About
Between Oct. 27, 2023, and Sept. 26, 2025, the Pittsburgh Water board voted on 228 resolutions and recorded no vote against any of them. That count came from the authority’s own minutes, and anyone with the minutes can reproduce it.
Hesitation Media publishes two kinds of work. Its enterprise reporting starts from a document or a question the outlet chose to pursue, and its forecasts name a date and the record that will settle them. Election coverage also reports the odds that prediction markets and forecasters publish, each with its source and the time it was read. The site is written for people keeping up with current events who want the documents behind the news. Each story links to its sources, and the primary records sit on this site with a SHA-256 hash, an archived copy and a citation.
What gets published
- Investigations. Reporting built on primary records, including Said vs Filed pages, which set a public statement beside a filing from the same office.
- Forecasts. Election coverage, data analysis such as the midterm history series, and Slow Forecast pages, which name a dated decision and the record that will settle it.
- Records. The document itself, with its hash, where it came from, and what it shows and does not show.
- Method. How to get a record yourself.
How the reporting works
Two practices shape the site. The first is slow journalism. A story goes up when the documents behind it are in hand, which is often weeks after the story was news elsewhere, and a page that changes afterward logs each correction and update with its date. A Slow Forecast page stays up after its date passes and is updated with the record that settled it.
The second is empathic journalism. The editor also works as a therapist, and interviews follow that clinical training: a source is asked what happened before being asked what it meant, and the parts of an account that a record could confirm are checked against the record before publication. Private people are not named. Before a page makes an adverse claim about a named official or institution, the subject is told what the page will say and given at least 72 hours to answer. The ethics page sets out these rules in full, and the methodology page explains how records are obtained, archived and checked.
The editor
Lena Rose Williams is a journalist and therapist in Pittsburgh. Her reporting on the Pittsburgh Water board has appeared in Public Source, and she writes the newsletter on Substack. She is on X as @briannuckols13.
Contact
Tips, records and corrections go to brianjnuckols@gmail.com. The contact page explains how to send documents.