Philadelphia · Field interview
"The numbers don't add up to work for nobody."
Volume IX — Accountability
We answer to the people we cover.
A community-funded newsroom is accountable to its community in ways most newsrooms aren’t. Here’s how that works in practice.
Section 01
The premise
Accountability runs in both directions.
Most newsrooms have a one-way relationship with their audience: we publish, you read. We don’t think that’s enough.
Our funding comes from the community. Our contributors come from the community. Our beats come from what the community is asking. So our accountability runs in both directions: we hold power to account, and we hold ourselves accountable to the people whose stories we tell.
This page is the operational version of that commitment.
Section 02
How feedback reaches us
Four open channels. Read daily.
1. Comments on the newsletter
Every Beehiiv newsletter has reply-enabled. Replies come straight to the editor on duty.
2. Discord — open community channel
The WTM Discord has a #feedback channel where readers, contributors, and people we’ve covered can post directly. Editors read it daily. We respond inside 72 hours.
3. Email
- General feedback: wethem2022@gmail.com
- Story-specific feedback or corrections: wethem2022@gmail.com
- Standards questions: wethem2022@gmail.com
4. Monthly Discord townhalls
We hold a public townhall on the WTM Discord on the last Wednesday of every month at 3:00 PM EST. Open to anyone in the server.
The agenda is loose. Questions, story pitches, feedback on coverage, requests, gripes. All on the table. Notes from each townhall are summarized in the next newsletter. Anyone who wants to be quoted on the record knows they’re on the record. Anyone who wants their input kept off the record can ask, and we honor it.
Why monthly: weekly was hard to honor consistently. A monthly cadence we actually hold is worth more than a weekly cadence we miss.
Section 03
When we cover someone, what they get
A real chance to respond. Not a veto.
If we publish a piece that names a person or organization in a way that materially affects them, that person or organization gets:
- A real opportunity to respond before publication, in a timeframe proportional to the urgency of the story
- Their response, in their own words, included in the piece
- The right to correct factual errors after publication, through our corrections process
- The right to be heard in a follow-up if they have new information
What they don’t get:
- Veto power over the piece
- Pre-publication review of our reporting beyond what we choose to share
- The ability to suppress publication
This applies whether the subject is a tech company, a token project, an elected official, or anyone else of public consequence.
Section 04
What we do with the feedback we receive
Every named concern goes into a tracked log.
Every piece of feedback that names a real concern goes into a tracked log:
- Date received
- Channel (email, Discord, comment, listening session)
- Subject (the piece, the standards page, the funding model, etc.)
- What we did (correction issued / clarified in newsletter / no action, with reason / structural change made)
The log is internal, but a quarterly anonymized summary is published in the newsletter and archived on this page.
If a single piece of feedback identifies a structural problem (not just a factual error), we publish what we changed, dated, and why.
Section 05
When we get something wrong
Name the mistake. Explain how. Lay out what changes.
Errors are corrected per the corrections section of our editorial standards.
When the error is structural (not just factual, but a pattern or methodology issue), we publish a longer accountability post in the newsletter. We name the mistake. We explain how it happened. We lay out what we’re changing so it doesn’t happen again.
This page logs those structural corrections at the bottom, dated.
Section 06
When we won’t change a piece
The original stays. Disagreement gets a response.
We don’t remove pieces because someone is unhappy with them.
We don’t soften reporting because a subject prefers softer reporting.
We don’t withdraw a piece because of legal pressure that lacks legal merit.
If you disagree with a piece on substance and you have evidence we got something wrong, we will engage. If you disagree on framing and the framing is supported by what we reported, we may publish your disagreement as a response, but the original stays.
Section 07
Representation accountability
Coverage shaped by people from the place.
Our masthead and contributor pool reflect the geography we cover. If you read a piece about a place and the byline doesn’t have proximity to that place, we’d want you to ask us about it. So we track this:
- Quarterly Published count of contributors by region.
- Quarterly Published count of pieces by geography of subject vs. geography of byline.
- Annually A representation summary in the newsletter.
If our coverage of a place isn’t being shaped by people from that place, that’s something we want flagged before reviewers flag it.
Section 08
How we hold ourselves accountable to contributors
Contributors are part of the community we’re accountable to.
Contributors are part of the community we’re accountable to. Specifically:
- Contributors are paid on agreed rates, on time. If we miss a payment, that’s logged here as a structural failure.
- Contributors can withdraw a piece if substantive edits aren’t agreed to.
- Contributors can ask for a piece to be unpublished if they later decide they didn’t consent to publication. In our current exploratory phase, where many contributors are entering long-form journalism for the first time, we honor unpublication requests where they don’t compromise public-interest reporting. As the team and editorial process mature, this provision may tighten — but it doesn’t tighten retroactively on pieces published under the current rule.
- Disputes between WTM and a contributor go to a third party for resolution if both sides ask. We don’t have an internal HR process; we have a small team and a public commitment.
Section 09
Public log of changes
Versioned. Dated. In public.
This page is versioned. Substantive changes — including any structural corrections, policy changes, or new commitments — are dated below.
[Log will populate as the publication runs. First entry is the publication date of this page.]
We hold power to account, and we hold ourselves accountable to the people whose stories we tell.