As part of our efforts to combat disinformation, the Beacon has joined The Trust Project® and implemented the 8 Trust Indicators® to help our readers easily recognize trustworthy news.
The Trust Project is a global network of news organizations with a confirmed commitment to integrity through the Trust Indicators. The Trust Indicators are a set of enhancements to participating sites that spell out editorial practices and policies and provide additional context.
In some ways, The Beacon’s participation in the Trust Project recognizes work we’ve done over the past five years to earn your trust — things like posting correction notes when we make a mistake and requiring our reporters to disclose conflicts of interest.
But you’ll also see some changes to ways we share information and let you know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Keep an eye out for these new features:
The Trust Mark
The Trust Mark will appear on all of our news stories. When you see the Trust Mark on a story or our homepage, click the link to go to our Editorial Standards page and learn more about our policies, what we’re doing to earn your trust and how you can get involved.
Editorial standards page
We’ve compiled all of our policies and best practices in one location. Visit this page to learn who funds The Beacon, what ethical standards our journalists follow, how we engage with the public and more.
Story labels
Our new type of work labels tell you what kind of story you’re reading, such as an explainer, investigative story or Q&A. Click the label to find out what it means.
Bylines
We’ve expanded our bylines to make it even clearer at a glance who wrote the story and how to get in touch with them.
Journalist biographies
If you click on a journalist’s name or scroll to the bottom of a story, you’ll also be able to read expanded biographies and understand who’s reporting the news, their areas of expertise and their ties to the local community.
Sources and methods
For some of our more in-depth stories, we’ll include extra information about how and why we reported the story, along with a list of the sources we used.
Diversity
The Trust Project also highlights our commitment to hearing from diverse voices — both in our staffing and in terms of the people our journalists speak with and include in stories. We lay out those commitments in our editorial standards.
Public engagement
Finally, we’re putting even more emphasis on hearing from you. You’ll see notes in every newsletter that share where to report corrections, give feedback or share story ideas, and we explain that on our editorial standards page as well.
