Editorial Standards

The Raincross Gazette is an independent digital newsroom covering Riverside, California. Our mission is to publish news and events that increase the spirit of neighborliness in Riverside. This page describes how we work: how we source and verify our reporting, how we handle conflicts of interest, how we use AI in our process, and how we respond when we get something wrong.

Ownership and Mission

The Raincross Gazette is published by Gold Standard Media LLC, a Riverside-based company founded by Riverside native Justin Pardee. We are independently owned and operated. We are not a chain, a hedge fund holding, or a subsidiary of any larger media company.

For a fuller picture of who we are, who's on the team, and how we got here, see our About page.

Editorial Independence

Our reporting is not for sale. No advertiser, sponsor, civic partner, board member, investor, or grant funder has any influence over what we cover, how we cover it, or what we conclude. We do not allow sponsors or partners to review stories before publication. Sponsored content is clearly labeled as such on the page and in our newsletter, with no exceptions.

Our newsroom and our advertising operation are run separately. The publisher does not direct coverage based on advertising relationships, and the Advertising Director does not direct coverage at all.

Riverside is a big city and a small town at the same time. Our publisher and team members live here, work here, and participate in civic life here. Where any team member has a personal, professional, or civic relationship with the subject of a story, we disclose it within the story itself. If a relationship is close enough to compromise the work, we reassign it.

We do not aspire to false neutrality. We aspire to fairness, accuracy, and a deep accountability to the people of Riverside. Good reporting requires us to follow facts wherever they lead, including when they're inconvenient for someone we know.

Sourcing and Verification

We default to attribution. Every factual claim in our reporting is traceable to a source: a named person, a public document, a meeting we attended, a record we obtained, or a piece of reporting we cite. When we summarize or paraphrase, we say where we got it.

Our Managing Editor reviews every story before publication, verifying facts against primary sources and confirming details with sources by phone or email as needed. Reporters and editors document sources, links, and supporting materials directly in our internal story records.

We rarely use anonymous sources. When we do, it's because the source faces a real and identifiable risk for speaking on the record, and because the information they're sharing is independently verifiable. Anonymous sourcing is flagged in the story, along with our reasoning for granting it.

We treat social media posts as tips, not as reporting. A claim circulating on Facebook or Instagram is something to verify, not something to publish. Social media rewards speed and emotion, not accuracy and context, and corrections rarely travel as far or as fast as the original post. That gap is part of why we exist.

Conflicts of Interest

Our team members are Riversiders. We have neighbors, friends, churches, kids in local schools, and prior professional histories in this city. We treat that as a feature of local journalism, not a problem to hide, and we manage it visibly.

The default for any potential conflict is disclosure within the story. If a reporter has a personal connection to a subject, a prior business relationship with an organization being covered, or any other tie a reasonable reader would want to know about, we say so in the story. If the connection is close enough that disclosure isn't sufficient, we reassign the story.

This applies across the team. Our publisher's civic roles (Altura Credit Union Supervisory Committee, Raincross Group) are disclosed in any story where those institutions appear. Advertising partners are named as such when they appear in editorial coverage. Family members and close personal friends of any team member are disclosed when they appear in a story.

How we use AI

We use AI tools, in our newsroom. We are direct about this because we'd rather you understand our practice than guess at it.

We use AI for back-office work: research synthesis, transcription, summarizing public documents, drafting outlines, taxonomy work, editing assistance, and similar tasks. AI helps us punch above our weight as a small independent newsroom. It does not replace our journalists or their judgment.

Every story we publish is reported, written, edited, and signed by a human. We do not publish AI-generated stories under human bylines, and we do not use AI to fabricate quotes, sources, events, or facts of any kind.

Corrections, Updates, and Clarifications

We make mistakes. When we do, we correct them promptly, visibly, and on the record. We distinguish between three kinds of changes:

• A correction fixes a factual error in a story we stand behind
• An update adds new information that became available after publication
• A clarification sharpens existing wording without changing the underlying facts

Every correction is published in the same place the error appeared, with prominence comparable to the original. We do not silently overwrite errors. Corrections are noted at the top of the affected story with the date and what was wrong. Every correction is also logged on our public Corrections page, a transparency practice we adopted from Tangle News.

Tips, Pitches, and Complaints

For news tips, story pitches, press releases, and ideas for coverage, write to newsroom@raincrossgazette.com. Our Managing Editor, handles inbound to the newsroom and routes it to the right reporter.

For complaints about coverage, allegations of bias or unfairness, or any concern about how a story was reported, write to the publisher directly at justin@raincrossgazette.com. We read every complaint, and we respond.

We will not retract or alter accurate reporting because someone is unhappy with it, and we say so plainly when we decline a request. When we do make a change, we explain why.

What this page does not cover

This page describes our practice as it stands today. It is not exhaustive, and nothing here substitutes for the judgment of our journalists in the moment. We will revise this page as our work evolves, and we will date it when we do. If you think something here is missing or unclear, tell us.

Last updated: May 19, 2026.