Why some Lakatips stories carry the full article and most do not

Lakatips has always worked the same way: we gather what Zambia’s newsrooms publish, we show you the headline and the opening lines, and we send you to the paper that did the reporting. From today the site can also carry a complete article — but only where we have the right to.

That distinction is worth setting out plainly, because it governs everything you will see on a Lakatips story page.

What you will see on a story page

Most stories on this site are summaries. A summary page carries the headline, a short extract written on our side, the reporter’s name where the feed gives it, and a clear link to the newsroom’s own page. The full article is read there, on their site, where their advertising and their subscriptions support the journalism.

A smaller number of pages carry the complete article. A page does that only when one of four things is true:

• Lakatips wrote it. This note is an example.
• A publisher has licensed the article to us, or given written permission to carry it in full.
• The material is an official statement or press release issued for publication.
• The material is in the public domain, or carries terms that permit reuse.

Where a full article on this site was written by someone else, we say so above the first paragraph and again at the foot of the page, we name the newsroom, and we link to their original. We do not describe another newsroom’s work as Lakatips reporting.

What we will not do

We will not copy a newspaper’s article in full because their website happens to serve it to us. Being able to read something is not permission to republish it, and a feed that carries an entire story is a technical convenience, not a licence.

We will not go past a paywall, a registration wall or any other protection a publisher has put around their work.

Every publisher on this site is set to summary-only until there is a written permission on file. That is the default, and nothing moves off it by accident.

Publishers

If you are a Zambian newsroom and you would like your stories carried in full on Lakatips — with your name on them, a link back to your site, and the canonical tag pointing at your page so the search ranking stays with you — write to us at news@lakatips.com and we will set it up.

If you would rather we carried less of your work than we do now, write to the same address and we will act on it. Our copyright and takedown policy sets out how.

Corrections

Where a story on this site is someone else’s reporting, corrections belong with them in the first instance, and every story page links to the original so you can reach them. Where the story is ours, the mistake is ours, and news@lakatips.com reaches the desk.