Editorial policy

Our job is to bring Zambians the day’s reporting from across the country, and to be straight with them about where it came from. Most of what you read here was reported by a newsroom we work with; the editorial work is choosing what to carry, in what order, and how to put it in front of you.

This page explains how those decisions get made, so you can judge what you are looking at rather than take our word for it.

Which newsrooms appear

A publisher joins the network on the strength of being a real, identifiable newsroom that publishes regularly and stands behind what it prints. The current list is on the network page.

What appears here for a given story depends on the arrangement with its publisher. Some stories are carried in full; others are shown as a headline and opening lines with a route through to the publisher’s own page. Either way the reporter and the publisher are named on the story, and the route to the original is always there.

Going through to a publisher asks you to sign up once — an email address and a phone number, on the first occasion only, and never again on that device. We are straight about why: it is how we can tell each newsroom how many readers Lakatips sends them, which is the basis we work with them on. Nothing about you is passed to the publisher; what we keep is set out in the privacy policy, and the copyright and takedown policy sets out the sourcing terms.

How the front page is ordered

The front page is assembled automatically, several times an hour. Four things decide the order:

• Recency. The strongest factor by far. A story loses prominence steadily as it ages.
• Corroboration. When several newsrooms file the same story independently, it rises. Agreement between competing newsrooms is a reasonable signal of significance.
• Publisher weighting. Newsrooms with a longer record of accuracy carry slightly more weight. This is a modest adjustment, not a veto.
• Reader interest. What readers are actually opening feeds back into the ordering, capped so that it nudges rather than dominates.

No single publisher may hold more than three slots on the front page at once. Without that cap a high-volume newsroom would crowd out newsrooms that file less often but report just as well.

Sections

Stories are sorted into sections automatically, using the publisher’s own category first and, where that is missing or too general, the language of the headline and opening lines. This is a filing decision, not a judgement about the story. It is occasionally wrong; if you spot a story badly filed, tell us and we will correct the rule behind it.

Headlines and text

Headlines appear as the publisher wrote them, with one exception: where a newsroom files in block capitals we re-set the headline in ordinary case, because a page mixing shouted and unshouted headlines is hard to read. Wording is never changed. Where we show opening lines only, they are the article’s own, with publisher boilerplate, datelines and repeated headlines removed. An article carried in full is carried as the newsroom filed it.

Accuracy and corrections

The accuracy of a story is the responsibility of the newsroom that published it, and corrections are fastest coming from them — every story page links straight to the original. Where the problem is ours — a wrong section, a mangled headline, a broken link, a picture that should not be there — write to info@lakatips.com and we will fix it.

If a publisher retracts or removes a story, it drops off Lakatips on the next pass. A publisher can also ask us to remove an individual item immediately.

Advertising and independence

Advertising has no bearing on which stories appear, how they are ordered, or where they sit. Commercial placements are always labelled as such. We do not accept advertising designed to be mistaken for a news headline, and we do not sell placement within the editorial ordering.

What we will not carry

• Material that is unlawful in Zambia, or that identifies a victim of a sexual offence or a child in conflict with the law.
• Content whose purpose is to incite violence or hatred against a group.
• Stories from outlets that persistently publish fabricated reports.

These are judgement calls and we would rather make them openly than quietly. If you think we have one wrong in either direction, tell us.