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Iron City DispatchIron City DispatchTechnology, platforms and the business of the internet
The publication

How we work

How a piece is put together here, in the order the work actually happens. This page exists so that a reader can check our method against the result, and so that the desk has something to be held to.

Reporting

  1. Start at the instrument. Before a word is written about a rule, the rule itself is read: the regulation, the directive, the RFC, the standards document. Not the press release announcing it, and not a law firm’s client note about it.
  2. Find the article number. A deadline that cannot be pinned to a numbered provision is treated as a rumour until it can.
  3. Check what is in force today. Instruments have application dates distinct from their adoption dates, and the gap is where most published errors live. Our compliance calendar lists only dates written into the text of the act.
  4. Write the trade-off, not the verdict. If a choice has an operational cost — a reconnect that the application has to handle, a key whose lifetime has to be decided — that cost is the story.

Comparisons

Where two or three options have to be set against each other, they are set out as a table: one axis per column, every column sourced, no total and no score. Readers can weight the columns themselves; we do not know their constraints and will not pretend to by publishing a number out of five.

Photography and illustration

Images are either published with the original material or taken from freely licensed sources, with a caption that says what is in the frame. We do not use generated imagery to illustrate a factual claim, and we do not use a stock photograph of a stranger to stand in for a named person.

Corrections

The procedure, in full:

  1. Write to the desk at [email protected], naming the page and the sentence.
  2. We check the claim against the source the page cites. If the page cites no source, the claim comes out immediately — an unsourced figure is a defect regardless of whether it is true.
  3. The page is corrected in place and a dated line is added at its foot, saying what it said before.
  4. If the error was material and recent, the correction is also noted on The Wire.

We do not have a correction backlog to show off, and we are not going to invent one. What we can promise is the procedure above and the date of the last review of the standing pages, which is printed in the footer of every page.

Archive

This domain was used before the Dispatch by a Pittsburgh marketing company, and its material is still here, at its original addresses, because other sites link to those addresses and breaking them would serve nobody. Those pages are marked with an archive plate, indexed in the 2017–2018 archive, and kept out of the ticker and off the front page. Identifying details of the former occupant — company name, telephone number, postal address, staff names and photographs — have been removed. The prose itself has not been edited.

More about the Dispatch

About the Dispatch

Iron City Dispatch reports on technology, digital platforms and the business of the internet: six desks, sourced figures, no scores and no ratings.

The publication

Editorial policy

The editorial policy of Iron City Dispatch: sourcing, figures, commissioned placements, bylines, corrections and personal data.

The publication

Contact the newsroom

A message form and one editorial address, what to send to either, and what this publication cannot help with.

The publication

Masthead and imprint

Masthead and imprint for Iron City Dispatch: publication details, funding, the name, and the technical setup.

The publication

Cookies, forms and measurement

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. What the pages load, the one key stored in local storage, what the single message form sends and to whom, and what the se

The publication

The desk

Material here is credited to the desk, not to invented correspondents. How the work is divided, and what was removed from this page.

The publication

Archive: 2017–2018

Material published at this address in 2017 and 2018 by the Pittsburgh marketing company that used the domain before the Dispatch, kept for reference.

The publication

Independent trade desk. We take no commission on anything we describe and run no affiliate programme of our own. Every figure on this page names the standard, filing or organisation it comes from; where a number could not be verified the page says so. How we work and how we correct. Reviewed:

Cookies, and what this site stores. The Dispatch sets no advertising or analytics cookies and loads no third-party tracker. Closing this notice writes one key — icd-notice — into your browser’s local storage, so that the notice does not return. Nothing else is kept. The one thing a page here sends onward is what a reader types into the form on the contact page, and that is described before the form is used. What the policy says.