Honest coverage
Who we don't read,
and why.
Every aggregator has sources it cannot or will not read. Almost none of them will tell you which. We will, grouped by the reason. It is the same principle as the receipt on every fact: if we cannot show you the whole picture, we tell you what is missing and why.
Set a text-and-data-mining opt-out. We stop, no exceptions.
Their servers turn away an automated reader. We don't force the door.
Subscription or login only. We read what is open, never what is locked.
They asked out. We honor it.
An opt-out is a full stop, not a negotiation.
When a publisher signals that it does not want its content read by machines, we stop. No exceptions, no re-reading under a different name, no "we will just use the headline." The request is permanent until they lift it. These publishers asked out, and we do not read them:
Honoring an opt-out costs us coverage. We think a record you can trust is worth more than a record that took what it was told not to.
A closed door is an answer too.
Some say no with their servers, not a form.
Plenty of publishers never file an opt-out. Instead their site turns an automated reader away at the door: a 403, a robots rule, a block on anything that is not a person with a browser. We do not argue with a closed door and we do not try to slip around it. If your infrastructure says no to a machine, we read that as no. A few you would recognize, out of hundreds:
We list only names we are confident about. A closed door can also be our own fetch hiccup, so we never accuse a publisher of shutting us out. Either way the practical answer is the same, and the same respect applies.
Behind a wall.
We read what is openly published. Not what is locked.
Some of the best journalism in the world lives behind a subscription or a login. We do not cross those walls, and we do not pretend to have read what we have not. So this work does not enter the record, not because it is not excellent, but because it is not openly syndicated:
Where a paywalled outlet also publishes an open feed, we read the open feed and nothing more. When a source you expected is missing, it is one of these three reasons, never a quiet editorial choice about whose news counts.
Publish news? You decide which list you are on.
Want your open feed read, with attribution and a link back on every story it touches? Or want out entirely? Either way, it is one form, and we act on it.