Tufts Daily Ethics and Best Practices

Members of the Organization

Contributors. Includes writers for section who have written fewer than three articles for any one section of a department in a given semester.

Daily Staff. Includes writers who have written three articles for any department in any one semester, or per the discretion of the department head. Status as staff may be maintained by continued contribution, but is lost after a semester entirely without contribution. These are regular contributors to the paper, but do not have the voting power on the editorial board. Senior Staff writer is a title given either after nine articles, or at the discretion of their respective department head. Also automatically given as a courtesy to members emeritus of the Editorial Board. Also includes columnists.

Daily Editorial Board. Consists of assistant editors, editors, managers and department heads. Have voting power on the paper and also editorial responsibility.

Executive Board -- comprised of Section heads (executive editors), managing editors, and editor-in-chief

Managing Board -- Editor-in-Chief, managing editors, production director, and business director

Responsibilities of Members in content

Every member submitting content to the Daily should be aware of the standards of conduct.

Speeches, concerts, and other events on-campus evidently intended for public viewing are by default the "public sphere," and are fair game for coverage. Public meetings that are intended solely for club members are public sphere, though reporters should introduce themselves as members of the Daily and request permission to cover the meeting beforehand. Identity of attendees at said meetings are not public sphere and require permission to disclose. Additional public information: federally mandated reports such as crime statistics, public University tax forms and SEC filings, any public documents from student organizations, police blotter/reports, and/or other documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Online content, such as e-mail lists and content from the Facebook.com, is, within reasonable boundaries, also considered the public sphere. Acceptable: searching an individual on the site to find her name or report on a political or social group. Unacceptable: using the site expressly to invade privacy under the guises of journalistic motives.

When interviewing a source, reporters, photographers, editorial page editors, and columnists must always announce themselves as such, and make clear the basic topic of the article. While certainly acceptable to refine the focus of the topic, reporters should not be intentionally deceptive. A reporter may speak to a source on a general basis and then use the quotation for another article, but not without first checking the new context with the source.

Interviews should be conducted in-person when possible, with the telephone as the next best option. Anything written as "said" in the paper can be assumed that the statement was made in-person or via telephone. Use of electronic communications should be kept to a minimum: quotations given over e-mail must be attributed as such, "Source told the Daily in an e-mail" Instant Message conversations should be kept as a last resort, and should be referenced as such. In all cases, electronic communication should be kept to supplementary or background information, the main substance of an article should come from telephone or personal interviews. Finally, any piece labeled as an "interview" (one source with Q&A format) should be conducted in person or over the phone.

Reporters should be as scrupulous as they can when interviewing sources. Use of recorders is excellent when possible, provided the source has given permission. Reporters should, whenever possible, fact-check quotations with sources, particularly when dealing with complicated, technical, or sensitive material. Fact-checking can consist of a slow reading of the quotation over the telephone, or an e-mail message. The source has the right to correct factual errors made by the writer in their notation, but cannot use the opportunity to tweak wording or retract what was said. Final discretion on phrasing is the reporter's. Sources have the right to see quotations, and paraphrases thereof.

But under no circumstance should portions or the entirety of an article be shown to a source before publication.

All specific pieces of supplemental information: facts, statistics, references to legislation, additional reports MUST BE attributed to their original source. This need not be a detailed attribution (Journal X, Issue 34, No. 23, page 34), but a publication, institution, or Web site. A time modifier, when possible, can also be useful: "According to a 2006 report by the Center for Disease Control..." This is not necessary for general knowledge: "Larry Summers resigned from Harvard" or "On Sept. 11, 2001, two planes flown by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center"

It goes without saying that the failure to complete the above: intentional failure to attribute information, or the use of work that is not one's own (intentional or unintentional), constitutes plagiarism, a very serious academic and professional offense. Writers or editors caught plagiarizing or fabricating information, upon first offense, may be suspended from the Daily indefinitely. Reporters should retain all notes from interviews and keep them on file (including e-mails and Word documents) for at least one year, in case they are called upon to defend their work.

Responsibilities of Members outside of the Daily

With Tufts as a small campus, and college as a time of intellectual, academic and extracurricular exploration, the rigorousness of detachment that professional journalists aspire to from their communities is both impossible and impractical. To that end, members are free to engage in groups to facilitate their personal and intellectual development, with a few restrictions.

Staff and Editorial board members, should not write about any project/initiative/club/group they are engaged in on-campus. They are welcomed and encouraged to submit such topics as story ideas and provide contacts, but should not be involved with interviews or writing of the story.

Examples:

Tufts Democrats member should not write about a Democrat or even Republican, campaign rally.

Greek Editorial Page editor should not write editorial on Greek life.

Lower-level photography editor can serve on Tufts' Elections Board if she limits her coverage to arts photography.

Varsity lacrosse player can write the Fall sailing beat.

Editorial board members should not contribute in any way, including photographs, production, letters to the editor, or op-eds, to any other campus news print publications, namely the Observer, Primary Souce, or any other similar publications that may arise. (Placing an ad in other publications on behalf of another organization in which an editorial board member is involved is permitted.) Expressly cultural, humor, academic, or literary publications do not count as such, though these two spheres should remain separate. Should they prefer to transfer their affiliation to another campus news outlet, they must resign their position on the editorial board, and either stay on as Daily staff or dismiss their Daily affiliation altogether.

Contributors, staff, and editorial board members should not give interviews to other daily reporters, except when the member plays a key role in a particular topic or initiative unrelated to their duties at the Daily. If they must appear in the article, the executive board will insert an editor's note indicating the person's position on the Daily.

