Editorial Standards
The Orlando Chronicle
A paper’s rules are only worth something if readers can see them. These are the Chronicle’s, in plain terms.
Why this story, why now
Two questions decide what the Chronicle takes on. Why now? Something has to make the moment: news breaking, an agency putting out new numbers, or a fixed date such as a filing deadline or the first day of hurricane season. Why here? The answer has to land in Orange, Seminole, Osceola or Lake counties. A statewide or national figure earns space only when it says something specific about this region.
The numbers, and where they live
Depending on the story, the sources can include:
- U.S. Census Bureau survey estimates on who lives here, what they earn and how they commute;
- Bureau of Labor Statistics counts of jobs and paychecks;
- crime tallies that police departments and sheriff’s offices send to the FBI, and fatal-crash files from NHTSA;
- CDC estimates of local health, CMS hospital data and EPA air-quality monitoring;
- NOAA weather history and FEMA hazard and disaster data;
- housing numbers from Zillow, Realtor.com and HUD;
- Federal Election Commission filings and the U.S. Department of Education;
- and, closer to home, open-data portals from Tallahassee down to the City of Orlando.
Each dataset is pulled straight from its publisher and a copy is filed away; every number in the story is worked out from that saved copy.
Measured against what
A county’s number means more next to a yardstick. The usual yardsticks are Florida as a whole, the U.S. and counties elsewhere that resemble ours. Survey-based figures, the American Community Survey’s included, come with a margin of error attached. If Osceola and Seminole sit within each other’s margins, the Chronicle calls it a wash instead of declaring a winner.
Counted twice
After the desk does the math, a separate check redoes it from the saved data before anything is published. Then the report runs a gauntlet of separate review passes covering the math, the citations, the charts and the language. Fail any of them and the report stays off the site. The last step is an editor, who reads each report and decides when it runs.
Facts from elsewhere
Some things a spreadsheet can’t tell you: why a road got widened, when a law kicked in, how an agency explains its own numbers. Borrowed facts like those are credited in the story to wherever they came from, and before publication each credited passage is compared with that source. A claim the source won’t support is dropped.
The fine print, up front
Every Data Desk report closes with a section headed “About the data.” It lists the source, the stretch of time the numbers cover, what each key term means in that dataset and the caveats, the places where the numbers get thin. Anyone who wants to check the Chronicle’s math can start there.
Voting guides
The county-by-county voting guides are Special Reports, assembled from the records of each county’s Supervisor of Elections, Florida’s local election office. They list early-voting locations, each precinct’s Election Day polling place and the places where a mail ballot can be handed in. Every listing is verified against those official sources and refreshed through the early-voting period, and where a county posts live wait times at its sites, the guide shows them.
Pictures, drawn and plotted
Charts are plotted from the story’s own dataset and nothing else. Report art is illustration, not photography, signed “Illustration designed by The Orlando Chronicle.” Some drawings begin as openly licensed photographs; for those, the photographer and the license get named alongside. None of it should be taken for a news photo of something that happened.
Whose name is on it
A Chronicle byline names a desk. The Data Desk puts its name to data reports and the Special Reports Desk to projects like the voting guides; the signing desk is accountable for the piece. Behind those bylines, the newsroom works with modern reporting tools, automation among them, and the publisher keeps editorial oversight of all of it.
Setting the record straight
Found a mistake? Email contactus@theorlandochronicle.com or text (407) 759-6200, telling us what’s wrong, where it appears and, if you have one, a source. Voting guides carry their own “Report an error” form. When the Chronicle gets a fact wrong, it fixes the story and appends a note explaining what changed.
Who we answer to
Advertising and reader memberships pay for the Chronicle. An advertiser’s money buys room on the page and nothing in the coverage, and ads are set off so no one mistakes them for reporting. With no chain, hedge fund, party or advocacy group behind Vector Press, the only people left to answer to are readers.