Our standards

The Salt Spring Firestarter. First for news. Second for kindling. Published by Firestarter. Our standards · Corrections

The Salt Spring Firestarter is one edition of a chain. Every edition is published by Firestarter, holds to the same standards, and carries the same trust-wide reporting; what differs is the island it covers.

The norms we hold ourselves to

  1. If we report that a named body or official got something wrong, the same article carries their answer, or says we asked and what happened. Automatic. A report that makes an allegation and carries no response is refused.
  2. A contested claim rests on more than one source. Automatic. An allegation resting on a single source is refused.
  3. We quote people in their own words, from the record, and say when we are summarising instead. Automatic. A quotation must appear verbatim in a document we hold.
  4. A report says what happened. Whether it was good or bad belongs in Analysis, labelled. Automatic. Evaluative language will not publish in the reporting lane.
  5. Anyone we criticise can answer, and we publish the answer in full, at the same prominence. Editorial. Send it to corrections and we print it.
  6. We correct in public, dated, on the article and in a running list. We never quietly edit. Editorial, with the dates enforced in the schema.
  7. Private individuals are not the subject of reports. Institutions and public officials acting publicly are. Editorial, and the beat generator is never handed a member of the public's words.

Two of those are mechanical, not aspirational. A report saying a named public body failed, breached or misled, with no answer from that body and no line saying we asked, does not publish. Nor does an allegation resting on a single source. The piece waits with the reason attached until the other side is in it.

This cuts against the publisher, which is the point: the same person runs a campaign to abolish the Islands Trust. The campaign argues. The paper reports, and the body it reports on answers in the same article.

Ownership and transparency · Corrections