Editorial guidelines

Who can write

Anyone. It costs nothing, and it requires no invitation, no subscription and no career in journalism. What it does require is confirming your telephone number through Telegram and accepting the Contributor Agreement.

That confirmation is not proof of identity, and we do not call it that. It shows that somebody controls a number at a given moment — nothing more. In public you appear under a name you choose yourself: your legal name, an abbreviated surname, or a pseudonym.

What we like to read

• Original reporting — something that is not already somewhere else.
• Opinion and commentary, where they carry an argument and not merely a stance.
• Analysis that explains a connection a news item only brushes against.
• Essays and personal perspective, where the person is part of the subject.
• Local stories — the decision, the building site, the closure nobody else writes about.
• Firsthand accounts of something you were actually present for.
• Expert commentary from a field you work in.
• Culture, technology and social affairs in the same breadth as our other sections.

What makes a piece strong

• Evidence. Whoever cites a number also says where it came from.
• Primary sources. The minutes themselves beat the report about the minutes.
• Context. Why now, why here, what came before.
• Specificity. One concrete case carries further than a general complaint.
• Fairness in disagreement. State the other side so that it would recognise itself.
• Transparency. If you are involved in the matter, write that into the piece.

Opinion is welcome — including uncomfortable opinion

We ask nobody to share our political, cultural or religious views. Criticism of governments, parties, companies, public authorities, religions and public figures is legitimate journalism, and an article is not rejected here because its position is unpopular.

The review asks about risk, not about direction: the same text with the opposite stance has to receive the same assessment. What nobody can ask of us is the distribution of unlawful material — threats, targeted abuse, incitement, doxxing, fraud, plagiarism.

What we do not publish

• Pure search-engine text — written for a ranking rather than for a person.
• Copied press releases. A release is an occasion, not an article.
• Plagiarism and text you do not hold the publication rights to.
• Hidden advertising and paid links of any kind.
• Sensationalism — the claim the piece itself does not support.
• Personal attacks on identifiable people.
• False factual assertions, especially accusations of criminal conduct without support.
• Third parties' private data that is not lawfully public.

Length, language and format

Between {minWords} and {maxWords} words. The floor is deliberately not a short-form threshold: a guest contribution stands on its own, and what fits into three hundred words is usually a news item rather than an article.

You may submit in any language Tagblick publishes in. Send the text straight into the chat or as a file — .txt, .md or .docx. We accept nothing else, and the file extension decides nothing here; what is inspected is the actual content.

Sources and quotation

The assistant asks which sources the piece rests on. You are not obliged to name any — an essay often has none — but where they exist they belong with it. They do not appear under the text automatically; they are for the editors first.

Quote openly and to the extent the point requires. A piece consisting largely of somebody else's wording goes to elevated review — not because quotation is forbidden, but because past a certain share it would no longer be your article being published.

Images

Up to {maxImages} images per article, as JPEG, PNG or WebP. For each one we ask where it comes from and what rights you hold in it. An image with unclear rights is not published but put in front of an editor.

We strip metadata. A phone photograph normally carries the place it was taken inside it, and for somebody who has witnessed something that can be the most dangerous fact about them. We remove it before the file goes anywhere — including when you did not think of it.

Artificial intelligence

We ask whether and how you used AI tools. An honest answer leads to no rejection. It only changes what the editors watch for while reading — with a text that came wholly from a model, above all evidence and invented sources.

What does lead to rejection is the false answer. And Tagblick has its own short reports written by machine and says so under every one of them; it would be a strange newsroom that required this of itself and concealed it from you.

What happens after you send it

Automated checks run first: length, language, structure, links, images, and a comparison against everything already published on Tagblick. A language model then assesses the text for editorial quality and for risk.

That assessment publishes nothing. It prepares a decision a human being makes — for every single article, without exception. A model is measurably worse than a person reading the text at recognising defamation, concealed plagiarism and manipulated images.

Decisions, change requests and appeal

You hear from us in the same chat you submitted through — accepted, rejected, or returned with change requests. A change request is not a rejection: it names what is missing, and you can send a revised version. Every version is kept; nothing is overwritten.

A rejection always names a reason. If you think it is wrong, you may ask once for a second reading. We promise no publication in return — only that a second pair of eyes will look.

What we change in your text — and what we do not

Spelling, punctuation, subheadings and formatting we handle without asking. A headline may change; a headline is an editorial craft.

Anything that changes what you said goes back to you. We do not quietly rewrite one argument into another, do not cut an accusation without saying so, and do not turn a conclusion around. If your piece appears in the other editions, the translation is marked as one — it is not attributed to you as your own work.

Corrections

Mistakes happen, including after publication. We do not silently overwrite an article when they do: a substantive correction gets a visible dated notice under the text, and the previous version is kept internally.

If you notice something in a published article — including somebody else's — use the reporting route on the article page or write to [email protected].