Editorial standards

Editorial Policy & Corrections

Long Island Traffic publishes accident, crime, and road-condition coverage for Nassau and Suffolk Counties. We're a continuously-updated publication: when new information emerges from official sources after a story is first published, we update the article in place rather than burying the follow-up in a separate post. This page documents how that works and how to request a correction.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-23

Source standards

Every accident article on Long Island Traffic cites at least one official or independently-reportable source. Our primary feeds are:

  • NYS Police Troop L — daily PDF blotters covering Long Island state-jurisdiction roadways.
  • Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) — official press releases via the CivicPlus News Flash system.
  • Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD) — official press releases on the SCPD press-room (suffolkpd.org).
  • NYSDOT 511NY — real-time traffic incident, closure, and construction data via the public 511NY API.
  • National Weather Service (NWS) — active alerts for the New York metro forecast zones (NYZ072/078/079/176).
  • Google News — vetted broadcast and print outlets for incidents not yet on the official feeds (Newsday, News 12 Long Island, PIX11, NY Post, Patch).

We do not publish from anonymous social-media reports without independent confirmation. When a story originates with a non-official source, we say so clearly in the source citations at the bottom of the article.

Continuous update policy

Most accident stories develop over hours or days. Police identify the victim the morning after the crash. Charges get filed two days later. The road reopens. Investigators determine the cause. In a traditional newsroom each of these would be a separate article that scatters reader attention and creates duplicate-content issues with search engines. We don't work that way.

Our pipeline runs an automated update matcher after every ingest cycle (typically every 4 hours, accelerated to every 30 minutes during severe weather and every 2 hours during holiday weekends). When a freshly ingested event from any source maps to an article we already published in the last seven days, the matcher routes it through one of two paths:

Auto-applied updates

Routine, low-risk follow-ups apply automatically and append a timestamped entry to the article's Updates timeline. The categories that auto-apply are:

  • Victim identified — when police release a victim's name, age, and home town.
  • Road reopened — when 511NY or NYSDOT confirms a previously closed roadway is back open.
  • Investigation ongoing — when police indicate the investigation continues without naming a cause or filing charges.

Each auto-applied update preserves the original article narrative and adds the new information as a clearly-marked, separately-attributed entry. The article's dateModified timestamp updates so search engines and AI agents see the article as a living document. We never silently rewrite the original article body to incorporate new facts.

Editor-reviewed updates

High-stakes follow-ups never apply without a human editor confirming them first. The categories that require human review are:

  • Charges filed (DWI, vehicular manslaughter, etc.)
  • Arrest made
  • Cause determined
  • Death toll changed
  • Correction to a previously-reported fact

These categories carry legal and editorial weight that machine-classification alone shouldn't decide. A human editor reviews the source, verifies the claim, and either promotes the update or rejects it. Promoted updates appear in the article timeline with the same provenance as auto-applied ones.

Corrections policy

We correct errors quickly and visibly. If we got something wrong — a name, a location, a vehicle count, a sequence of events — we update the article with a new timeline entry tagged Correction, and we leave the original incorrect text in place with a strikethrough so readers can see exactly what changed.

To request a correction, email corrections@longislandtraffic.com with:

  1. The article URL.
  2. The specific text or fact that's wrong.
  3. The correct information, ideally with a source we can verify.

We aim to acknowledge correction requests within 24 hours and resolve them within 72 hours. Significant corrections (those that change the headline or the central fact pattern) are also published to our X / Twitter account.

Contacting the editorial team