ABOUT FACTUAL

Factual is dedicated to helping nonfiction producers bulletproof their work for accuracy.

Factual’s fact-checkers are vetted for quality and are matched to incoming clients based on subject matter, availability, language skills, and more. 

Our fact-checkers are trained up on Factual’s best practices for working with nonfiction producers across disciplines: magazines, books and publishing, podcasts, and documentary films.

Our goal is to prevent embarrassment: Factual specializes in pre-publication fact-checking, which means our fact-checkers are scouring drafts of nonfiction projects before publication and diligently vetting the work for factual and contextual accuracy. 

Factual was founded to address the ongoing proliferation of false information in consumer media. 

Now more than ever, nonfiction producers are concerned about accuracy. But few know where to find quality fact-checkers and must spend valuable working hours shoring up a team. That’s where Factual comes in: We have excellent checkers and can help put together the team you need.

About the founder

Wudan Yan is an award-winning narrative journalist, fact-checker, and media entrepreneur based in Seattle, Washington.

At the start of her career, Wudan cut her teeth as a fact-checker at magazines with old-school fact-checking standards, such as Nautilus and Discover Magazine. She’s brought her eye for detail and accuracy to award-winning magazine articles and podcasts. She contributed fact-checking to David Quammen’s Breathless, which was shortlisted as a finalist for the 2022 National Book Awards, and fact-checked award-winning podcasts such as DAMAGES and UNSEALED: THE TYLENOL MURDERS. She also fact-checked season two of THIS LAND, which was nominated for a Peabody Award.

Wudan’s narrative writing has been published in The Atlantic, California Sunday, High Country News, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, Undark, and beyond. Factual is her third business. Learn more about Wudan here.

Photo credit: Daniel Berman