We want to be clear about what this website is. We also ask for your patience as what it is may continually evolve.

We have called ourselves the Student Association Press. We intend to cover all Canadian post-secondary student associations, Francophone or Anglophone, large or small, Graduate or Undergraduate, College or University. While we might cover separately incorporated student unions at a Federated institution, we don’t intend on covering in particular depth faculty or department student societies.

What do we mean by cover? We’re looking to do three categories of “coverage”: news, analysis, and opinion. We supplement this with three auxiliary pieces of content: thinkpieces, data pieces, interviews and projects. We want to describe what that means to each of us so that we can be held accountable in the future. And while we don’t intend to publish missed connections, Saturday funnies, crosswords or horoscopes, we may occasionally produce miscellaneous content that doesn’t fit into any of the coverage or auxiliary content categories.

Types of Content

News

News is delivering facts about what has happened and why. It will rely on upholding some standardized sets of ethics and practices. This means the coverage being fair, being balanced, seeking comment when a party is impugned. It means being precise in our language. It means owning errors, which we expect will not be infrequent, as neither of us are journalistically trained. It means using editors. With two of us and some trusted friends in the space, this means anything tagged as news will have at least one other person read it over for comment and approval before release.

We will not pass off other news as our own. What we tag as news will have at least some original investigation or where we have independently sought comment from involved parties. Where we build off of other organization’s reporting, we will credit the authors and their publications. And we are likely to use other reporting frequently. We don’t have reporters on the ground, but with a particular interest in student associations and wanting to cultivate expertise, we might be willing or able to dig deeper on student newspaper reporting. We will not simply lift and repackage existing reporting. If we have nothing new to add from a news perspective we may simply do an analysis piece calling out the original reporting as important to pay attention to.

Where we depart from typical journalistic norms

We have a conflict of interest with the Carleton Undergraduate Student Association. We as authors produce both reporting and opinion, contrary to the Canadian Association of Journalists guidelines (we are also not members of the CAJ).

We identify more closely as bloggers than as journalists, even if our content tagged as “news” may try to uphold journalistic standards. You should take this into account when weighing the credibility of our work.

Analysis

Analysis engages on a more in-depth contextual level with news, whether our own or conducted by others. It observes reporting and discusses in more depth implications, possible paths for actors, and more colourful language. This analysis will not necessarily receive editing if written by Abbie or Matthew. We may often reach out for additional comment or context in the case of these pieces, but will not necessarily do so.

We may also publish “explainers” from time to time under the analysis category, to better inform people on certain student association concepts.

Opinion

We will also be putting out opinion pieces. Opinion is a flavour of publication that tries to inform readers of interesting, valuable or diverse viewpoints by allowing a writer to present a case for some form of societal change or for a specific position.

We will welcome outside opinion pieces as well as occasionally publish some of our own. We will exact a level of scrutiny on both, pushing for clear communication and distinctive voice, while also making judgments on whether the quality of the argument merits public consumption. We will attempt to welcome viewpoints other than our own, and embrace diversity of opinion, while recognizing that diversity of opinion is not carte blanche to make arguments that unfairly single out individuals or groups.

The editing standard is editing for outside opinion pieces, and optional editing for pieces written by the Matt and Abbie themselves.

Data Pieces

To complement our news, we will also be putting out data-driven articles, which while they may not align with current events, seek to improve the public availability of information about student unions. They create conceptual frameworks for categorizing student association activities and apply these categorizations to student associations to identify and quantify information on key topics of public interest. Unlike news, these will not necessarily involve original reporting, and may be subject to data errors as we try to balance volume and quality while doing this as a side practice.

Data pieces may be published by the editors without the other editor engaging in scrutiny. Outside data pieces will be reviewed by an editor for style and for newsworthiness, but review and quality assurance of the underlying data may not be conducted. Our standards are not codified, and are for the foreseeable future, subjective.

Thinkpieces

These are analogous to opinion pieces. Thinkpieces explore hypotheticals and possibilities, or engage more deeply with the philosophical element of student unionism. Our first variety of thinkpieces, the Frontiers series, seeks to explore possible functionalities that student associations may wish to undertake, but they are not the only thinkpieces we will entertain or create. The editing standard is editing for outside thinkpieces, and optional editing for pieces written by Matt and Abbie themselves.

Interviews

Interviews are transcripts of in-depth interviews conducted with interesting subjects in the field. Unlike news, where interviews may be used to pull certain quotes, lengthier interview pieces provide less commentary, and the goal is to communicate the subject’s thoughts, not use their thoughts to illuminate the topic being discussed.

Projects

Projects are items that are less journalistic or curatorial, and more interesting in producing interesting products and serving as a resource for building the student union sector.

We have some ideas for these projects, but are keeping them under wraps for the time being, as just getting the rest of this blog off the ground is already immense, and we want to be confident we can support any projects that we announce.

Policies

Sponsored Content

We don’t take money for article space “sponsored content” at this time, and if we ever change this policy, we will ensure that we state so clearly, both here and on any individual piece of sponsored content.

