From the desk
How we cover news
This page is the honest version of the newsroom. We watch local reports, write our own short notes, cite the publisher, and leave a form for someone in a similar situation. We do not republish articles.
How a note gets updated
- 1. Watch the feeds. Every morning the desk reads public RSS from local publishers, right now 6abc and WHYY. We keep only headlines that are both local to Philadelphia and the neighboring counties and tied to a case people might search: crash, arrest, lawsuit, shooting, DUI, injury, and similar.
- 2. Write an original note. The script drafts a short desk note in our voice. It does not paste the article body. It names the place, the kind of matter, and what to send if your situation is close.
- 3. Cite the publisher. Every note links back to the original report and names the source. That link is the source of truth if the story changes.
- 4. Put the form next to it. The point is not to pretend we covered the crime scene. The point is that someone with a similar matter can write the intake desk.
- 5. Tell the desk when something new posts. When new notes go up, PJ gets an email with the titles and links so a person can look at them.
How we cite and review
Citation. Each local report page names the publisher, links to the original URL, and says plainly that the page is an original desk summary. We do not copy quotes from the article into our note. Schema markup also points to that source URL.
Review. The first pass is automated: locality, topic, and an original summary. A person on the desk gets notified when new notes post and can revise or remove anything that should not stay up. Court notes and longer desk guides are written by hand from public court reporting, not from the daily feed.
What this is not. It is not a wire service. It is not legal advice. It is not a claim that the desk is involved in the reported story. A message on the form asks for a review or a referral. It does not hire a lawyer.
The voice we write in
The notes should sound like a person at a desk in Philadelphia, not a template. Short sentences. Direct address. No invented verdicts. No “people are already searching this” filler. If the note could have been written about any city, it is not done.
A good note does three things: says what the public report is about in our words, tells you where the original story lives, and tells you what to send if something like it happened to you.
Byline on local reports: The Philly Lawyer desk. Review line: original desk note, cited to a public report, not legal advice.