Editorial standards

These are the rules the desk works to. They are written down so that a reader can hold us to them, and so that when we fall short the failure is measurable rather than a matter of opinion.

Scope

FaithDaily covers Christian life in all its breadth — the churches, the people who fill them, and the faith, scripture and stories they share. Every tradition and every reader is welcome here.

We cover churches as they are, not as any party within them would like them to be. Where a story concerns a dispute we report what each side says in its own terms and we do not adjudicate the theology.

Three kinds of thing, kept apart

Aggregated reporting from other outlets appears as a headline, a short excerpt and the picture that outlet attached to the story. The headline opens the article at the outlet that wrote it. We never reproduce another outlet’s article, never rewrite it under our own name, and never place our own label on their work. If an item has no picture we draw a plate rather than borrow one.

Original pieces are written for FaithDaily by the desk or by a named contributor. They carry a byline, a date, a reading time and — where they quote Scripture — a named translation. Every original piece is approved by a named editor before it is published, and the editor’s name is recorded.

Testimony is sent in by readers and carries the name of the person who wrote it. It runs only after someone on the desk has spoken to the contributor and confirmed that the account is theirs and that they are content for it to be published. Testimony is never written by the desk, never drafted by the engine and never edited beyond spelling and length without the contributor’s agreement.

Scripture

Scripture is quoted from a named translation, given with the quotation, and checked against the text of that translation before publication. A reference that cannot be verified is not published. Where a translation’s licence limits how much may be quoted we quote less rather than paraphrase.

A verse is quoted in enough of its context that its sense is not changed. We do not use Scripture as a caption.

The editorial engine

Five daily pieces are drafted with an editorial engine and published without waiting for a named editor. Four of them — the verse of the day, the daily devotional, the study prompt and the morning prayer — are written from the day’s passage. The fifth is the Daily Church News Briefing, written each morning from the church-news reporting the wire carried that day and dated to the day it is about. Every one of the five passes the same Scripture check as everything else before it runs, each is marked by its type, and any of them can be withdrawn by an editor at any time.

The briefing is subject to two further rules that can stop it publishing itself. A day whose wire holds too few stories is left empty and says so, rather than being padded out. A day whose stories all come from too few separate outlets is written but held for an editor, because a page headed Daily Church News Briefing with a list of sources implies the day was cross-checked, and one newsroom’s reporting cannot support that claim. Every briefing names the outlets it was written from.

Nothing else the engine drafts is shown to a reader until a named editor has read it, edited it if necessary and approved it. Testimony is never generated. An engine draft that fails the Scripture check is discarded, not corrected.

The spoken versions

The daily devotional and the prayer of the day are also published as audio. That audio is a synthesised voice reading the published text — it is not a recording of the person the byline names, and no one on the desk speaks on this site. It is labelled as a synthesised voice on the piece itself and in the podcast feed, and the words it reads are the words on the page and nothing else.

The voice is generated through 360REV, the platform this site runs on, which is also where the engine’s drafting is done. This site sends no text to any other supplier of generated words or voices. When the platform cannot supply a voice, the piece is published with no audio and none is bought elsewhere.

Sources and attribution

Original reporting names its sources where they can be named. Where a source is unnamed we say why. Every original piece lists the material it drew on at its foot, with links where they exist. When we build on another outlet’s reporting we say so and link to it.

Corrections

If a quotation is wrong, a reference does not exist, or we have described a church, a person or an event inaccurately, we correct the piece, note the correction on the piece with the date, and record it in the public corrections log. A correction that is not visible is not a correction. Substantive changes to a published piece are versioned and the version count is shown.

We do not quietly remove pieces. A piece that is withdrawn is replaced by a note saying that it was withdrawn and why.

Independence

Sponsors are marked as sponsors wherever they appear, are never placed within a piece, and never appear beside devotional, Scripture or prayer content. No sponsor, member or advertiser sees a piece before publication or has any influence over what we cover.

Complaints

Write to desk@faithdaily.news. A complaint about accuracy is answered by the editor responsible for the piece within five working days, and the answer says what we found and what we did.