Hiding in plain sight: How local stories go global
By Orr Hirschauge & Adi Barill,
co-founders of Alchemiq
With physical goods, the supply chain is visible: ships, bills of lading, and trucks. News has a supply chain too, less obvious, often faster, but no less structured. Sometimes, a story can take longer to go around the world than it takes a plush toy ordered online.
Imagine a local report from the Democratic Republic of Congo about a new variant of mpox. It appears first in local outlets. After several iterations, spanning weeks or months, it is picked up by a DRC national-level publication. Eventually, it catches the attention of an Africa correspondent at one of the international news agencies, directly through the news website, or via social media chatter.
From there, the story moves to the agency’s central desk in New York City, Paris, or London. Editing begins. Publication follows. The wire story is syndicated to dozens of outlets tracking Africa, public health, or global risks. Tier-one publishers such as The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, and Die Welt may follow up. Only then does the story fully circulate globally, sometimes returning to neighbouring countries that hadn’t noticed it yet.
This example is hypothetical, but it closely mirrors how we saw it the mpox story play out on the Alchemiq news feed, where we see the real flow of news – from the first articles to world distribution.
The limits of visibility
What matters here is not just the actual publication, but visibility, and attention. For each reader, including readers employed in news production, the item needs not only to be visible, but also to pass a threshold of perceived relevance.
The same piece of information can exist for days, sometimes months before the news thread becomes visible to wider audiences. News does not arrive everywhere at once; it accumulates, reappears, and shifts context as it moves. Even in what is perceived as a global news sphere.
Distribution matters. Google’s Discover is currently a major factor of what is actually read on news websites, much more than social media.
Geopolitical and economic differences matter. News about a scientific discovery coming from China are more likely to be visible to readers in Russia and South America than to US readers.
Time zones, or more accurately newsrooms up and running at different times of day in different global spots, influence who sees things first. A big story breaking in Europe at 2am can be bigger in Australia in the first five hours at least.
The news is global, but it isn’t evenly distributed. The information exists early, but mostly for those who already know where or what to look for. Passive audiences encounter it late. The same is true inside newsrooms.
This flow limits journalists and editors. Most see the world through a combination of familiar languages, regions, and sources. Coverage is shaped not only by editorial judgment, but by structural constraints: time, workload, and the boundaries of what is practically visible during a working day.
Most editors and reporters still rely on RSS feeds, social scrolling, alerts, and manually checking sites to catch up on the latest news. Advanced tools can help, but in many cases they share a core limitation: you either know what you’re looking for, or you drown in noise. Vertical trackers can help in niches like private equity or industry regulation, but only if someone has time to filter what actually matters to their audience.
How AI changes news discovery
This is where the system breaks, and where AI changes the equation.
AI significantly lowers language barriers, and it can be especially helpful in creating intelligent clustering that helps form tailored feeds with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Not faster news for the sake of speed, but earlier visibility that crosses the necessary threshold of “why should I care.”
In a media environment where attention is fragmented and visibility is uneven, understanding how news flows has become an editorial challenge.
The flow of news and knowledge is essential. The question is no longer what happens, but how, and when it becomes visible. Sometimes it can change people’s lives.
About the authors: Orr Hirschauge & Adi Barill are co-founders of Alchemiq, an AI-powered global news agency made for journalists.