We may take money in support in tips from student leaders or from anyone who wants to support us. We understand the risk that this might colour our coverage, but we state here before seeking any donations that if you donate, we will not attempt to be any less critical in any coverage. We may choose to link quantity of content production to the aggregate level of financial support we receive.

Corrections and Comments

We welcome anybody with concerns about the accuracy or originality of our coverage to reach out to us. We want to act in good faith, and on news items in particular, we do not want to create or amplify misinformation. We cannot commit that concerns over subjective pieces of opinion will always be incorporated into edits, but we can ensure that we will read and closely consider these pieces of feedback, which can be emailed via our linked contact form. We may choose not to send a message acknowledging receipt of a concern, though we commit to reading all of them at least once every two weeks.

Corrections will be posted at the top of articles.

Pitches and Tips

We take tips as to stories we should do. We do not obligate ourselves to either further investigate or report off of a tip, and may choose to not respond to a tip.

We are open to receiving pitches to write for us as a guest on an item of opinion, data pieces, projects or thinkpiece. Reach out to us at our contact form. We may not respond for up to two weeks, but commit to reading and responding to all good faith pitches. At this time we have limited interest in pitches to write for us in a news or analysis capacity, with an exception of if you are currently a reporter at a student newspaper and have the permission of your editor to pursue a collaborative reporting project with us.

Protection of Sources

We protect sources for news articles, provided that a standard of secrecy is first explicitly established between us and the source (such as off-the-record status or background status). As we are doing this as a hobby and we don’t have strong competition, our standards for including information on an anonymous basis is high, and there must be a compelling reason to protect identity, such as the immensity of the story, or concerns for safety or legal status of the source. Our default position, as with most organizations, is that content given to us is on-the-record until we confirm it with you otherwise. Being off-the-record is not a unilateral declaration you can make.

Verification

For stories not involving primary documents, we will use single-source verification if there is reason to believe the source is well placed to comment, especially if they are willing to speak on-the-record.

We will use two-source verification upon our own judgement, but when we choose to do so as an editing team, will not revert to a single-source standard solely for the reason that we cannot find a second source.

Primary Reporting

Due to our preference to expand on news, we prefer that you direct new stories, especially any evidence of student association malfeasance or student union executive misconduct to your local student paper or local newspaper. They are likely better equipped to work with reluctant or hostile sources, and better trained to do the investigative reporting required to do these stories justice.

Affiliations

We are distinct from and not affiliated with the Canadian University Press (who you should also follow). We more narrowly focus on student associations.

We are not associated with the Canadian Association of Journalists, though we rely on their resources to improve the quality of our work.

Eligible Authors

We do not welcome, nor do we engage in, writing that is generated by artificial intelligence. Other than that, all humans welcome.

Language

We are not bilingual, and we recognize our work is hampered because of this. We think we are unlikely to write our own content in French, and may occasionally choose to exclude Québec or other Francophone institutions where language barriers make it difficult to do reporting or data pieces. We will accept pitches and stories in French, but timelines for publication may be slower as a result.

Accessibility

We are not highly aware of what makes a blog most accessible. We welcome feedback.

We recognize usage of charts may be disadvantageous for use with screenreaders, but they are often an important part of our reporting, and we value not using static images to present them, wherever possible. We will do our best to call out interesting things about the charts elsewhere in the article.

We endeavour to make sure that our pictures have alt-text.

We endeavour to get a large proportion of our links preserved on Internet Archive for posterity.

We reserve the right to use content warnings, but this may not be universal practice.

Intellectual Property

We endeavour to ensure that intellectual property is respected, especially with images. Note that while we may choose to license some of our works under a Creative Comments or other licence, some underlying works may retain more restrictive licensing restrictions, which you may be obligated to follow.

Our intellectual property defaults to copyright, but we will usually place an irrevocable CC BY-SA 4.0 licence on most works.

Note: SUP use for Wikipedia

We’re a fan of folks expanding Wikipedia coverage of student associations, where it aligns with (the infuriatingly student-union excluding) Wikipedia policies. We ask that if you cite us for Wikipedia coverage, make sure you’re paraphrasing, and please constrain it to news or data categories of works. We do our best to make sure the coverage meets Wikipedia standards around Secondariality (we analyze and interpret), Reliability (we attempt to adhere to journalistic standards with regard to news) and Independence (We aren’t members of the organizations we write about*). We cannot however guarantee that our reporting meets the Wikipedia standard for Significance/Notability, so don’t get offended if a Wikipedia editor says you can’t use us as a source to create an article, as blogs usually aren’t considered reputable resources.
*Abbie is employed by Carleton’s Undergraduate Student Association (CUSA), news stories about Carleton will be either written by or edited by someone unaffiliated with CUSA.

Style

We’re loose with style, including British/American/Canadian spellings, headings, contractions, etc.

General Powers

We generally reserve the right to terminate or alter our style of coverage, to choose to report or not report on specific items and so on and so forth. We are a young organization that has a lot to learn.

A Last Important Note

We do not take a position on the use of the serial comma, as it is a topic of contention and irreconcilable difference between our editors.