Editorial
Who is accountable
Ray Pader is the editor of [SITE NAME]. He sets the site's scope and source list, defines what it will and will not cover, sets the standards described on this page, and is accountable for everything published here. He has spent 15 years editing and publishing industry news, most of it at Shale Markets, his trade site covering the oil and gas business, and he lives in Gibsonia, half an hour north of Pittsburgh.
The kinds of item we publish
Briefing items. Short summaries of reporting published elsewhere. Each one names the publication it came from, carries its date, and links to the original. We summarize; we do not reproduce. If you want the full story, the link is there and we would rather you followed it. We fully respect and value honest sources of news.
Analysis pieces. Longer articles that draw patterns across our own archive — what a run of stories over recent weeks adds up to. Every claim in one traces back to an item we already published, with that item's own source and link attached.
Original content. Interviews with people working in the industry, findings from our own reader surveys, and pieces built on both. These are produced with the aid of AI — it helps gather background, structure the piece, draft it and check it — but the questions are ours, the answers are real, and a person conducted the interview.
We do not do on-the-ground reporting. Nobody from this site is standing at a plant gate. What we know comes from a named publication, a public record, someone who told us directly, or readers who answered a survey — and we always say which.
Sourcing standards
Every item names its source and links to it. An item we cannot attribute to a named publication with a date and a working link does not run. This is enforced in the system, not left to judgment.
Public records over coverage of public records. Where a filing exists — a WARN notice, a permit, an enforcement action — we work from the filing and use the number it states.
A company statement is reported as a statement. We attribute it, and we say what the company did not say. An investment figure with no timeframe, a jobs number that is announced rather than filled, a closure with no word on whether it is permanent — we name the gap rather than smooth it over.
We do not launder claims through our own archive. An analysis piece can only rest on items that retained their publication name, URL and date.
Trade-moving figures need a strong source. Production, capacity, deal value, price and guidance figures require a first-tier source. Where that is missing, the claim comes out — and if the claim was the story, the story does not run. [CONFIRM]
Interviews and surveys
Interviews. Interviews are on the record unless something else is agreed before the conversation starts, and we tell anyone we approach what this site is and where their answers will appear. Quotes are what the person said. We do not compose a quote, tidy one into a better sentence, or generate one; where we shorten a quote for length, the cut is marked.
Surveys. When we publish survey findings, we publish the method alongside them: who was invited, how many responded, when it ran, and the wording of the questions. Our surveys go to readers of this site, so the people who answer are those who chose to — a self-selected sample, not a representative one. We will say that every time rather than describe a reader poll as though it measured the region. We do not report a percentage without the count it came from.
How we use AI
Articles on this site are assembled with AI tools working from sourced material, under editorial direction and to standards set by the editor. We think you are entitled to know specifically what that means.
What the AI does. It collects candidate stories from the sources we have configured, summarizes reporting published elsewhere, drafts analysis pieces from our own archive, helps gather background for and draft our original pieces, and runs the checks described below.
What the AI does not do. It does not decide what this site covers — the scope on this page and the source list behind it are the editor's. It does not speak to anyone on our behalf, or write survey answers. It does not invent quotes; a quotation on this site is either one a named publication printed or one a person actually said to us. It does not publish anything the process below has killed.
Every draft goes through an adversarial review before it can publish. One model drafts; a second, working from independently retrieved sources, checks the draft against them and returns a verdict — publish, revise, or kill — with specific notes. Revisions are answered note by note and verified. Where a contradicted claim has to be cut, the cut is verified in code rather than assumed. If cutting it removes the central claim, the piece is killed instead of published in a shortened form that says nothing.
Every source link is fetched before publication. A dead link is cut, along with whatever rested on it.
Killed pieces stay killed. Skipping a day costs us nothing. Publishing something that only exists because nothing stopped it costs us you.
We keep the record. For anything published here we can tell you what the sources said, what was corrected, what was cut and why. Ask and we will tell you.
What we do not publish
Invented quotes, sources, or figures
Estimates presented as filed numbers — if a WARN notice states a count, we use it
Speculation about a plant's future beyond what a filing or a named official says
Individual workers' names in layoff, injury or discipline coverage
Stock recommendations, price targets, or investment advice of any kind
Corrections
We correct errors, and we say what changed. A correction is appended to the item with the date and a plain description of what was wrong — we do not quietly edit and move on.
If something here is wrong, write to [CORRECTIONS ADDRESS]. We will look at it the same day. You do not need to be the subject of the story to report an error in it.
If we have summarized your organization's news and you believe we have it wrong, that is a correction and we will treat it as one. If we have summarized it accurately and you would rather we hadn't, that is not.
Fairness in labor coverage
Contract talks, strikes and layoffs are a standing part of this beat. We report what the company said and what the union said, we attribute both, and we do not adopt either side's framing as our own. A company "offers" and a local "offers" — neither one "demands." Where we cannot reach a fact, we say it is unknown rather than accept one side's account of it.
Advertising and independence
Advertising has no influence on what we cover or how we cover it. Advertisers receive no advance notice of stories, no review, and no veto. Advertising is visually distinct from editorial content and labeled where it could be mistaken for it.
This site is owned and published by Red Rocks Consultants, a Pennsylvania business owned by Ray Pader. We have no ownership stake in any company we cover. Where a business relationship exists with an organization in a story — an advertiser, a trade, a client of another Red Rocks business — we disclose it in that story.
Reader submissions
News tips, corrections, and events for the calendar are welcome. We read everything sent to us. Press releases are treated as company statements, not as news, and run only when they change something at a facility in our coverage area.