# Generic outlet identity Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: generic-outlet-identity - Category: Platform-specific (platform) - Subcategory: provenance - Also known as: two nouns and a news word, no masthead, no named editor - Status: Active. Currently signals low-effort writing. - Severity: high - Evidence grade: community-observed (named by practitioners, no formal measurement exists) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-17 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/generic-outlet-identity ## Description An outlet name assembled from two ordinary nouns and a news word, attached to a site with no masthead, no named editor and no address. NewsGuard lists interchangeable names of this kind among the things it looks for when logging unreliable AI-generated news sites, alongside chatbot error text left in the body copy and a publication rate no staff could sustain. ## Why it reads as machine-written A name that could belong to any outlet was chosen so that it would not have to belong to anyone. The absence of a reachable human is the load-bearing part, because a name is cheap to fix and an editor is not. This is a provenance judgment rather than a prose judgment, which is why it survives when every style tell decays. ## Detection Type: judge (a rubric for a lightweight model judge) Rubric for a lightweight model judge: ```text Open the about page and the masthead. Return no-tell if a named human editor or reporter is listed with a working way to reach them, however small the outlet. Otherwise check three things in order: whether the outlet name is two generic nouns plus a news word of the kind a name generator produces, whether article bylines are staff labels with no profile behind them, and whether the footer carries a postal address or a registered publisher. Return tell only when the name is generic and no named human is reachable anywhere on the site, quoting the byline and the outlet name. ``` ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > Business Post Daily is a leading source of business and technology news, delivering timely coverage to readers worldwide. Written by Staff. Our reporting is independent, accurate and built on the standards readers expect from a serious publication. Founded on the belief that good journalism should be available to everyone, we have grown into a trusted destination for professionals across many industries. We cover the stories that matter to people who need to stay informed, without the noise, and we intend to keep doing exactly that. After, repaired: > Kerava Business Weekly is edited by Anni Laakso, who writes most of it, with two reporters listed on the staff page with working email addresses. Corrections run at the foot of the story with the date. The publisher and registered office are in the footer. Note: The name and the staff byline are the tell. Everything after them is an about page that never reaches a person: no editor, no address, no way in. Names in this repair are invented for the specimen. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Small legitimate local outlets run thin about-pages because nobody is paid to write them, and a one-person trade publication may have no masthead at all. Plenty of long-standing papers have generic names for historical reasons. The check that survives all of this is whether a named human is reachable, not whether the name is dull. Anonymity also protects reporters in places where a byline is dangerous, and this entry is a poor instrument in those cases. ## Model attribution No family attribution. The tracking organisation records that chatbot error text appears in body copy on some of these sites but does not attribute sites to model families. ## Sources 1. NewsGuard AI tracking center and UAIN framework https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/ai-tracking-center/ (tier: press; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Active: One organisation publishes the framework and the site counts, so the grade stays community-observed even though the criteria are written down. Severity is high because the entry is about provenance rather than taste, and a reader acting on an unattributable outlet carries real risk. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). Built by [Herman Foundry](https://hermanfoundry.com) from Levi, Finnish Lapland.