Our standards explained

Peninsula News was started more than 12 years ago to fill the need for a local newspaper for the Woy Woy Peninsula.

The Peninsula was an area where a traditional local newspaper was not economically viable.

To overcome this, the newspaper was owned and operated by a voluntary community group with the help of a commercial publisher.

This unique business structure made the small-scale enterprise viable and the structure remains.

However, it is a business model which sometimes confuses people.

Peninsula News is a publication which relies heavily on voluntary contribution and which, by its nature, operates to different standards to the mainstream media.

The following explains the way we see the newspaper and some of the standards we apply.

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Peninsula News is a "community access" newspaper.

This means that we are basically reproducing contributions submitted to us on the basis that we are providing access to the media. The contributions are equivalent to (and in many cases are) letters to the editor.

Unlike the mainstream newspapers, we are not portraying these news items as being the result of our initiative.

How we regard, and edit, such contributions is substantially different as a result. It is also why we are transparent about the source of every article.

Our editing is therefore aimed primarily at removing uncontentious and obvious errors of fact, removing material that would inflame bad community relationships, and generally making an item as readable as possible for our readers.

We do not hold ourselves out as arbiters of the truth nor do we seek to endorse or otherwise views expressed by contributors, as many in the media are very quick to do. And we resist pressure from others that would put us in that position.

In any case, because of the economies of our publication, we have to accept most submissions in good faith.

We have chosen to provide a local news service for a small community. This means that the newspaper has to exist on about one 10th or less of the advertising revenue of the standard budget for a regional newspaper.

We rely heavily on voluntary contribution to provide a truly local newspaper as a service for the Peninsula community - even to the extent that the editor himself works voluntarily.

We do not have the time to check all the submissions in every respect ... and there are many items that portray the facts or imply interpretations that we may disagree with.

Climate change is an example. News Ltd describes climate change as a "belief", where we would treat it as a fact. Letters to our Forum section from "climate sceptics" may misrepresent scientific facts about, for example, sea level rise based on personal anecdotes.

It can become unwieldy to check these facts. And what would we to do with them, when we find that the comment is not based on accepted fact? Do we deny publication of a genuinely-held view on a matter of public policy on this basis? This is a serious question in a democratic society.

Generally, we rely on other readers to correct these assertions.

Peninsula News does employ a journalist to cover council news and, where errors are found in these reports, we do publish corrections.

When we are publishing corrections, it is because we are wanting to give people the opportunity to know what actually happened and we are wanting to be transparent about the way that the error came about.

This allows people to make judgements themselves about the reliability of the news we publish - which sources to trust as well as how far they trust us.

Mark Snell, 20 Aug 2011