Hours of research.
Minutes with Masthead.
Type a name, topic, or question. Get a sourced dossier with citations, entity relationships, anomaly flags, and follow-up suggestions — before your coffee gets cold.
Every story starts with
the same grind
spent on background research per story
browser tabs open. Half of them duplicates.
journalists who went to J-school to search databases
Name in.
Dossier out.
research> "Mayor Sarah Chen campaign finance 2025"
── scanning 47 sources across 3 databases...
✓ Campaign finance filings (FEC) — 23 records
✓ Property records — 2 matches in county assessor
✓ Corporate registrations — 1 active LLC
✓ Prior coverage — 14 articles across 6 outlets
⚠ Discrepancy: Reported donation $4,800 vs FEC limit $3,300
Dossier ready — 3 pages, 23 citations, 1 flag
Time: 1m 42s · manual estimate: 2–4 hours
Five engines working
in parallel
Multi-Source Scan
Parallel queries across government databases, corporate registries, court records, news archives, and public filings. Deduplicated, relevance-ranked, source-reliability scored.
Entity Graph
Maps connections between people, organizations, addresses, and funding flows. Disambiguates common names via Wikidata. Surfaces relationships a manual search would miss.
Prior Coverage Scan
Finds all existing reporting across major outlets. Summarizes angles already covered and identifies gaps — so you know what hasn't been written yet.
Anomaly Detection
Cross-references numbers across sources. Flags contradictions, temporal inconsistencies, and unusual patterns — like the same address across multiple LLCs.
Timeline Reconstruction
Extracts dated events from every source and builds a chronological narrative. Highlights gaps — "no public record between March and September 2024" — because sometimes what's missing is the story.
Not a search bar.
A research department.
Open Sources
- ✓ Multi-engine web search
- ✓ Wikipedia + Wikidata
- ✓ Government open data portals
- ✓ SEC EDGAR & FEC filings
- ✓ Court records (PACER)
- ✓ Corporate registries
- ✓ News archives
Licensed Sources
- + LexisNexis / Factiva
- + Property records (assessor APIs)
- + Lobbying disclosures
- + Non-profit filings (IRS 990s)
- + Patent & trademark databases
- + Academic papers
Uses your newsroom's existing subscriptions
Custom Sources
- ⬡ Your newsroom archive
- ⬡ FOIA response corpus
- ⬡ Proprietary investigative databases
- ⬡ Custom API connectors
On-prem deployment available
Same journalist.
Radically different morning.
- ✗2 hours Googling, 47 tabs open, half are dead ends
- ✗Copy-pasting between databases into a messy doc
- ✗Missing the FEC discrepancy because you checked the wrong filing
- ✗No idea what other outlets have already published
- ✗Starting from scratch on the next story
- ✓Sourced dossier in 2 minutes, every citation linked
- ✓Entity graph shows relationships you didn't know existed
- ✓Anomaly flagged automatically — $4,800 donation vs $3,300 limit
- ✓Prior coverage scan shows gaps nobody has written about
- ✓Research saved to project folder — builds over time
Works where
you already work
CMS Sidebar
Highlight a name in your draft → research appears in a panel. One click to insert citations. WordPress, Ghost, Arc.
Standalone App
Full web interface at research.getmasthead.io. Run deep dives, save projects, export dossiers as PDF.
API + Slack/Teams
Trigger research from your team chat. Results stream into a thread. API for custom integrations.
The journalist is
always in control
- —Doesn't write your story. It finds the facts. You write the narrative. The byline is yours.
- —Doesn't make editorial calls. Every finding comes with a confidence score and source link. You decide what matters.
- —Doesn't fabricate citations. Every dossier links to primary sources. If the data doesn't exist, the dossier says so.
- —Doesn't replace source cultivation. It searches public records. Your confidential sources stay between you and them.
Average dossier delivery
Avg sources scanned per query
Findings linked to primary sources
Saved per journalist per week
Stop researching.
Start reporting.
Deep Research is part of the Masthead Newsroom Suite. See what your stories look like when the grind disappears.