Homepage » Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

thinkbroadband.com is one of the UK's largest and most respected independent sources of broadband information and commentary. We have been operating since the inception of mainstream broadband services in the UK back in 2000 and throughput this time, we have always done so in accordance with an implicit set of values focussing on fairness and impartiality.

Our editorial content encompassing our news, guides and blog articles have been exclusively written by our own staff and not sourced from outside agencies or publishers, ensuring out high quality content and consistency is maintained. We occasionally invite respected third parties to contribute in the way of a guest post which is clearly flagged as such. These types of posts are not common and always at our invitation; we will not entertain any proposals from third parties (or their agents) to write content for us, whether for a fee or free.

We focus our coverage on what we consider our users want to read and thus publish fewer articles than most other sites and focus on providing analysis where possible. Where an issue has been widely covered elsewhere, we are less likely to write about it.

Please remember thinkbroadband staff are not employed full-time to produce content for the site. We do this for the passion of helping users with broadband related issues. As such, your assistance in helping us by sending us press releases under embargo is highly appreciated and likely to yield to better coverage.

Editorial Criteria

There are hundreds of companies providing broadband services in the UK and it would not be possible for us to cover every press release sent to us. The following criteria are intended as guidance to such companies and their PR agencies and companies to explain how we work.

We welcome relevant press releases even where we are unlikely to publish a news article based on them directly. We often use press releases for background information about your company and sometimes refer to them in future articles.

Please note the following criteria:

Scope—We are a broadband news website and thus are unlikely to write articles that do not related to broadband services or to broadband users in general. So for example, we may write about peer-to-peer file sharing, streaming video and so on even though they are not broadband specific, because broadband users are likely to be interested in this content. However, we will not write about every new streaming service that launches. We therefore do not wish to receive telecommunications press releases which are unrelated to broadband.
Be Unique—We are more likely to write about a company, product or service if it is doing something unique. This might be a new low price point, an innovative way to deliver a service or something which makes it interesting.
Who is affected? We are more likely to write about issues that affect large numbers of users. Not only might this cover issues such as changes in law affecting many broadband users, but similarly smaller changes from larger service providers are more likely to be covered because of their widescale effect. This is not to say we cover every press release from the largest providers—we want to help smaller providers, but we have to consider how interesting your release is to our users.
Purpose—We will write about research and its findings, but not solely to promote the organisation which carried out or sponsored the research.
Peak vs. Off-peak—We prioritise news, so you are more likely to get coverage if you send it to us on a day when there's very little other news happening.
Topical Issues—We write about topical issues.If you send us a press release after it has been covered on various other sites, it is unlikely we will consider writing about it as many of our users would already have read about it. Similarly, if we are busy and have not had the opportunity to cover some news which has been then featured widely, we are unlikely to follow it up the next day. See next point.
Embargoed releases—You significantly improve your chances of having news published if you send it to us in advance of the publication date UNDER EMBARGO. This also gives us the opportunity to request clarifications and thus helps us to write a more complete article.
Sources
Exclusives—We are far more likely to cover news where we have an exclusive first run prior to other media outlets.
Adding us to lists—DO NOT add our e-mail addresses to any general press distribution list/service or any directory of publications WITHOUT ASKING US first and receiving our confirmation. i.e. You may send us relevant press releases for your company but if you wish to send us releases for other companies, you must have our consent first.
We welcome tweets @thinkbroadband but we would encourage you to e-mail all press releases or queries to us to ensure that they are appropriately considered.

Press Releases

Please note the following advice about formatting and procedure.

We only accept submissions by e-mail and not by fax/post. We do not confirm by phone whether we have received or read a press release. We do not have the resources to field calls from PR agencies looking to confirm if we have received your press release.
Send all press releases to pressreleases@thinkbroadband.com and not to individual staff members. (This is change from previous policy; please do not copy individual staff as this is more likely to result in your e-mail being filtered as spam). Only send press releases to individual staff members if you have been specifically invited to do so.
State clearly the release date/time on the release. Unless otherwise stated we will assume all releases are for immediate distribution and publication. The words .UNDER EMBARGO. or .EMBAROED UNTIL. should appear if a release date/time is in the future.
Embargo.We will respect embargoes. Wherever possible, send press releases to us at least 24 hours in advance under embargo. This gives us a better opportunity to read your press release in detail and ask you to clarify any points so that we can write an informative article.
Draft release—Where you cannot send a release under embargo as it is not finalised, we will also accept .draft. press releases (where clearly labelled as .DRAFT.). We will always wait for a final press release before using any information from a draft. This both to help you give us information in advance and to help us prepare for the final release.
Include the text in the body of the e-mail. You may include attachments (PDF preferred) but please note that we would only read attachments if we are writing an article to examine any tables, images or graphs that you include. Bear in mind we read e-mails on mobile devices so attachments are usually ignored in the initial filtering process.

Our Conduct

On articles which are critical of a company or its products/services, we aim to contact a company representative before publication wherever possible to seek comment on the issue. This may not be possible on time sensitive issues. We will update news articles with any comments received where we consider a response is appropriate.
If your organisation is likely to be featured, please feel free to contact us via team@thinkbroadband.com with your press contact details and we will store them in our database which makes it easier for us to contact the right person within your organisation if we have any queries.
Sources—We will carry out due diligence appropriate to each source and the information they provide. We will also seek to protect the identities of our sources.
Relationships—We welcome constructive relationships with service providers, hardware manufacturers and other parties. We are happy (time permitting) to meet and understand your products/services. We often use these relationships to provide unofficial feedback from users, and to help users solve issues. Where information is shared with us under confidence, we will not publish it, unless we are provided with the same information without such an expectation of confidence via another source, or it becomes public through other means.

Corrections

If you believe we have made a mistake in an article, please contact the author of the article directly. You will find their name and e-mail address linked to in the header. Alternatively please e-mail team@thinkbroadband.com. We will endeavour to make corrections as soon as possible. If you are still unhappy, please see the complaints procedure below.

Complaints Procedure

We understand that sometimes you may be unhappy with our coverage of your company or its products and services. If you have any problems that you cannot resolve directly with the author of the article, please send an e-mail to team@thinkbroadband.com and we will investigate it as soon as possible.