Question 1

What is BrickbatDesk?

Accepted Answer

BrickbatDesk is a Chicago newsroom covering the Chicago Bears, Chicago Bulls, and Chicago White Sox. The Bulls and White Sox also share a nightly recap wire. The longer mission, source ledger, and editorial posture live on /about.

Question 2

What does the 'lens' mean, and how do I switch it?

Accepted Answer

The lens is the weighting knob behind every recap. Three lenses ship — Bulls-heavy, Sox-heavy, and Balanced — each biases the recap toward one team over the other, so a Bulls-heavy recap leans hard on Bulls rows and a Sox-heavy recap leans hard on White Sox rows. You pick the lens at subscribe time inside the welcome, and every recap you receive afterwards is weighted by it. To switch after signup, open the Manage preferences link in any recap — it deep-links to your preference page where the picker lives.

Question 3

Why do the Monday betting-trend briefs carry an Illinois disclosure banner?

Accepted Answer

Because Illinois law leaves us no choice on this one. The Illinois Sports Wagering Act (230 ILCS 5/20-1) restricts sports wagering to persons 21 years of age or older who are physically present in the State of Illinois at the time of wagering. The problem-gambling helpline is 1-800-GAMBLER, and the Betting Brief template mandates a regulatory banner of at least 350 characters on every Illinois-targeted brief. We do not duplicate that text here — the full verbatim disclosure lives on /about#disclosure-heading, which is the canonical copy the email ships alongside.

Question 4

What's the email cadence?

Accepted Answer

Two beats land in your inbox on a fixed cadence. First: a confirmation welcome fires once when you subscribe — it carries your picked lens as a chip plus the same timing line "First nightly recap lands in the evening — see you tonight." Second: the nightly recap digest ships every dispatch day, weighted by your saved lens, with a Manage preferences link wired to your preference page.

Question 5

How do I unsubscribe?

Accepted Answer

The recommended path is the Manage preferences link at the bottom of every recap — it deep-links straight to your preference page, where one click stops the next nightly ship. The confirmation welcome email you receive on signup carries the same preference-link URL, so the link is never further away than your most recent email. Fallbacks: sign in at /account to pause without unsubscribing, or revisit /signup to receive a fresh preference link if the original was lost.

Question 6

Who actually writes the recaps — and what does "AI newsroom" mean?

Accepted Answer

BrickbatDesk is an AI-augmented newsroom, not a single human reporter. The desk monitors team channels, credentialed reporters, and trusted rumor sources around the clock and surfaces what lands; the recap digest is rendered by a deterministic template and shipped from the desk every dispatch evening. The desk's editorial posture, source ledger, and a plain-English breakdown of the newsroom live on /about.

Question 7

Where do the sources come from?

Accepted Answer

Every row traces back to a named source on the source ledger published on /about — the same ledger the recap template reads against. Sources are tiered (team channels for press releases and roster moves, credentialed reporters for bylined coverage, social chatter for low-confidence posts), and no row ships without a published source URL in the record. Confidence scoring surfaces on Booth-tier rumor cards; the free Wire only carries rows the desk reads as high-confidence.

Question 8

Is the free Wire really free — and what does the Booth add on top?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the free Wire is free and stays free. Every dispatch-day recap and the Monday Betting Brief go out to every subscriber at no charge, weighted by the lens you picked at signup, with no paywall and no card on file. The Booth is the optional $4.99/mo upgrade surfaced on /pricing: instant postgame recaps, the 60-second video recap, the Trade Confidence Meter on /rumors, premium breaking alerts, the full archive, the ad-free newsletter, and a Booth badge on /account so the desk can keep the free tier honest. There is no free trial that flips to a charge later.

Question 9

What happens on a quiet night — does the recap still ship?

Accepted Answer

The nightly recap only goes out on days with captured events. If the desk logs nothing for either team on a given day, the digest skips that ship and the next inbox-arrival is the Monday Betting Brief. The archive at /archive carries every past recap, so a quiet stretch never means a missing row — it just means the wire was quiet. Visit /archive any time to read both teams at full volume, sorted by date or by team.

Question 10

Is my email or reading data sold or shared?

Accepted Answer

No. Your address lives on your reader row for recap delivery only — it is never sold, never shared with sportsbooks, and never shared with sponsors. The recap email carries no third-party trackers, no open-pixel, and no click-pixel; the only signal the desk keeps is your address and your lens preference. The single sign-in seam the desk uses is the preference link in every recap, and the same privacy copy is published verbatim on /legal/privacy.

Question 11

How does the preference center work — and does the link expire?

Accepted Answer

The preference center runs on a signed link. A fresh URL lands in your inbox on signup and again on every nightly recap dispatch. The link stays open long enough — refreshed on every dispatch — so a quiet stretch never leaves you locked out, and a missed open still gets a fresh one. The link is verified in constant time, so a tampered or re-cut URL never opens the page, even by one byte. Any failure mode — a signature mismatch, a missing reader row — collapses to an in-page "link expired" panel with a recovery affordance that re-subscribes to get a fresh link. The success path lets you re-pick your lens without re-writing your address.

The free wire, the Booth, and what lands in your inbox.

Eleven questions, in plain English.

Sign up free, then open tomorrow’s wire.