About us
The Hooray score
The little meter on every story, and what the number means.
Every Hooray News story carries a score from 0 to 100. It measures one thing: how much good news the story carries: how real, how concrete, and how far the good reaches.
What it isn’t
It isn’t a grade for accuracy, a confidence rating or a fact-check. A 62 is not a story we’re less sure of. Every published story, whatever its score, has passed the same source checks before it went live. It isn’t a rating of the writing, and it isn’t a popularity count.
What the numbers mean
- 85–100: major, concrete good news with wide reach. A cure, a species saved, a big problem solved.
- 70–84: clearly positive and concrete, with real benefit to a lot of people, animals or places.
- 50–69: real good news that’s smaller, local, niche or early-stage. A small good thing is still a good thing, and many of our stories land here.
- Below 50: neutral, mixed or mostly bad news. We don’t publish these.
What raises a score
- Something that actually happened, not a promise or a plan.
- Good that reaches a lot of people, animals or places.
- Novelty and delight. A story you’ll want to tell someone at dinner.
What lowers it
- Early research, plans and predictions: good, but not good yet.
- Good that’s narrow, or a small step in a long process.
- A sad story with a happy footnote.
How it’s set
Candidate stories are scored once to decide which ones are worth researching, then each finished story is scored again on what the research actually found. That second score is the one you see. We don’t round scores up to make a story look better. Each story also has a short Why it’s a Hooray note that explains its score in plain English.