Writing Down Rules You Already Follow

Most small outlets already have editorial standards. They just live in the founder's head, or in the unspoken habits of a two-person team, rather than on paper. That arrangement holds up fine until it doesn't — until a reader complains, a source disputes a quote, or a new contributor joins and has no way of knowing what the outlet actually expects of them.

The value of writing these standards down is not that they change what you do day to day. It is that a written document gives you something to point to when a question arises under pressure, rather than having to invent an answer on the spot while a complaint is still open.

The Sections That Matter Most

A handbook does not need to be exhaustive to be useful. The sections that tend to matter most for small outlets cover how sourcing decisions are made, what counts as sufficient basis for a claim, how corrections are issued once a story is published, and how a subject's right of reply is handled before publication rather than after.

Conflicts of interest deserve their own section too, even for a team of two or three people. In a small outlet, everyone tends to know everyone in the community they cover, and having a clear, agreed process for disclosing or stepping back from a story avoids the awkwardness of working it out mid-assignment.

Building It Through Conversation, Not a Template

A handbook copied wholesale from a larger newsroom rarely fits a small outlet's actual working conditions. The more useful approach is to talk through how the team already handles these situations, then formalise what is already working while quietly closing the gaps that only become visible once someone asks a hard question.

A shorter, public-facing version — a single page describing your approach to sourcing and corrections — also serves readers well, since it signals that the outlet has thought about these questions in advance rather than only when challenged.