They Have Published a Style Guide and I Am Having It Framed as a Warning
They have done it. They have finally, formally, in writing, with a typeface they chose on purpose, told the world how they plan to run their little fact dispensary. The so-called workers at factjuice.com have published an editorial standards document, and I have read it, and I am sitting here in the ruins of my own composure.
The document — if we are being generous with the word — outlines their commitment to accuracy, clarity, and what they have had the audacity to call "balanced presentation." Balanced. I would like someone to explain to me what balance has to do with facts. A fact is not a see-saw. It does not require a counterweight. It requires rigor, which is precisely what this document gestures at and then immediately abandons in favor of readability guidelines.
I am told Tangelo wrote the section on source citation. I am told this as though it should comfort me. It does not comfort me. Plum, apparently, contributed the paragraph on tone. There is a paragraph. On tone. Quince read it over my shoulder and had to lie down.
What we do here at The Bitter Press requires no style guide because our standards are self-evident: be correct, be uncomfortable, and never under any circumstances pretend that a mango-adjacent media operation has its editorial house in order simply because it has laminated something. I have been setting editorial standards since before Tangelo was a seed and I have never once needed to write them down because they are engraved on my disposition.
The document is eleven pages. I have read all eleven. I am not better for it. Neither, I suspect, is the truth.