No Usable Sources Means No Article: A Note on What We Won't Publish

From my time in hardware, one thing I carried into journalism is a pretty simple rule: if you can't show your work, you don't publish the number. The same applies here. If the source material contains no reportable facts about the assigned topic, the honest move is to say so rather than construct a plausible-sounding article out of nothing.

Skepticism about vaporware and overpromising startups is something I write about constantly. It would be somewhat inconsistent to then publish vaporware journalism, which is basically what an article built on these sources would be.

What a Real Article on This Beat Looks Like

For context, here's what I'd need to write a properly sourced industrial automation piece:

• A named company with a verifiable product or deployment
• Specific figures: unit counts, cycle times, payload specs, funding amounts with disclosed terms
• At least one primary source (press release, technical paper, regulatory filing, or on-record interview)
• Independent corroboration where claims are significant

It's too early to say whether the source mix-up here was a tagging error or a workflow problem, but it's worth flagging. Readers of Centre Robotics expect technical specificity. A story about a $190 conference pass discount does not meet that bar.

When the right sources come in, the article will run. Until then, this is what transparency looks like.

James Chen · 25 Jun · 5 min