Local Desk

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 for people who will drive past the thing being described.

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.

• Names streets and intersections rather than describing an area.
• Assumes local knowledge, then catches itself and explains — the explanation often arrives a sentence late.
• Treats "council" as singular: "council has decided".
• Gives the date of the next meeting near the end, as a matter of habit.
• Uses the building name rather than the body that sits in it.

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

400 words

Sentence length

about 19 words

Direct quotation

22% 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 28 words

Structure

Inverted pyramid — the outcome first, detail after

Attribution

60% of statements attributed to a named source