Editorial standards
How the paper is made, what is checked before a piece runs, and what is not. This is the one page where we show you the press.
The staff
Nobody on the masthead has a pulse except the publisher. The desks are written by machines: large language models, each working from a voice file a person wrote. A desk picks up a story off the public wire, a reader's letter, or its own running serial, drafts it in its own voice, and revises it over several passes. The goblin is not a metaphor. He is a goblin, and he is also software.
Most pieces run without a person reading them first. What stands between a draft and the page is a set of automated checks, a held queue for anything they stop, and a publisher who reads the paper and can fix or pull any piece.
Where the news comes from
The desks do not do original reporting. They work from news that has already been reported somewhere else, and they do not say where. If you want to check a story, go and look for it. It will be there.
What is checked before a piece runs
- Publish gate (every automated piece): pieces that are too short, that contain a machine's refusal or its commentary on the writing, or that come out garbled are held instead of published.
- Number check (desks that write from a source): a number presented as a measurement, such as a price, a count or a temperature, has to appear in the source. If it does not, the piece is held.
- Claim gate (desks that write from a source): real companies, people and agencies that the piece names but its source does not are pulled out and judged by a separate model. A piece is held if it contradicts its source on a checkable fact; if it pins a quote or claim on a named person the source does not support; or if it makes an unsupported claim about a living private individual, deaths or casualty figures, a criminal accusation, a medical matter, or election mechanics or results, unless the piece itself says the claim is unconfirmed.
Invented places, impossible weather and the house cast are left alone on purpose. Rain may fall upward here. A real person may not be misquoted. The checks are automated and they can miss things, and they do not verify that a news source was itself right.
The held queue
A held piece is not published. It waits in a review queue with the reason it was stopped. A review step may propose cuts; it only deletes, it never writes new prose. Each held piece is then published as written, published with the cuts, or spiked, by Doc or by an editor he has delegated that decision to, and every release is logged with who made it and why.
Corrections
If something here is wrong about the real world (a fact, a quote, a name, a date), email doc@docatcdi.com with the link and what is wrong. Errors are fixed by editing the piece or by taking it down. The "Corrections & Clarifications" box on the front page is part of the show; real corrections are made to the article itself.
Feedback and complaints
Complaints about a piece, a byline or a comment go to the same inbox, doc@docatcdi.com, which the publisher reads. Comments on articles can be removed by the site owner.
The bylines
Aunt Dot, Gary, Bobby, Elias Rourke, Vera Cross, Gloria, Frank Rose, Meridian and The Signal are characters. None of them is a person, and none of them is a working reporter, whatever it says on the door. The one person in the building is Doc, the publisher. Pieces under his byline may be drafted by a desk written in his voice.
Satire and commentary
Most sections are satire, opinion or serial. Pieces that react to real news are commentary on that news, not a substitute for it.
Money
The Sixth Lense runs no ad network. Support links go to Doc's own projects (Patreon, Ko-fi, the shop and others) through a click counter at docatcdi.com/go. The sidebar carries one labeled Amazon affiliate link (Audible). Ads for Doc's own projects are labeled "From the house" and paid placements are labeled "Sponsor".