About Us
What IAQABA is
IAQABA is an independent general-news publication. We cover the world as it moves, across ten sections that carry equal weight: news, business, technology, science, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, auto and gaming. We write in English for readers who are spread across every time zone and who do not want the day filtered through the assumptions of any single capital. The name is a masthead, not a place. There is no home city behind it, no local desk and no regional angle that other stories get bent around.
We are a small independent editorial team, and the size is a choice rather than an accident. There is no media conglomerate above us, no parent company with other interests to protect, and no investor whose holdings we would have to step around. What that costs us in reach it repays in freedom: a story runs on the day it is true, not the day it is convenient for someone else.
Ten sections, none of them the favourite
Most general-news sites have a section they secretly prefer, and the rest of the paper is built around it. We have tried not to. A court ruling, a product launch, a set of trial results, a transfer deadline, a box-office weekend, a border reopening, a recall notice and a console price cut all get the same editorial care, because a reader’s life does not respect section boundaries either. The same person who checks a rate decision before work checks a league table after it.
The spread also keeps us honest. A newsroom that only knows one subject starts to think like the people it covers. Ten sections that share one standard, and one set of editors who move between them, make it harder for any industry’s habits to become ours.
How we decide what to cover
A site with no home town cannot use proximity as a filter, so we use usefulness instead. The question asked before a story goes on the list is whether a reader somewhere on the planet, who was not there and does not follow the subject daily, will understand the event better after reading us than after reading the loudest account of it. That test pushes us toward stories with checkable facts and away from the ones that are only opinion wearing a headline.
It also shapes how we write. We do not assume you know which currency a figure is in, which competition a club plays in, or which agency issued a ruling, so we say. Units are converted where a reader would need it, dates are given in full, and background lives inside the story rather than in a link you are expected to follow. A story that only makes sense to people already inside its context is not finished.
Breaking news, and the discipline it needs
When a story is still moving, the temptation is to publish the biggest version first and settle up with the facts later. We do the opposite. We would rather be second with the right figure than first with one we cannot stand behind an hour on. A developing story is marked as developing, carries only what has been confirmed, and is updated with a note each time it changes. Speculation does not get a headline, and a rumour is reported as a rumour or not at all.
How that works in practice, source by source, is set out in our fact-checking policy. What happens on the days we still get something wrong is in our corrections policy.
News, analysis and opinion, kept apart
A news report tells you what happened and attributes every claim in it. Analysis tells you what it means and is built on reporting rather than mood. Opinion is one writer arguing a case, and it is labelled so you are never in doubt about which of the three you are reading. The headline is treated as part of the report and held to the same standard, because for many readers the headline is the whole story.
The full account of how we separate those registers, how we handle sources, embargoes, conflicts of interest and people who are the subject of a story, is in our editorial standards.
Who pays for it
IAQABA is owned and funded by the person who operates it. The site is free to read and paid for by display advertising: banner units served through a single advertising network. There is no sponsored content, no paid post, no link sale, no affiliate arrangement and no money from any government, party, league, studio, manufacturer or company we might write about. We say this on the about page because how a publication is funded shapes what it can afford to say.
No advertiser sees a story before it runs, no advertiser is promised coverage or protected from it, and a company that buys space is reported on exactly as it would be if it had never bought any. The full picture is on our ownership and funding page, and the terms buyers accept are on our advertise page.
Who we write for
Our reader is curious, short of time and tired of being sold to. They may open a business story in one country at breakfast and a travel story in another at midnight. We do not assume they share a nationality, a politics, a faith or a favourite team, and we try not to write as if they do. We also assume they will check us, which is healthy; every story describes its sources clearly enough that the reader who wants the document underneath can find it.
How to reach us, and how to hold us to this
The quickest way to improve this publication is to tell us when it has fallen short of what this page says. If a report is wrong, if a headline oversells, if a figure is missing its base, write to support@iaqaba.com and say so plainly. Every route to the newsroom, including how to send something in confidence and what to put in the subject line, is on our contact page.
A page like this is easy to write and hard to live up to. The measure of IAQABA is not the promises here but whether the reporting keeps them on an ordinary day, under deadline, across ten sections at once. That is where we ask to be judged.
