How we do things, and what we won't do. The bones come from the Society of Professional Journalists; the words are ours. This page is the rulebook; the rest of the paper is written from the heart and doesn't repeat it.
The desks. Some pages carry a desk name (The Porch, The Record, The Box) instead of a person's. Those are drafted by the paper's software from the record we hold, edited by hand, and say so at the top. No made-up people, quotes or facts; every claim links to where it came from or says we are still looking. When a neighbor takes a desk, their name replaces the line; how that works is one page.
Meeting notes from neighbors. Before a quote runs we read it back to the person who said it. Before a vote count runs we check it against the recording or the minutes. The writer sees their lines before they run; their name goes on them and nothing else of theirs. Photos of the room are fine; photos of people who didn't speak publicly are not. A wrong line gets corrected at the top of the next issue.
Your email address goes to the email service and nowhere else. Pantry and supper hours get a phone call before they run. The jar: once a year we say how many chipped in, never how much; it's run by Jeff's one-person company and nobody draws a salary.
Seek truth and report it
Every claim carries its receipt: the document, the date, the name. If we can't attach it, we say "to link" until we can. We check before we publish, not after. We prefer the original source over the story about it. We don't make things up and we don't take other people's work without saying so.
Minimize harm
The people in this paper are our neighbors, and we'll see them at the market. We weigh what the public needs to know against what it costs a person to be in print. Kids, people in grief, and people who've never talked to a paper before get extra care. We ask before we quote you, and we say who we are when we call. A writer under 18 needs the permission form signed before a byline.
Act independently
Nobody buys a word of this. There are no sponsors, no ads, no price list. The jar is pay what you want, and a shop that chips in gets exactly what a neighbor who chips in gets. When the editor has a tie to something we cover (his office, his club, his friends), it says so in the sentence. If it can't be said cleanly, we don't cover it. Same for anyone who writes here: a tie to the story goes in the sentence.
Be accountable and transparent
We say who wrote what. A person writes every piece; software can fix spelling or type up an interview, and it does not get a byline. The one place software drafted lines is the Cobweb index, and that page says so. When we're wrong, we fix it, label it, and run the correction at the top of the next issue, not at the bottom of a page nobody reads. Tell us at hello@westsidewherewithal.com, call or text 719-201-5462, reply to the Thursday email, use the box on the front page, or write to the address in the footer. A person reads it.
Our own rules, on top
- By us, for us. We can write about what isn't here. It's for the people who are.
- Clean. No profanity in the paper, even when the editor would.
- Less division, more discussion. We argue with ideas, not neighbors.
- Nothing to buy. A neighbor is a neighbor, renting or owning, behind the counter or in front of it. Chip in as one, write as one, with the tie said in the sentence. This rule is for the outfit from somewhere else that wants to buy a word in here: a chain's ad budget, a developer's PR shop, a media company in Denver. There is nothing to buy.