Daily Beagle Updates
Disruption to Service Notice, Copyright, Article Selections, and more
A couple of updates by the Daily Beagle. We won’t be sending this out via email as we’re now trying to avoid ‘flooding’ people’s inboxes with less important topics.
Notice Of Upcoming Publication Disruption
Due to real world circumstances, there will likely be no Daily Beagle Roundups for the 21st August or 22nd August. We will try to provide scheduled articles for these days instead. If an opportunity presents itself, we will try to get a Roundup out, however it may be “reduced service” with less coverage than usual. This disruption is only temporary.
Change To The URL
The Daily Beagle no longer refers to “tunderdog.substack.com”, which was my alias authorship name, and instead now refers to the publication, “thedailybeagle.substack.com”, which should make it easier to remember. Old URLs will redirect to the new one.
Copyright Policy
The Daily Beagle has an interesting approach on copyright, which is multi-faceted:
Any copyrighted work done by other people remains their respective copyrights. The usage by The Daily Beagle does not grant the public usage rights, as we may have made agreements, asked for permission, or complied with specific provisions which are unique to The Daily Beagle. Read: you cannot copy anyone else’s copyrighted work from The Daily Beagle.
Any work done by The Daily Beagle itself can be copied and re-used freely. If it is done commercially, you must clearly credit The Daily Beagle, and where possible, link to the article in question, or if there’s too many articles, the Substack.
Non-commercial users are not required to provide credit, but it would be nice.
This is compatible with any similar-in-nature open source licences, and we’re reasonably flexible on this.
If you don’t wish to credit The Daily Beagle, paying subscribers are exempt from this requirement, so long as you were paying at the time you first use our content. If you stop paying, it reverts for any future usage, but isn’t retroactive.
You may also ask us explicitly for permission via email for specific or weird case scenarios. We can’t advise on other people’s copyright and we cannot give you any legal advice.
We operate on a flexible forgiveness model, and so long as it isn’t blatant outright stealing, we’re likely cool with it.
How We Choose What Articles To Report On
Readers may be confused as to which articles we choose to report on for our Daily Beagle Roundups, or may be wondering why on the basis of transparency as to what sort of bias we exert.
We run each article, social media post or topic through a series of criterion we’ve custom defined in order to try to find stories that are of interest whilst avoiding fluff.
Before we assess a topic’s validity or likely truthfulness, we determine if the topic is of interest first. We run through a series of informal questions, which we informally call…
The Interest Test
Does the topic introduce something substantially new we haven’t reported on?
Is it likely to have an impact on wider events? (Wider can mean both nationally or worldwide)
Is the topic in the public’s interest (health, financially, or otherwise) to know about? And if told, can the public do anything about it?
Will talking about that topic avoid inducing harm? If it doesn’t, does it exceed public interest/good to know?
Harm here is defined by a hard, physical standard, not the politically correct flimsy standard. Will someone be physically injured or potentially physically injured by this knowledge? For example, we avoided explaining how a grenade in a jar works to avoid giving advice that could lead to physical harm.
If the topic we feel is interesting enough to readers or offers new information, we then go through the steps of verification. We don’t use any mainstream industry standard as the mainstream sources are often horribly wrong. Instead we use a series of assessment criterion to increase the odds of “truthiness”:
The Validity Test
Does the source have the ability to know?
For example, Russian government Intel Slava Z is likely to know Russian government inner-workings, but may not know US government workings
Does the source have a consistent track record of reporting the truth? If they don’t, do they require additional scrutiny (see below)?
For example, outlets like the liberal Guardian, conservative Breitbart often have political bias that polarise their worldview on misreporting statements
For example, Intel Slava Z have a track record of largely telling the truth, but it is tempered with the fact they are a government outlet and thus will have bias in claims
Does the source have reasonable evidence to back up their claims?
For example, we dismiss any social media posts we cannot verify, but photographic and video evidence is allowed to stand on their own merits
If the source doesn’t have reasonable evidence, can The Daily Beagle find an alternative source or citation backing up the claim?
Some claims are interesting enough to warrant further digging to find claims. Often, claims made on social media, such as those by Intel Slava Z, lack any references or citations, but alternative sources can be found.
If it cannot be verified, if the claim were to be disclaimed as being unverified, does it provide sufficiently interesting insight on possible future events to be worth at least considering?
For example, a social media post might try to suggest a country is threatening to use nukes. It is worth exempting this with a disclaimer to show the public discourse, fears and possible developments.
If an article fails all of the criterion above, it is generally not included in the Daily Beagle Roundup. We feel most of the approaches give us a decent spread of interesting news.
This is why we largely omit political squabbles or similar seeming developments even if true as they’re repetitive and not informative, and why we include social media posts from bias outlets as it gives an insight into what other countries or people are thinking.
How We Choose Citations For Research Articles
We typically start with a rough idea of the message or point we’re trying to make, however during the course of article writing, as we uncover new things, we are amenable to change. In-fact, quite a few articles got shelved as circumstances changed mid-writing with a view to updating them with new facts. If we’re not happy with the data or accuracy, then we won’t publish.
The Daily Beagle operates on a cascading scale of citation research, going from high quality to terrible. The ordering is approximate as the quality even within categories can still vary, but our ordering typically is:
Peer-reviewed studies
Studies that at least appear credible (EG include evidence, or refer to other studies)
Pre-print studies (read: non-peer reviewed) in decent peer review journals
Raw/direct evidence, including ‘eyewitnesses’ social media posts, photographic evidence, audio, video and similar; this may include evidence The Daily Beagle itself has obtained
Statements made from, where possible, neutral third parties with relevant expertise in the field
Statement made “from the horse’s mouth”, of non-neutral, hostile third parties admitting a fact or agreeing on a point
[At the very bottom] non-expert mainstream media articles that aren’t overt in a particular bias (E.G. impartially reporting an event)
We may include highly opinionated opposition pieces to establish a point, such as highlighting a bias, highlighting an incorrect argument, showing facts they don’t dispute, or to show an egarious abuse of power or inappropriate action. This isn’t an endorsement of their position by The Daily Beagle, merely a highlight.
We primarily avoid opinionated articles because they are the lowest quality of information sources, and we also try to avoid conflict-of-interest sites, whether pro-or-anti our views or point, as we know political advocacy groups - whether they’re speaking truth or not - don’t necessarily win over the public.
We may also omit any peer-reviewed studies that appear to have glaring flaws, seem to be (somehow) highly opinionated, or evidence that appears to be low quality or “dual use” (E.G. could be used to argue either way). We may also drop papers due to excessive jargon, confusing terms, or unclear/indecisive outcomes that may confuse readers, especially if we find better quality alternatives.
To save time, and because we do have a life, we only provide citations for claims we believe the public will have a hard time believing unless shown with evidence, and won’t provide citations for every obvious fact, especially ones that can be easily uncovered publicly with a few seconds of online search.
Of course, the selection process is subjective, however The Daily Beagle believes this produces the highest quality article material by having such high standards. We’re of the view this excels most newspaper outlets’ quality, returning back to classic, old-school journalism.