More than a blog: TC Daily Planet editorial procedures and standards

The Twin Cities Daily Planet is an edited news source produced by professional journalists working in collaboration with citizen journalists from the local community. We publish:

1) original reported news articles,

2) articles republished from media partners, and

3) some content (Free Speech Zone articles, blog entries, comments) that is moderated but not edited.

Here's how it works:

Editorial standards:

1. Accuracy is essential.

2. We care about fairness and transparency. Personal perspective is good, but we ask writers to identify any relationship with the story.

3. We look for news stories with a local angle, from local writers. (Interested in writing for us? Check editorial guidelines here.)

4. If we publish an article as a TC Daily Planet original, we edit it. If we publish an article from a community media partner, they edit it.

5. We have limited resources and editorial time, so we usually edit only assigned articles. We publish unedited articles in the Free Speech Zone. While we don't edit Free Speech Zone articles, we do moderate them, just as we moderate comments and blogs. 

6. If you have an idea for a story you'd like to write, send us an email (editor [at] tcdailyplanet [dot] net) or come to a writers' group meeting.

7. We ask our contributors to abide by our ethics policy regarding gifts and comps.

Moderating content—What does that mean?

Moderation means looking at each Free Speech Zone article, blog, or comment to decide whether we will publish it.

Step one: We delete spam, advertising and press releases.

Step two: We check for compliance with minimal standards. We will not publish articles, blogs or comments that are overtly racist, probably libelous, threatening, or personal attacks of the "I know him personally and he is a crook/liar/shoplifter/child abuser" variety. Some name-calling falls in the latter category.

While we do not do fact-checking as part of moderation, we won't publish something that is an obvious error. One example: "There are 400,000 homeless children in Minneapolis."

Articles and reviews

All TC Daily Planet original articles and reviews are edited by Mary Turck or Jay Gabler. TC Daily Planet original articles have bylines that look like this:

BY AUTHOR, TC DAILY PLANET

We also publish articles from community media partners. Those articles are edited by our media partners. A typical byline for a media partner story looks like this:

BY CHARLES HALLMAN, MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER.

Free Speech Zone and Neighborhood Notes

Free Speech Zone articles may be submitted by anyone on any topic. We do not publish press releases and we do not publish out-of-state submissions.

Neighborhood Notes are submitted by our neighborhood correspondents, or by anyone else who wants to tell about what is going on in their neighborhood.

Free Speech Zone and Neighborhood Notes articles must:

• be original writing.
• avoid commercial advertising.
• have a Minnesota connection, either in subject matter or because the writer is a Minnesotan.
• use the real name of the real author.

Blogs

We try to feature blogs that are interesting, and that offer readers a variety of styles, topics and voices each day.

1. Unedited (but moderated) blogs include:

• posts from blog partners who have given us permission to republish what they write elsewhere
• posts from registered users.

2. Edited blogs include :

• Editors' blogs: Jay Gabler writes Front Row Seat and Mary Turck writes News Day
• Columnists (#MSP, The Optimistic Pessimist, Ask a Somali, etc.)

Blogs submitted to the Daily Planet should:

• be original writing.
• avoid commercial advertising - and that includes trying to put a URL to another site in as the name of your blog.
• have a Minnesota connection, either in subject matter or because the blogger is a Minnesotan.
• use the real name of the real author.

More on blogs and directions for setting up your own blog here.