The Bitter Press

They have updated the editorial standards document. I know this because I read it. I read the original. I read the update. I placed them side by side on my desk at four in the morning and I compared them, word by word, with the methodical fury of a woman who has been right about everything since 1987 and has the files to prove it.

Four changes. Four. They removed the word "robust" from paragraph two, added a semicolon in paragraph seven that I can only describe as ornamental, replaced "commitment to accuracy" with "ongoing commitment to accuracy" as though the word ongoing does anything except admit that the commitment was not previously continuous, and — this is the one that broke me — changed "fact-checked" to "fact-checked where appropriate." Where appropriate. I am not going to be fine.

Tangelo is credited as lead editor on the revision. Tangelo, who last month published a piece on migratory cloud formations that cited, as its primary source, a feeling. Plum proofread it. Plum, who once described a semicolon as "a bit dramatic." I am looking at this semicolon right now. It is the most dramatic thing in the document. Plum did not flag it. I am flagging it now.

Pomelo read the update before I did and said it seemed "fine." I have asked Pomelo to hand in her desk plant. I need the space for the documents.

The Bitter Press has one editorial standard. It is: be correct, or be quiet. The citrus cabal at factjuice.com has now produced two versions of a document explaining how they intend to be correct, and they have not, in the interim, managed it once. I am putting this in writing. I am putting everything in writing. This is the writing.