Questions · twenty-seven answers in five groups
These are the questions the desk is actually asked, grouped so that the answer you need is in the section that matches your reason for asking. Answers are short by design; each one points to the chapter or notice that carries the full position.
Two themes run through all of them and are worth stating once at the top. First, this site awards nothing: no qualification, credit, accreditation or certificate, and no employment or publication outcome. Second, it advises on nothing specific: it describes practice and names the instruments and bodies involved, and any decision about your own article, source or complaint belongs to a qualified professional.
Scope and status
Is Craft of Reporting a school or a course provider?
No. It is a free editorial knowledge base of thirty pages about reporting practice. There is no enrolment, no timetable, no assessment and no teaching contact. Nothing is awarded for reading it.
Do I get a certificate, credit or qualification?
No, and there is no plan to introduce one. The site issues no certificate, transcript, credit, badge or completion record, and holds no accreditation from any body. Nothing here should be presented to an employer or institution as a credential.
Will this help me get a job in journalism?
It may help you understand how the work is done, which is useful. It arranges no placement, shift, internship or commission, makes no introductions and promises no publication or employment outcome of any kind.
Is there a fee, now or later?
No. Every chapter is open, there is no account to create, no paywall, no subscription and no charge. The site sells nothing at all.
Who is behind the site?
Craft of Reporting Ltd, registered as CRO 698412 at 8 South Mall, Cork. The chapters are written by an editorial desk under collective responsibility, without personal bylines or staff photographs.
Using the material
Where should I start?
If you have never filed copy, start with the lesson on writing a news story, then the inverted-pyramid subject. If you already have a draft, start with the lesson on checking the facts and keep a verification log beside you.
How long does a chapter take to read?
A subject chapter runs about eleven hundred to fifteen hundred words, which is roughly six to eight minutes. A lesson runs about two thousand words and takes about twenty minutes, longer if you work the checklist.
Can I use these chapters to teach other people?
You may read, quote with attribution and refer others to any page. The material is a reference rather than a syllabus, and it should not be presented as an accredited programme or as evidence of certified training. Ask through the general route for anything beyond that.
Do the chapters apply outside Ireland?
The technique chapters apply anywhere. The law and ethics material names Irish instruments and bodies specifically, so readers elsewhere should treat those sections as a template for the questions to ask about their own jurisdiction.
Is the story-structure meter an assessment tool?
No. It divides the figures you type: words by minutes, lede words by total words, words by sentences. It never reads your text, produces no score or grade, stores nothing and sends nothing anywhere.
Are the checklists meant to be followed exactly?
They are written as a floor rather than a ceiling. Every item exists because omitting it causes a specific, common failure described in the section above it. Newsrooms will add items of their own, and where your house rule conflicts with a checklist, the house rule governs your work.
Can I read the chapters offline or print them?
Yes. Every page is plain HTML with one stylesheet, so it prints cleanly, saves to a single file and reads without a network connection once loaded. The print styles drop the navigation, the notice strip and the storage banner so that a printed chapter is the text and its tables.
Law, ethics and limits
Can the desk tell me whether my article is safe to publish?
No. That is a legal judgement about a specific text, its evidence and its jurisdiction. The law and ethics chapter explains which questions to ask and who is qualified to answer them, and a solicitor should answer them.
Is anything on this site legal advice?
No. Chapters name statutes such as the Defamation Act 2009 and the Freedom of Information Act 2014 so that readers know what to ask about. They do not state defences, do not apply law to facts and are not a substitute for professional advice.
Is the site regulated, accredited or supervised by any body?
No. It is not a member publication of the Press Council of Ireland, is not overseen by the Office of the Press Ombudsman or Coimisiun na Mean, and holds no accreditation from any education or professional body. Those bodies are named only as neutral reference points.
Where do I complain about a published Irish news article?
Complaints about member publications go to the Office of the Press Ombudsman, with appeals to the Press Council of Ireland, under their published code of practice. The publisher's own correction route is usually the fastest first step.
Can you review my unpublished draft?
No. The desk does not read unpublished work, and unsolicited drafts are deleted. The checklists at the end of each lesson and subject are written to be applied by you to your own draft.
Corrections and accuracy
How do I report an error?
Use the form on the contact page and choose Editorial correction as the route, or email the desk with Correction as the first word of the subject line. Either way, give the full page address, the exact sentence and the record that shows the correct position. Expect a reply within five working days.
What should I include when I write to the desk?
The page address, the sentence or feature in question, what you expected instead, and the record or the setup that supports it. For an accessibility report, add the browser, operating system and assistive technology. Please leave out confidential documents, health data, credentials and anything identifying a source: neither the form nor the mailbox is a secure channel.
How are corrections published?
A typographical fix is made and logged. A clarification that changes emphasis is noted. A correction that changes a fact is dated and described on the page itself. A retraction removes the claim and says that it has been removed.
How often are chapters reviewed?
Technique chapters annually. Anything naming a statute, a code or a regulator is re-read whenever that instrument is amended or a body is renamed, and annually in any case. Each review checks links, named bodies, boundary drift and checklist alignment.
Why are there no author names on the chapters?
The site argues against inventing named people in journalism and applies the same rule to itself: material is published under the desk's collective responsibility, with no personal bylines and no staff photographs.
Privacy, storage and technology
What does the site store on my device?
Two items only: a record that you dismissed the entry notice, and your storage choice. Each is kept in local storage and in a first-party cookie for up to one year. The cookie policy lists both keys.
Does the site use analytics or advertising?
No. No analytics tag and no advertising tag are installed. Consent Mode v2 signals are set on every page, all advertising signals stay denied permanently, and analytics storage stays denied unless you allow it, at which point it still has nothing to collect.
What happens to what I type into the contact form?
The five fields become the body of a message in the desk's own mailbox and are used only to answer you, on the same legal basis and for the same retention period as an email. They are never used for marketing, and no recipient is involved beyond the hosting and mail providers that carry the message. The privacy notice sets all of that out, including the row in the processing table that covers the form.
Does the site make any external requests?
No. There are no external fonts, scripts, images, embeds, players or pixels. Everything the pages load comes from this domain, which is also why the illustrations are hand-written vector files.
How do I change or clear my storage choice?
Use the storage choices button in the footer of any page to reopen the banner, or the reset button on the cookie policy page to clear the stored choice entirely. Clearing your browser's site data has the same effect.
If your question is not here
Use the general route on the contact page. Questions that recur are added to this page rather than answered twice, so a question you send may end up here in a later revision, without any detail identifying you. Questions asking for a decision about a specific article, source or complaint receive the same answer as above: the desk cannot make it, and a qualified professional can.
Two categories of question are declined as a matter of policy rather than capacity. The first is anything that amounts to asking whether a particular sentence can be published, because that is a legal judgement on facts the desk cannot see. The second is anything asking the desk to intervene between a reader and another publisher, regulator or employer, because it has no standing in any such process and pretending otherwise would waste the reader's time at a point when time matters.
The short version
- Free to read, nothing to buy, no account, and nothing collected beyond two storage keys and the messages readers choose to send.
- No qualification, credit, accreditation or certificate, and none planned.
- No employment, placement or publication is arranged or promised.
- No legal advice, and no review of unpublished work.
- No advertising or analytics tag, and no external requests of any kind.
- Corrections answered within five working days and logged with a date.