What Guides Our Reporting

PCE, member schools, and district officials will all hand us releases and talking points. We treat those as a tip, not a draft: every fact gets re-verified before it runs, and the finished piece reads like reporting, not a memo with a byline slapped on. Starting from a release is fine. Passing one through unexamined is not.

PCE powers The Charter Record, and PCE doesn’t get a preview, a veto, or a “just one note” on anything we publish. The same firewall applies to advertisers and donors: their sales engagement may create visibility, not coverage decisions.

Because our current editorial lead also works in PCE’s advocacy communications, any story about PCE directly, its funding decisions, its leadership, or a position it has taken publicly, gets a second read from someone outside PCE staff, such as a member of the editorial advisory board, before it runs, and carries a visible line disclosing our relationship to PCE.

Staff and contributors recuse themselves from stories involving a school they work for, a school their own child attends, or any organization that pays them elsewhere, and they disclose the connection to the editor even when they’re sure it doesn’t matter.

If a funder becomes the subject of a story, editorial handles it with zero input from anyone on the funding or sales side. A funder can support a coverage area we’ve already planned, school funding, safety, enrollment, whatever the beat is, but not a specific story.

We don’t accept money earmarked for a headline. And we don’t just restrict that influence internally, we publish it: a public list of who funds / donates to The Charter Record and which coverage area each supports, kept current, the same disclosure other member funded newsrooms make.

Telling readers a wall exists means less than letting them check it. This isn’t a nice to have. It’s the difference between a newsroom and a newsletter.

Facts get sourced, and sources get named, full name and title on first reference. We use unnamed sources rarely, only when the story requires it and the risk to the source is real, and when we do, we tell readers why, so they can weigh it themselves.

Any anonymous quote clears an editor before it runs, the same second reader described in Point 2, not the reporter’s call alone. “People are saying” isn’t reporting; it’s a rumor with a byline.

“Charter Record” is in our name, but Philadelphia’s public school students aren’t two separate stories. When a policy, a budget line, or a ruling affects charter and district students differently, we say so plainly, as context, not a verdict.

Deadlines create pressure to fill in blanks the reporting hasn’t filled in. We resist that. If a timeline, a total, or a motive isn’t nailed down by a named, dated source, the story says so plainly, not buried in a qualifier three paragraphs down. Readers can handle an open question. What they can’t recover from is trusting a guess that turned out wrong.

If we get something wrong, the fix runs on the same article, not a separate page nobody finds. It states what was wrong, what’s now correct, and when the correction was made, and it happens as soon as we confirm the error, not on our schedule. Report one to info@thecharterrecord.org and we look into it before publishing a fix, but we don’t sit on a known error while a related one is still under review.

Advertising is labeled as advertising, every time: no gray area “sponsored content” dressed up as an article. We don’t run political ads. We don’t accept payment tied to coverage, favorable or otherwise, from anyone: schools, vendors, or PCE itself.

School Spotlight selections are made by editorial with no visibility into which schools currently advertise with us, and a school’s ad spend, or lack of it, never factors into whether, when, or how favorably we cover it.

We make every effort to seek a parent or guardian’s consent before naming or picturing a student, especially when they’re the focus of a story rather than a passing mention.

We think carefully about whether a child’s story is ours to tell in detail or better described with care and distance. In coverage touching on a student’s struggles, discipline, or hardship, we default to protecting their privacy over landing a more vivid quote. Good educational journalism doesn’t require exposing a student to make its point.

Staff and regular contributors don’t take gifts, meals, or special treatment over a nominal amount from anyone we cover, and anything close to that line gets disclosed rather than quietly kept. We do not pay sources or gatekeepers for access, and we do not accept it as a personal favor either.