Statement of editorial guidelines

The Northern Beaches Advocate adheres to The Statement of General Principles of the Australian Press Council.

Our specific editorial guidelines are as follows:

• It is not about us. We have adopted the policy of The Economist which does not place author bylines on articles. We feel this encourages a more objective approach to writing. We also believe in transparency, and our contributing authors can be viewed here.
• It is about you. Everybody has an opinion, including us, but media has become oversaturated with it. Our approach is to allow for the views of protagonists to be expressed, but allow our readers to form their own opinion, rather than trying to have them adopt ours.
• The internet never forgets. We will typically avoid identifying people by name, except where that information is material to the story and/or the public interest. In many cases, it is not necessary to identify an individual for the material facts to be conveyed, such as rescue operations. When people are having a very bad day, we will try not to make it worse.
• We stand corrected. Despite every good intention and effort, there will be times we get it wrong. We stand behind the stories we publish, but acknowledge there may be times another perspective is also valid, or we simply missed a piece of information. If you think that is the case, let us know. If it is clear we got something wrong, we will correct it.
• We do not cover everything. The Northern Beaches has over 250k residents. We will publish stories we think are important. Sometimes that will be ‘boring but important’ information, sometimes it will be dramatic. We will not cover everything though, and for that reason…
• We believe in diversity. There are a number of local media options. We encourage readers to seek a diversity of sources for information, and maintain (healthy) scepticism of each.
• Respect the reader. We need to make money to operate and we believe in transparency about how that happens. Many commercial organisations seek to have their marketing presented as news. Advertisers are welcome to buy advertising, but we do not sell news articles to advertisers. When we publish a story, we believe it is newsworthy.