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LSM99

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Alana Hippensteele, Managing Editor
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Managing Editor

Alana Hippensteele

Alana Hippensteele is the Managing Editor of LSM99 and the person whose name sits behind the site's editorial standards. She has run the newsroom since 2024. The job is unglamorous and mostly administrative in the best sense: she assigns every casino review and market page, sets the brief for each writer, and signs off the final fact-check before anything goes live. Nothing publishes on LSM99 without passing across her desk. She owns the editorial policy, the scoring methodology and the corrections process, which means when a rating is wrong she is the person who has to answer for it.

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  • Editorial standards
  • Review methodology
  • Fact-checking
19
Pages written
45
Pages fact-checked
2024
At LSM99 since

About Alana Hippensteele

Work starts with a brief, not a keyword. Before a writer opens a document, Alana sets out what the page has to answer and what evidence will be needed to answer it: which licence the operator actually holds, which regulator issued it, what the withdrawal terms say, what the bonus conditions require. Reviews are scored across six weighted sections covering licensing and safety, payouts, bonus fairness, game range, support and mobile, and each section has to stand on something checkable. The author and the fact-checker are never the same person. A second named person verifies the claims, and if the two disagree the page waits.

She keeps a hard wall between the commercial side of the business and the ratings. LSM99 carries affiliate relationships, and Alana treats that as a reason for stricter process rather than a reason for softer copy. Commission rates are not shared with writers or fact- checkers as part of a brief, and no partner sees a score before publication or gets to argue one down afterwards. Operators are ranked by what the scoring methodology produces. An operator that pays nothing can outrank one that pays well, and regularly does.

Corrections are published rather than quietly patched. Every page carries a named author and a date, and Alana schedules revisits so that reviews, market pages, payment pages and guides are checked again against current licence status and current terms rather than left to age. Markets covered include the UK, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, Denmark and Thailand, and regulators change rules in all of them. Her standing rule is that where the evidence is thin the page says so. Uncertainty gets written down, not rounded up.

How Alana runs the desk

Editorial quality on LSM99 is a process rather than an instinct. Alana runs the desk on four repeatable steps that apply to every review, market page, payment page and guide, regardless of who wrote it or how large the operator is. The steps are boring on purpose. Boring steps are the ones that survive a deadline.

  1. 1

    The brief comes first

    No page begins as a blank document. Alana writes a brief that states the questions the page must answer, the regulator whose rules apply, and the evidence a writer will need to gather before drafting. For a market page that means the licensing position in that country. For a review it means licence, payout terms, bonus conditions and support access. Writers work to the brief, not around it.

  2. 2

    A second named checker

    Every page is assigned a fact-checker who is not the author. That person works from the source material rather than the draft, and their name goes on the page alongside the writer's. The separation exists so that nobody marks their own homework. Where the checker cannot confirm a claim, the claim is cut or rewritten to reflect exactly what could be confirmed and nothing beyond it.

  3. 3

    A source for every claim

    Factual statements carry a source that a reader could check independently. Licence claims trace back to the register held by the UKGC, Spelinspektionen, the KSA, the ANJ, Spillemyndigheden or the MGA. Bonus and withdrawal claims trace back to the operator's published terms with the relevant clause identified. Marketing pages and press releases are treated as claims to verify, never as evidence in themselves.

  4. 4

    Sign-off before publish

    Alana runs the last check herself. She reads the page against its brief and confirms the named author and fact-checker, the date, the six section scores and the reasoning behind each one, the licence details, and the wagering terms attached to any bonus figure. Anything unresolved sends the page back rather than through. The sign-off is the point where the site's name gets attached.

What Alana will not publish

Some things get sent back every time, no matter the deadline or the traffic forecast. These are the failures that mislead readers most directly, because each one dresses an unchecked assertion up as a verified finding. Alana treats them as absolute rather than negotiable, and the rule applies equally to a large operator and a small one.

  • An unverified licence claim

    A licence is either confirmed against the regulator's own register or it does not appear on the page. Alana will not accept a logo, a footer badge or an operator's own statement as proof. If the register does not show the licence in the market the page covers, the page says the position could not be verified.

  • A bonus figure without terms

    Headline bonus amounts do not run on their own. Any figure has to appear with the wagering requirement, the qualifying deposit, the time limit and the game weighting that governs it, quoted from the published terms. A large number stripped of its conditions is advertising rather than reporting, and it does not clear her desk.

  • Payout speed from marketing

    Withdrawal timings taken from an operator's promotional copy are not evidence of anything. Payout claims have to rest on the published processing terms per method and on what the site can observe. Where neither gives a firm answer, the page reports the range and states that the figure could not be confirmed.

  • No named author or date

    Pages carry a named author, a named fact-checker and a visible date showing when the information was last checked. Anonymous copy does not publish, and neither does a page whose date has drifted away from its last real review. Readers are entitled to know who stands behind a rating and how old it is. Queries go to editorial@lsm99.gg.

Written by Alana Hippensteele

Fact-checked by Alana Hippensteele