Editorial Policy

Our bylines are desks, and we say so

Articles here are published under desk names — The Payments Desk, The Markets Desk, The Credit Desk, The Policy Desk — rather than individual author names. Each desk is a shared byline for a group of contributors and editors working on that subject area.

We are explicit about this because the alternative is worse. A great deal of financial content online is published under invented personas with fabricated credentials and stock-photo faces. We would rather name the desk honestly than invent a person who does not exist. The desk model is used by established publications — The Economist has written under Bagehot and Schumpeter for decades — and its integrity depends entirely on disclosing it, which is what this page does.

What a desk byline means in practice: the work was researched and reviewed by contributors with background in that area, every figure was checked against a primary source before publication, and the desk stands behind it collectively.

Analysis, not advice

Capital Outpost describes how financial products and market infrastructure work, what they cost, and what the evidence says. It does not tell readers what to do with their money.

That line is not decoration. Personalised financial advice is a regulated activity in most jurisdictions, we are not authorised to provide it, and content that crosses the line would be both unlawful in some places and unhelpful everywhere, since we know nothing about any individual reader's circumstances.

Concretely, we will explain how an instrument is priced, who bears which risk and what a fee schedule actually costs at a given volume. We will not say whether you should buy it.

Independence

Commercial relationships are disclosed and are kept out of editorial judgement. The rules:

• Advertisers and affiliate partners have no input into what we cover or what we conclude.
• No provider sees an article before it publishes. There is no approval step and no right of reply prior to publication.
• Paid placements are labelled as such, in the article, above the fold — not only in a policy page.
• We do not accept payment to remove or soften criticism.
• A provider withdrawing spend does not change existing coverage.

If a contributor has a personal financial interest in something we are covering — a holding, a former employer, a consulting relationship — they do not write or edit that piece.

How we use AI

We use AI tools in the production process, for drafting, structuring and first-pass research, the way most newsrooms now use them. We are telling you because the honest position is disclosure, not denial.

What that does not mean: unreviewed machine output does not get published. Every factual claim is checked against the primary source by a human before it ships, because a language model's confident summary of a fee schedule is not evidence of what the fee schedule says. Where a claim cannot be traced to a source, it is cut rather than softened.

Corrections

We correct errors openly rather than editing quietly. Factual mistakes are fixed in the article and logged on the corrections page with what was wrong and what it now says.

Substantive revisions that are not errors — a refresh with new figures, a restructured section — get an "Updated" stamp and a note describing what changed.

Report an error to editorial@capitaloutpost.com. Include the URL and the specific claim. We would much rather be told.

Sources and linking

We link to the specific document a claim rests on — the fee schedule, the filing, the rulebook clause — not to a homepage. External links are marked as commercial where they are commercial.

We do not link to a source we have not read, and we do not cite a study through a press summary of it.

Contributions

We accept outside contributions, subject to the same standards as our own work: verified figures, named sources, disclosed interests and no undisclosed commercial motive. Submissions that exist to place a link are declined. See the write for us page for what we look for.