When scanning the headline and first few paragraphs carefully, I looked for misspelled words (typos), incorrect punctuation, bad/incorrect grammar, and spellchecker errors. My theory was that a professional writer would always check and correct those things, while a hack or fake news writer wouldn't have the knowledge (or care) to do so.
The telltale signs would regularly turn up to reveal the "fake news" stories, and the publisher of such a story was added onto my suspect list - don't trust anything these guys publish.
Problem is that NOBODY proofreads their own stories any more, not even the professional writers. There are no proofreaders on the staff of even the prestigious news outlets such as NYT, WaPo, CNN, WSJ, you name it. It seems most news story have errors these days and spellchecker sftware can only do so much.
I can no longer rely on my old standby to separate real from fake, and this is from a retired former proofreader and typesetter who is feeling rather useless these days.
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