the best-supported version of the story, including if parts of the “cheat” framing do not hold.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · 1,800–2,500 words plus ledger

Elon Musk

Primary sources first: complaint and docket in Wisconsin Democracy Campaign v. Musk, Wisconsin Elections Commission materials, contemporaneous Musk/APAC posts, FEC or state filings for the spending. Do not invent totals. “Cheat” is the question the piece answers, not a conclusion we pay for.

Every Live Federal Case With These Eight Names On It

Federal dockets are public, free to read through RECAP, and we are not using them. The thesis to test: coverage makes these names look personally besieged, when most of the exposure actually sits on the company rather than the person. Build the ledger for a named starting set and find out which is true — every entry flagging whether the individual is personally named or only their company is a party. However many live matters that turns out to be; a name with none is a finding, not a failure. Commercial, securities, regulatory, employment, IP, defamation and government-enforcement matters only — no family, custody or probate dockets, and nothing whose substance is a private individual's personal life.

Deliver A sourced ledger of active federal cases for a named starting set — Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Karp, Brian Armstrong, Bill Ackman, Shari Redstone — covering roughly 20-30 live matters. For each: case caption, court, docket number, filing date, who is suing whom, current posture, and the last three docket entries translated into plain English. Then one paragraph per case: what this fight is actually about and what a loss would cost. Every line footnoted to a docket entry number so an editor can pull the identical PDF.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · case table plus ~150 words per case, roughly 3,000-4,000 words total

Elon MuskDonald TrumpSam AltmanMark ZuckerbergAlex KarpBrian ArmstrongBill AckmanShari Redstone

Primary docket documents only, retrieved through CourtListener/RECAP or the court's own public terminal. Nothing sealed, and nothing obtained from anyone who holds a sealed copy. We commission your reporting time, never the documents themselves. This is a paperwork assignment: do not use hearing calendars to put yourself near any subject.

The Musk–OpenAI Case: What Has a Judge Actually Ruled?

Everybody repeats that Musk and OpenAI are at war in court. Nobody on this desk can say who is actually suing whom at this point — there are claims running in both directions — which of them survived dismissal, which died, and what a judge has actually ruled. We want the docket truth, not a summary of somebody else's summary.

Deliver A one-page status card built entirely from the court record: current case caption and docket number, the judge, the operative complaint and answer, a claim-by-claim list of what survived dismissal and what died with the date and docket number of each ruling, any trial or case-management date entered on the docket, and a plain-English 'where this stands' paragraph. Every assertion tied to a numbered docket entry.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · ~800 words plus the status card

Elon MuskSam Altman

Public court record only. If a filing is sealed, write that it is sealed and move on — we do not want anyone's sealed copy, and we do not pay for documents. Do not characterise either man's motives beyond what is in a filing or an on-the-record statement.

The Murdoch Settlement: Who Got What?

Lachlan kept control and his siblings' interests were bought out — that much is on the record. What nobody has done is put a number on it. The share counts, the terms of the buyout and the board seats are scattered across SEC filings, a sealed Nevada docket and a lot of second-hand accounts, and no one has assembled them into a single table. We want the scorecard, built from documents.

Deliver A who-got-what table: current Class B voting holdings for Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and the family entities per the latest Fox Corp and News Corp proxy statements and Schedule 13D/13G filings; which siblings' interests were bought out and on what documented terms; a clear line between what is genuinely on the public Nevada probate record and what has only ever been reported; and current board seats and officer titles. Every number footnoted to a specific filing with its date.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · ~1,000 words plus the holdings table

Rupert MurdochLachlan MurdochJames MurdochElisabeth Murdoch

Filings and court records only. Adult principals who ran public companies are fair game; family members who have not held public roles are not, beyond what a filing itself states. Do not chase the sealed probate material.

What Does Shari Redstone Still Control?

She sold control of Paramount. Nobody has written down what she kept. There is no filing-sourced inventory anywhere of the titles, equity, board seats and holding-company positions Shari Redstone actually holds now the deal has closed — and "Who's Losing?" is scorekeeping we cannot do without one.

Deliver A control ledger drawn from SEC filings and state corporate registries: her position at National Amusements and any successor entity, remaining equity or lock-up obligations per Form 4s and Schedule 13Ds, every board seat at a public or significant private company, and dated confirmation of exactly what she resigned from and when. Close with her most recent verified public business appearances — conference stage, earnings call, on-record interview — with dates and sources, plus legally obtained photographs from any such public event if they exist.

Fee agreed in writing before you start · ~900 words plus the control ledger

Shari Redstone

Corporate filings and public appearances only. This is scorekeeping about control, not about her private life. If property enters the story it is city or neighbourhood level and nothing finer — no addresses, ever. Appearances are retrospective and documented; do not attempt to establish current whereabouts.