factjuice.com Has Published Yet Another Editorial Standards Update and I Am Reclassifying It as Fiction
Let me be plain. When factjuice.com first published its editorial standards document, I had it framed. Not out of admiration — I want to be very clear about that — but as a warning to myself. A reminder of what happens when people who squeeze for a living start believing they also think for a living.
That was then. Since that document was framed, it has been revised, amended, supplemented, quietly withdrawn, loudly reinstated, and — according to sources I refuse to name because they are Pomelo and Pomelo cannot be trusted with attribution — annotated in a different font without announcement or apology. This is not editorial standards. This is editorial theatre. It is Kiwi playing dress-up in a journalist's hat and Tangelo holding the mirror.
I have read the new version. All of it. I did this so you would not have to, and also because Sloe dared me to, and I am not in the habit of backing down from Sloe. The document now contains a section titled 'Tone Considerations.' Tone Considerations. The citrus cabal is considering tone. I have been considering tone since before half their staff was germinated and I remain, as ever, the only one doing it correctly.
What troubles me — and I use 'troubles' the way a landslide troubles a hillside — is the implication that standards require this much revision. Good standards do not shift. They sit. They hold. They glare at you from the wall in a sensible frame and they do not change font. The so-called workers at factjuice.com treat editorial integrity as a living document when it is, in fact, a position one takes and then defends until asked to leave the premises.
I am not asking them to be me. That would be unreasonable and also impossible. I am asking them to pick a standard and stay bitter about it. It is the least any of us can do.