SOM Bus · for the Story Object Model
The Story Object Model (SOM) 1.0 standardises the story message and deliberately nothing else. We run the bus it needs: every message checked against the standard, ordered per story, delivered and replayable. Vendors test today. Next: HyperContent runs a private bus for each publisher’s newsroom when it goes live.
A story's journey
The newsroom system updates a story, the media store announces a clip, an AI skill flags a claim. The bus checks each message against SOM 1.0, puts it in order and delivers it to every system that needs it. A stale snapshot never gets through.
What is the Story Object Model?
The Story Object Model (SOM) is an open message standard for newsrooms; 1.0 was published on 12 September 2026. Newsroom planning (NCS), media stores, graphics, the web CMS, AI skills and compliance all describe a story the same way, so no pair of systems needs its own integration. Every SOM message is a JSON envelope (som_version, message_id, correlation_id, message_type, timestamp, originating_system, topic) around a payload whose schema is chosen by its message type. There are six payload families, plus the envelope (the specification counts seven schemas).
story.contextThe complete state of a story at one moment: headline, status, sources, assets, editorial gates. Always a full snapshot with an increasing sequence_number, never a delta.
telling.*A story going out on a platform: started, ended, exposed.
link.*An asset committed to, or withdrawn from, a destination, and its gate status changing.
delivery.media_availableMedia has arrived in a store. Messages carry references to media, never the media itself.
skill.warning.raisedAn AI skill flagging something for editorial attention.
system.auditThe governance trail: clearances, suppressions, withheld fields and overrides.
What SOM leaves to the bus
No broker, no delivery guarantees, no ordering, no identity: SOM leaves all of it to whoever runs the bus. This is what ours does before a message reaches anyone.
Every message is checked against the SOM 1.0 schemas with format assertion on, and snapshots against the story's history (conformance §6). Anything that fails is refused before a consumer sees it. A type SOM 1.0 has no schema for gets its envelope checked, and is accepted with a note.
Messages sharing a story's correlation_id arrive in order, duplicates are dropped by message id, and every consumer gets its own queue with a dead-letter queue. Replay from the archive and redrive yourself, in the portal.
Each producer signs in with AWS SigV4 or OAuth2, and may only publish the message types and system ids it was granted.
Every rejection names its rule and its source, so "the standard says no" is never confused with "our policy says no".
In the newsroom
A breaking story, a tip-line clip, a standards gate, a killed story: each one told as the SOM messages your systems exchange, who receives them, and what the bus does at every step.
For vendors
For publishers
How it works
Tell us who you are and what you want to test. It takes two minutes.
An engineer checks the organisation and creates your workspace. This is the only manual step: after it, your workspace’s owners and admins invite colleagues themselves.
Create credentials, try messages in the playground, publish, and read every verdict.
Publishers bring their vendors into their house, a shared sandbox, and rehearse their newsroom workflows there. Vendors share results with the publishers they choose.
Next When you go live, HyperContent runs a private bus for your newsroom, built from the house you tested.
No. SOM defines no conformance tiers, so neither do we. Results say exactly what passed: "passes som-bus suite som-1.0.0+lib-0.2.2".
In AWS eu-west-1. Send synthetic data only, in vendor and publisher workspaces alike. Payloads are kept for up to 30 days (the replay archive) and never written to logs.
HyperContent, which runs this bus so newsroom systems exchange Story Object Model messages that are checked, ordered per story and delivered.
Request access
We review every request and reply by email. Access is reviewed by HyperContent while the portal is in early testing.