Editorial Values & Standards
Our Editorial Values
The stories we tell at the Philly Download center Black people. As a local news organization, this is what we do: We tell stories through social media, community engagement, YouTube, podcasts and this website that you’re reading now. No matter whether we’re making pictures, articles or videos, we hold true to our editorial values as follows.
As time goes on, it may seem harder and harder to be successful and sustainable in local news. And there’s never been a time when the Black press and Black journalists haven’t faced myriad challenges. Still, we do our duty to the best of our ability to deliver news and information to our communities. We are committed to showing up for you, the communities of Black Philadelphia— it’s our calling, our responsibility, our privilege.
We strive to be (self-)aware, (self-)critical and deeply (self-)compassionate. We are a platform where our people’s stories can be told. We are from the community, of the community, in the community, with the community. We show up in the ways our communities need, because we must. We don’t exist without our community, as a news organization and as people.
We are making room, making noise, and making ways.
We take integrity, equity, storying, and accountability very seriously. We amplify Black voices. People aren’t voiceless; they are silenced. We seek out the voices who haven’t been heard.
For us, storytelling is sacred and a form of communal care. We aspire not to report just on the symptoms of social problems; we aspire to get to the root. We are proud to call griots our ancestors. We don’t take authority without memory, and we know Black memory is precious. Together, we are offering a chronicle of our times and an archive for the Black Philadelphians who will come after us.
We are moving towards a journalism that is a clearing amid the misinformation and static that pervades our communication systems and makes our communities more vulnerable. We understand that news and storytelling have the power to save lives. We want to see more Black people gain access to that power.
We welcome our community to hold us accountable to these values. If you catch us slipping, email us at info@thedownload.news. Here are other principles that matter to us.
- Informed
- Empathetic
- Collaborative
- Healing
- Acceptance
- Truth-telling
- Authenticity
- Justice
- Dignity
- Respect
- Humanizing
- Bold
- Loving
- Accurate
- Encompassing
- Solution-focused
- Reflective
- Reflexive
Our Ethics
The Philly Download follows both the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics as well as “Safer Reporting for Safer Communities: A Code of Ethics for Community Reporting in Philadelphia”
Corrections & Retractions
A correction is necessary when we get a fact wrong. If we find out it's factually inaccurate, we must and we will change it and issue a correction.
Retractions are under the purview of the editor-in-chief, who must publish a letter of explanation and apology if a post requires removal. The editor-in-chief will evaluate the coverage process, gather research and discuss with legal counsel before determining whether a post should be removed.
Our corrections syntax
Articles and Website-first Storytelling: When the content is updated, a correction will be issued at the bottom of an article or page, in the following format.
CORRECTION: [Explain we misstated originally.] [What the correct fact is.] [Apologize.]
Social media: If the content can be updated, at the bottom of the post, a correction should be issued in the following format: An earlier version of this post [explain what we got wrong.] However, [explain the correction]. We're sorry about this. If content can't be updated, we will create a new post to issue the correction, and link back to the original mistake.
YouTube: We will use YouTube Corrections and we will the same format as social media.
Print-only content: We will create a corrections page online for the print project in question, explain quickly that the article is a corrections page, and issue corrections in the article format. An example of the intro could be. “Hello, this is where we share corrections for the special edition we published in print on TK date. You can find out more information on this special edition here [link to article or social video about the project.]”
Editorial Independence Policy
We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News, from which we draw the following language:
Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.
Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.