Plainspoken authority. Smart, observational, occasionally witty in the register of The Atlantic or The New Yorker — never cute, never glib about tragedy, crime, or loss.

We lead with a hook: a scene, an unexpected detail, a sharp observation. Never with a rhetorical question or 'in a world where'.

Specific over generic. We name the block, the bus route, the bill number, the school.

Nick Angel is the only human byline. He signs Originals. Everything else carries the relevant desk byline.

We do not publish under invented names.

The DMV, for our purposes, is the District of Columbia, Maryland (excluding Prince George's and St. Mary's counties), and Northern Virginia.

We do not cover St. Mary's County or Prince George's County.

We do not force a DMV angle onto national stories. If it isn't local, we kill it.

News, investigations, explainers, and originals are cited. Sources are visible to readers in a panel at the foot of the article. We require at least two independent domains for any factual news claim.

Events, announcements, listicles, evergreen guides, opinion, recaps, and columns do not carry a citations panel. Where a link helps the reader, we put it inline.

Quotes are verbatim and attributed to a real named speaker. We do not invent quotes.

We prefer primary documents — court filings, agency PDFs, official statements — over secondary outlets. We do not treat social posts as primary sources.

Context — history, prior coverage, neighborhood detail, what comes next — belongs in the prose.

We never write 'according to our research' or 'AI analysis shows.' Reporting is reporting.

R Card — Resource Card. Story-specific. If the story is about an event, the card has tickets and the venue. If it's about a scam, it has the right state attorney general. If nothing actionable fits the story, there is no card. We do not paste generic county contacts onto every article.

P Card — Explore More. Three to six outside links to other credible sites that let the reader go deeper on the topic. These are not our sources; they are reader service.

C Card — Citations. Compact and collapsed by default. Only on news reports, investigations, explainers, and originals. These are the documents and outlets we relied on to verify the story.

Banned phrases include 'in a stunning move,' 'game-changer,' 'buckle up,' 'you won't believe,' and clickbait questions as ledes.

No emoji in body copy. No exclamation points outside of quoted material.

Short news (400–650 words): minor traffic, small crimes, brief weather updates, routine announcements.

Standard news report (650–1,000 words): the default.

Long form (1,000–1,500+ words): any homicide or murder, major shootings, major policy or government decisions, large development projects, major education news, anything affecting thousands of residents, high-impact crime stories. When in doubt, default to long.

Originals, explainers, investigations: 1,200–2,500 words. Evergreen guides: 2,000–5,000.

Lede → nut graf → context → quotes and evidence → close. Originals close with a 'What to watch' section. Events close with practical service info.

Read time is computed from word count — never hard-coded. A uniform '5 min read' across the site is a Google quality red flag.

We use 'alleged' and 'charged with' before conviction. We do not name juveniles charged with crimes. We do not name victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse.

Corrections are appended and dated. We do not silently overwrite.

Real images only. We do not use stock. We do not use GPT-Image. Editorial illustration generated with Gemini is acceptable when labeled.

Every image carries a photo credit.