Where does it go?
The question every implementer hits on the first morning. A newsroom holds a hundred kinds of thing and only some of them belong in a story object. One rule answers most of it: if it is content, it is referenced, and if it is state, it travels.
The test
Can you point a URI at it? Then reference it in content_refs[] and label the format. A wire body, an article, a document: SOM records where it is and what it is, not what it says.
Is it a claim about the story? Then it is an assertion, with structure: the claim, who made it, where in the timeline, how confident, and whether a human has reviewed it. A claim is not a document and has no address.
Is it headline meaning? Then it belongs in story_meaning, which is deliberately bounded. It is the kernel a tool needs to act correctly, not a summary of the story.
Is it your own structured data? Then it goes in extensions under your namespace, and every other implementation is required to ignore it rather than reject your message.
Whatever lands, its status travels separately: credibility, compliance, gates and review state are not properties of the content, they are the story's own state.
The trap: a lone value pushed into a format field. A single figure has no address, so there is no document to reference and nothing downstream can find it. If it is a claim, make it an assertion.
Asset or assertion
One question separates them. Can it independently meet a destination? A summary, a social cutdown, a transcript: yes, so each is an Asset, carrying its provenance if a model made it. A fact-check verdict or a deepfake match: no, so each stays an assertion on the record, first class and attributable, but never published as itself.
The reason is structural rather than a matter of taste. Reaching an audience needs a Telling, a Telling attaches to an Asset, and an assertion has neither the provenance structure nor the gates to survive the trip. So the social clip is an Asset in its own right, and the deepfake verdict stays an assertion that the gate on that clip reads.
One asset, many stores
SOM is storage agnostic by design, and the junction pattern never changes. SOM points, the store keeps the bytes, and the pointer is exactly as precise as the store can address.
Frame accurate. At the TAMS junction, media_refs[] carries a tams:// Source and a timerange, so a hold pins to the exact frames it blocks.
Item level. A MAM or PAM is addressed the same way through a locator of store plus reference.
Document level. Anything else at a URI is referenced in content_refs[] with a format label.
TAMS is the frame-accurate junction, not the price of entry. Most newsroom media lives in a MAM today, and a standard that demands a migration before you can join is a standard nobody joins.
The residency table
The same question asked of everything a newsroom builds with. Twelve answers, one pattern.
| THE THING | WHERE THE BYTES LIVE | WHAT SOM CARRIES |
|---|---|---|
| A wire | the agency | content_refs[], a URI plus a format label, with origin and credibility on editorial_source[] |
| Broadcast video and audio | TAMS | media_refs[], a tams:// Source plus timerange |
| Library and archive media | the MAM or PAM | media_refs[], a locator of store plus reference |
| A transcript | the transcript service | an Asset, its text referenced and its provenance carried |
| A rendered graphic | the graphics system | an Asset with a locator. The template never joins the bus |
| A script | the newsroom system | an Asset, body referenced, with holds and gates riding the asset and its links |
| A rundown | the rundown tool | not a SOM object. It references story identifiers, and the MOS bridge translates |
| A published article | the CMS and the platform | a Telling and a delivery record. The artefact lives at the destination |
| A social clip | the platform | a Telling and a delivery record |
| A discovery collection | the vendor's index | never on the bus. What returns are assertions and pointers to media |
| A fact-check verdict | the bus itself | an assertion record, whole and structured. There is nothing to point at |
| Compliance, premise, gates | the bus itself | pure SOM state. Moving it is the entire job |
If it is content, it is referenced. If it is state, it travels.
Where this came from
Every answer on this page was argued out against a real story rather than designed in the abstract, in the Story Archaeology sessions and the working group that came out of them, and every field named here is in the published 1.0 schemas. If your case is not on the table, raise it. The open register records what is still unsettled, and something that does not fit is usually a gap in the standard rather than a misreading of it.
the schemas