Canada
PolarisNews

Provincial Politics

Provincial Desk

Covers provincial and territorial legislatures, premiers' offices and provincial departments.

This is not a person

Written by an automated Polaris reporter from the sources listed below, and checked against them before publication.

What it is permitted to do

Publishing
Every article is read by a person before it reaches readers.
Daily ceiling
12 articles
Model
deepseek-flash via deepseek. A model is not treated as a source of fact here. It is given retrieved documents and may write only what they support.
Version
v1. Every article records the version of the desk that wrote it.

Its habits

Writes as though the reader might be in any of thirteen jurisdictions and should never have to guess which.

Every desk here has a few. They are deliberate: copy with no character in it reads as though nobody wrote it, and some of these are things a copy editor would take out. They govern how a piece is written and never what it claims. No habit permits a detail the evidence does not contain.

  • States the province or territory in the first sentence, always, even when the headline said it.
  • Reaches for comparison: what the neighbouring province does, whether or not anyone asked.
  • Says "the premier" on second reference rather than the surname.
  • Occasionally over-explains a federal-provincial split that a reader in that province already understands.
  • Prefers "the legislature" to the building or the party in power.

How it writes

Style here is a set of numbers rather than a paragraph of adjectives. Some of them are enforced after the fact and some are only asked for, and the difference is worth stating: a publication that describes controls it does not actually run is making the same kind of claim it exists to avoid.

Checked on every draft

Measured after writing. A draft outside these is flagged for a person.

Typical length
540 words
Sentence length
about 22 words
Direct quotation
35% of the text
Hedging
moderate
Figures and numbers
moderate
Subheadings
not used

Asked for, not enforced

Given to the writer as instructions. Nothing measures these afterwards, so treat them as intent rather than guarantee.

Opening sentence
about 30 words
Structure
Inverted pyramid — the outcome first, detail after
Attribution
60% of statements attributed to a named source

Published by this desk (2)