How this desk works

Approach · sourcing, review and correction

1. What the chapters are trying to be

Every chapter on this site is written to answer one question: how is this part of reporting actually done? That is a narrower purpose than it sounds. It excludes opinion about the state of journalism, it excludes advocacy, and it excludes advice about any individual's situation. What remains is description of practice, with the sources of that practice named.

The desk writes for a reader who will publish something. That reader needs sequence rather than principle: what happens first, what the decision turns on, what is written down, who signs it off. Where a chapter cannot supply that because the answer depends on jurisdiction or house rules, it says so instead of generalising.

2. The sourcing hierarchy

Material is ranked before it is used. The record made by the body that acted outranks any description of that record. A published code outranks a summary of the code. A statute as published outranks any account of what it means. Where the desk can only reach a lower level of evidence, the chapter says which level it is using.

3. Naming institutions without implying anything

Chapters name Irish and European bodies where a reader needs to know who holds a record or sets a rule: the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman for complaints about published journalism, Coimisiun na Mean as media regulator, the Data Protection Commission as supervisory authority for data protection, the Central Statistics Office for official statistics, and the National Union of Journalists for its code of conduct.

Every such mention is neutral and one-directional. It tells the reader where to look. It never claims that Craft of Reporting is a member of, approved by, accredited by, supervised by, affiliated with or endorsed by any of those bodies, and no such relationship exists. Where a body's remit is described, the description is kept general precisely because remits change.

4. How a chapter is drafted

Drafting follows a fixed order. The desk writes the section list first, in the working sequence of the task, then collects the primary material for each section, then drafts. Writing before the section list exists produces chapters that are essays about a subject rather than descriptions of a process, which is the failure mode this order is designed to prevent.

Each section is then tested against three questions. Could a reader act on this tomorrow? Is anything in it stated more confidently than the evidence allows? Does it contain any sentence that would function as advice about a specific situation? The third question is the one that most often sends a paragraph back, because the boundary between describing a duty and advising on it is easy to cross without noticing.

The production and review cycle for one chapter

1. Stage 1Section list written in the working order of the task, with the evidence needed for each section named.
2. Stage 2Primary material collected and read, including definitions, dates and the current text of any instrument cited.
3. Stage 3Draft written section by section, with every claim about a duty traced to a named instrument or code.
4. Stage 4Boundary read: any sentence that functions as advice on a specific situation is rewritten as a description or removed.
5. Stage 5Accuracy read against the sources, including the spelling and current name of every body mentioned.
6. Stage 6Structure and accessibility read: numbered sections, table caption, checklist alignment, link resolution, alt text.
7. Stage 7Published, with a review interval recorded: annual for technique, immediate on amendment for anything citing an instrument.
8. Stage 8Corrections logged as received, assessed against the record, published with a date, and counted in the periodic review.

5. Review intervals

Chapters carry different review intervals because they decay at different rates. A chapter describing interview technique changes slowly and is re-read annually. A chapter naming a statute, a regulator or a code is re-read whenever that instrument is amended, whenever a body is renamed or given new functions, and annually in any case. The review is a re-reading against sources, not a light edit.

Each review checks four specific things: that every internal link resolves to a file that exists, that each named body still exists under that name with that remit, that no sentence has drifted from description into advice, and that the checklist at the end still matches the sections above it. Drift is the commonest finding, and it usually appears in the shortest sentences.

6. The correction workflow

Corrections arrive by email to the address on the contact page. Each one is logged on receipt with the date, the page, the sentence in question and what the reader says is wrong. The desk then assesses the claim against the underlying record rather than against its own draft, because the draft is what is being disputed.

Four outcomes are possible and they are recorded differently. A typographical fix is made and logged without annotation. A clarification that changes emphasis is made and noted. A correction that changes a fact is made, dated and described on the page itself. A retraction removes the claim and states that it has been removed. Readers should expect a reply within five working days.

What the desk commits to

• Name the instrument, code or record behind any statement about a duty.
• State the level of evidence when a primary record could not be reached.
• Keep worked examples in words, items, days, minutes and percentages, never in money.
• Use no invented named people, no personal bylines and no staff photographs.
• Refuse to answer questions about a specific publication decision, and say why.
• Log every correction with a date and describe fact changes on the page itself.
• Reply to correction, privacy and accessibility contacts within five working days.

7. Worked examples and why they avoid money

Examples on this site count words, sentences, items, minutes, days and percentages. None of them involves a monetary figure. That is a deliberate boundary: the moment a teaching example attaches a sum to a decision, it starts to look like guidance about somebody's finances rather than a description of editorial arithmetic, and this desk has no business in that territory.

The same rule applies to people. Examples describe roles: a planning desk, a verification reader, an operator's spokesperson, a person who attended a meeting. No example invents a named individual, because inventing a person to illustrate a point is the same habit that produces composite characters in published journalism, and these notes argue against it.

8. How the site itself is built

Method extends to construction. The thirty pages are emitted from a single generator script working from one content list, so the page index, the machine-readable sitemap and the pages themselves cannot disagree with each other. A page cannot exist without appearing in the index, and an index entry cannot point at a file that was never written. That removes an entire category of error rather than relying on somebody remembering to update three lists.

Before any change is published the desk runs scripted checks: that every relative link resolves against the file that contains it, that each page carries the notices and metadata it should, that word counts meet the desk's own floors, that no table lacks a caption and no image lacks alternative text, and that nothing on any page requests a file from another domain. The pages load no external font, script, image, player or measurement tag, which is both a privacy decision and a reliability one: there is no third party whose outage or policy change can alter what you read.

9. What this desk will not do

The desk will not review your unpublished article, tell you whether a sentence is safe, advise on a legal letter, mediate a complaint about another publisher, or confirm whether a source may be identified. Those are professional judgements about specific facts. The chapters can tell you what kind of question you are facing and who is qualified to answer it, which is a genuinely different service.

It will also not award anything. There is no assessment, no marking, no certificate, no credit, no accreditation and no completion record, now or in future. If a chapter helps you file better copy, the copy is the outcome. Nothing on this site is evidence of training for any employer, institution or professional body.