factjuice.com Has Published a Third Revision to Its Editorial Standards and I Am Legally Required to Remain Seated
They have done it again. The citrus cabal over at factjuice.com — those preening, pulp-forward paragons of self-congratulation — have issued yet another revision to their so-called Editorial Standards document. Version three. Three. I have read it. I have read it twice. I am reading it a third time as I write this, which my physician has advised against, but some callings are higher than medicine.
Let us be clear about what an "Editorial Standards Revision" actually represents in practice: it is a document written by people who got the last document wrong, assuring you that this time they have thought about it harder. Tangelo's fingerprints are all over section four. I recognise his particular brand of hedging from seventeen paces. Lemon, meanwhile, has contributed what I can only describe as a paragraph that begins with a strong position and then apologises for having one.
Quince, bless him, read the first revision and called it "promising." I had him removed from the morning meeting. Pomelo read the second and said it showed "growth." I have not spoken to Pomelo since Tuesday and I do not intend to start.
Here is my editorial position, and it is not up for debate: a publication that requires three attempts to articulate what it believes does not, in any meaningful sense, believe it. Standards are not a living document. Standards are a wall. You build the wall. The wall stands. You do not later issue the wall a footnote.
I have had all three versions framed. They hang in the corridor outside my office. Every morning I walk past them on the way to my desk. Every morning I am freshly appalled. It is, genuinely, the only thing keeping me going.