Internally, Staff and Editorial board members, particularly News writers, should not write anything that calls the neutrality of their coverage into question. No Staff or Editorial Board member may write Viewpoints or letters to the editor. Members are welcome to write for, or develop a column for, different departments or within their own department, but not without compromising their own neutrality.

Editorial board members should use discretion when developing relationships with sources, and be aware that public perception of their role does factor into the institution's reputation and perception of reliability. The Tufts community (with roommates, classmates, hallmates) is far too integrated to impose hard-and-fast guidelines, so members should be mindful of this concern and use their own good judgment. Reporters who enter into or become involved in any sort of romantic activity with sources should privately notify the editor in question and be reassigned to different coverage. Any problems or conflicts that arise will be dealt on a case-by-case basis by the executive board.

Members cease to be subject to these submission conditions a) when they resign and b) a semester after their last article/photograph appears in the paper.

Editing Responsibilities

People join the Daily to learn. Naturally, it is the job of the supervising editors to modify and refine content submitted in concordance with Daily standards. Final edits are up to the discretion of the supervising editor and the managing board.

Particularly for Features and Arts reporting, every effort will be made to preserve the reporter's voice. But articles are still subject to editing for flow and content, if necessary. Columns and Viewpoints submissions, however, are left entirely up to the discretion of the author and receive very minimal edits, only for fact-checking, AP style and basic, glaring grammatical errors.

When problems with reporting are found, the editor is responsible to bring it up to the standards for Daily reporting listed above. Possible/probable changes include the following: lede, organizational flow of the article, wording of clauses, headlines. They may also make calls to answer final questions to fill gaps or holes in the reporting. If additional reporting takes place, a brief note: "Editor A contributed reporting to this article" should be added. If significant rewriting or re-reporting takes place, the editor may be incorporated as a double-byline. In the case of heavy editing or rewrites, the editor should send the article in question to the reporter, who has the right to correct any factual inaccuracies. Disputes, if unresolved, will be settled by the managing board.

Editors will also fact-check the basic names, places, and people in the articles through the Tufts directory or other relevant sources.

Daily content also passes through the hands of production and copy departments. It goes without saying that the content in the InDesign layouts, as used by production, should remain entirely unchanged, with only the managing board given authority to make changes in the layout. Copy staff should comb carefully for grammatical and style errors, and are free to make grammatical suggestions, with a light hand to Viewpoints and columns. They should not make severe changes and final discretion is left up to the supervising member of the managing board.

Corrections: whatever the safeguards put in place, mistakes do happen. If a staff or community member recognizes a factual inaccuracy in reporting, a correction (brief statement recounting the error and recording the correct version) will be run as soon as possible on the editorial page. The correction will be also added to the Web site and appended to the article's place in the online archive. If an important article is wholly incorrect or seriously misleading, the staff will place a front-page statement making sure the record is straight and write a correct article, if necessary.

Terms of Reporting

The Daily does its best to cover a broad-based variety of events on-campus. News attends particularly to student government, city government, faculty affairs, student life, and police. It also does its best to cover a wide sample of speakers and events on campus. Features covers student life and higher education trends. Arts covers on-campus and off-campus cultural events. Sports covers all seasons of on-campus sports, with perspectives on national leagues. That said, it has no obligation to cover any particular event, and final decisions as to coverage are left up to the discretion of editors.

Anonymous Sources

The Daily will in all cases attempt to secure the names of sources for articles; students will be named in all possible circumstances.

In the event that speaking on-the record carries serious personal cost or threat to well-being to the source, the reporter may extend the invitation to a source to speak "off the record" (with direct quotes taken but no attribution given) or "on background" (no direct quotes taken but information may orient the reporter with situation and direct to other useful sources. The reporter and source should set the terms of the interview beforehand, and the reporter reserves the right to abide by the initial terms of the interview should the source request a change.

Sources should only be quoted anonymously when they disclose vital facts that can be found under no other circumstances -- not to offer speculation or opinion (AP Ethics policy). Acceptable examples include: Members of organizations speaking out against employers or officials, for fear of professional repercussions, names of victims (rape, assault, sexual harassment, etc), students engaged in incriminating behavior, illegal drug or alcohol use, students with confidential medical conditions

If multiple anonymous sources, are used, the article should clearly delineate them as such

If anonymous sourcing is used, the article must explain the exact reason why the student's name is withheld.

The sourcing should give the most information possible about the source if not their name. E.g. "an official with ties to the investigation" or "a former RA in Residential Life."

Executive editors should know the names of anonymous sources in articles they supervise.

Police reporting

The Daily's News department places a special premium on police reporting, as it is of the utmost public interest.

To that end, if a serious crime has taken place, the Daily reserves the right to seek the details of the incident even if withheld by the Tufts Police (TUPD) or TCU Judiciary.

The Daily reserves the right to print the student's name after he/she has been found guilty of the inraction by the judiciary, or if the student is accused.

The Daily will always contact accused students if they are to be included in such a story and give them a chance to respond/defend themselves, to which they have the right to remain silent.

The Daily will seek this information from eyewitnesses and hold itself to the highest standards of accuracy when following the chronology of the events. Witnesses, too, will be offered protection of anonymity; at least two witnesses should be contacted to confirm details on a given event.

Again, the circumstances of withheld names will be thoroughly explained in the context of the article.

Questions, comments, or objections to coverage are welcome and encouraged, in the form of Letters to the Editor or a Viewpoint submission.