Our editorial process

The person behind the articles

Ahimanikya Satapathy sets the direction of Project Odisha: the subjects we investigate, the questions we pursue and the way each story takes shape. His cultural knowledge, corrections and editorial decisions guide the work. Articles carrying his byline reflect that authorship and responsibility.

Other writers, researchers, translators, photographers and people whose testimony appears in an article retain their own credits.

How we use tools

AI assistants help us find and organise material, compare sources, develop drafts, revise and translate language and build the website. They also assist with illustrations where an interpretive image serves the story. These tools support a human-directed creative and editorial process; they can make mistakes, so their output is not evidence by itself.

We explain this process here in one place, linked from About and the website footer, rather than repeating production labels across articles, image captions or link previews. A byline does not imply that its author personally conducted every study, interview or visit mentioned in the text.

Following the evidence

Footnotes connect factual passages to their sources. We distinguish a historical document from a later interpretation, a remembered story from a dated event, and a reported encounter from our own observation. When a disagreement or gap changes the meaning of a claim, it belongs in the story.

The knowledge base preserves fuller source records and research limitations. Specialist or community review is credited only when it has actually taken place. The collection is being updated article by article to make its authorship, footnotes and reading experience consistent.

Pictures have their own histories

Photographs carry their creators’ credits and reuse terms. Illustrations and reconstructions can help explain a process or evoke a story, but they are not documentary proof of an event. Captions identify that distinction where readers could otherwise mistake an imagined scene for a recorded one.

A record that can improve

Good questions and corrections make the project stronger. If you recognise a missing context, an error or a useful public source, please share it through our contribution page. Publication does not close a subject to further learning.