How we cover the commercial beat

Independent and reader funded

• We take no advertising, ever. The Consumer Daily is funded by the people who read it, so the only loyalty on the page is the one we owe you.
• No company can pay to change what we publish, to soften an assessment, or to keep a result out of the read. There is no version of the page where money moves the words.
• Where the editor has a personal interest in a company we are writing about, we say so in plain language on the page itself, so you can read the coverage knowing the full picture.

Sourcing and verification

• Every important factual claim we publish traces to a named, publicly reachable source URL. We do not cite "industry sources" without naming them.
• When we cannot verify a specific number, we drop the precision and rephrase qualitatively. We never publish an unverified specific dressed up as a fact.
• Earnings filings and transcripts are cited and linked, never reproduced. Trade press coverage is summarised in our voice with a clear link back to the source.
• We keep a record of every important claim we publish, with its source and the date we checked it. It is how we stand behind a figure months after it ran.

How we handle figures

• We show the number and let it land. We do not call a figure big or significant and leave it there for you to take on trust.
• We give numbers their context. A share or a percentage means little on its own, so we tell you what it is measured against and over what period.
• Worked examples reconcile to the last rounding digit. If you recompute one of our examples, the arithmetic holds.
• We never invent a quote. Every quoted line is verbatim from a source we have read, and we paraphrase when we cannot quote precisely.

AI on the desk

We use large language models, currently Claude from Anthropic, to help draft and structure the read at speed. Every draft goes through editorial review against a single rule: every important factual claim must trace to a named, publicly reached source URL, with no exception.

The standard the writing is held to is the same whether a human or a model wrote the first version. We treat the model as a tool that speeds up the rewrite of upstream sources, not as a source itself. If a claim cannot be verified against a real URL, we drop it or rewrite it qualitatively.

The record of every important claim, with its source and the date we checked it, holds regardless of who or what wrote the first draft.

Coverage across regions

We cover consumer goods commercial intelligence from every region, not just the United States and Europe. Asia is core to the beat, alongside Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. A story is in scope based on what it means commercially for the global category, not on where the source publication happens to sit.

Corrections

If you spot something wrong, email hello@theconsumerdaily.co. We append a dated correction note to the original page, never a silent edit. Material errors are flagged for one day after we fix them.

Reader feedback

Beyond corrections, we want to hear what is missing from the read and what is working. Story tips, source pointers, requests for company or category coverage, and general comments are welcome through our contact page. Substantive feedback gets a reply within a few business days, and what we hear from you shapes what we cover next.