The Editorial Charter

standards is being formed as a Delaware public benefit corporation, and this Charter is the instrument being adopted to govern it. By design, it cannot be amended by any one person, cannot be changed without public notice, supermajority consent of the independent board, and the unanimous consent of the holders of the Mission-Protective Shares, and cannot be suspended for financial necessity, commercial opportunity, or political convenience.

What follows is a plain-language summary of the Charter. The Charter itself is the controlling text.

Article I — Statement of Purpose

standards exists to produce and distribute, free and in perpetuity, news that is accurate by method, neutral by audited measurement, and independent by structure. Because it is being organized as a public benefit corporation, its directors are bound by fiduciary duty to weigh that public mission alongside the interests of shareholders, not beneath them.

Article II — Principles

Five principles govern everything that follows. Free, universally — the core news reaches every reader without payment, metering, or registration. Neutral, by methodology — bias can't be wished away, but it can be measured, disclosed, corrected, and audited against an outside standard. Independent, by architecture — no commercial, ownership, or political relationship carries a right to influence coverage. Written by people; AI use disclosed — AI helps find and verify; humans write, edit, and publish, and every byline is a person. Funded by layers — revenue comes from a diversified mix, so that no single source can become a single point of pressure.

Article III — Governance

Editorial authority rests with the Editor-in-Chief, who holds final say over all news content and can be appointed or removed only by the CEO and the independent board acting together — never by either one alone. A subcommittee meets to share the weight of the hardest editorial calls. The board also holds a special class of shares — Class B Mission-Protective Shares — that carry no economic value and exist only to require unanimous consent before the Charter can be amended, the company sold or restructured under distress, the Editor-in-Chief removed, or the Board itself dissolved or reconstituted. The founder is bound by the Charter; no founding stake confers a right to direct coverage. And if governance ever falls below working minimums for too long — the Editor-in-Chief seat or a quorum of the board left vacant past a set deadline — defined repair steps take effect on their own.

Article IV — Editorial Independence

A set of firewalls: advertisers, patrons, institutional clients, grant funders, content licensees — including AI platforms — and owners receive no advance notice of coverage and no right to review, edit, or comment on it before it runs. standards also accepts no advertising, patronage, or grants from political campaigns, parties, political action committees, or issue-advocacy organizations, regardless of orientation. No story may be killed, softened, delayed, or commissioned at the request of any party named here; if an investigation implicates one of them, the investigation proceeds. Licensees get standards' work on the same terms as any reader: after publication, without a right of comment.

Article V — Disclosure of Interference

If anyone with power over this publication — an officer, an owner, an advertiser, a funder, a government actor — tries to influence coverage, or anyone ties a request to a condition, an inducement, or a threat, standards publishes that fact, names the party, and quotes the request, within fourteen days. The duty falls on the Editor-in-Chief and survives any sale or change of control.

Article VI — Methodology and Bias Measurement

Neutrality is treated as something to be measured and checked, not asserted. Every story is scored and includes an AI-use disclosure. Each section publishes coverage-balance reports at least quarterly, and methodology logs explain how stories were surfaced. An independent third party audits the methodology every year against The Trust Project's Trust Indicators, and the results are published in full. Corrections are prompt and visible, and they keep the original error in view rather than quietly erasing it.

Article VII — News and Opinion

standards publishes both, and separates them rigorously by label and structure so a reader always knows which they are reading. The line also governs access: core news is always free, while opinion may be free or offered on commercial terms. Content is never reclassified to move it behind a paywall, and the subcommittee watches the boundary for exactly that. Opinion is led by an Opinion Editor reporting to the Editor-in-Chief; no owner, founder, officer, director, or shareholder may direct, narrow, or restrict the scope of the opinion standards publishes — a rule the Charter places among its foundational provisions.

Article VIII — Use of Technology

AI and related technologies are tools for finding, structuring, and verifying — not for writing. Four rules sit in the Charter's most protected tier — changeable only by its constitutional process: in public, by near-unanimity, and never near a sale or change of control: no published piece is authored or edited solely by AI; no headline runs and no story publishes without human sign-off; no byline is fabricated; and every story discloses the AI tools it used. The byline is always a named human, accountable for the work under it.

Article IX — Amendment

Changing the Charter is deliberately hard, and its core is hardest of all. Ordinary provisions require a supermajority of the Board, the unanimous consent of the Class B holders, months of public notice, and a ratifying vote on the posted text. The foundational core — the purpose, free access, independence, the AI rules, diversification, and the change-of-control article — can change only by the constitutional path: near-unanimity across the Board, the Class B holders, and the Independent Editorial Board; an extended period of published text, rationale, and public comment; a delay before any amendment takes effect; and never in proximity to any sale or change of control. The rules can be updated. They can never be traded. Financial necessity, commercial opportunity, and political convenience are never grounds, and no corporate reorganization may be used to route around the Charter.

Article X — Change of Control and Distress

The Charter travels with the company. No sale, merger, or restructuring can close unless the buyer first signs a Ratification Covenant binding them to the Charter on the same terms. To the extent permissible by law, defined distress triggers — an unsolicited takeover approach left unrejected, hiring a banker for a sale, contemplating bankruptcy, a debt default — tighten every lock and compress the interference-disclosure window to immediate. If an acquirer will not honor the Charter, the name, trademarks, and archive revert to a standards Editorial Continuity Trust held by the board, rather than passing to an owner who would set the Charter aside. Even in bankruptcy, to the extent possible under the law, the directors are directed to favor an orderly wind-down that preserves the archive over a sale that would defeat it.

Article XI — Counterparty Disclosure

standards publishes who funds it. Patrons and grant funders above a deliberately low threshold are named, with amounts in ranges, updated at least quarterly; advertisers, institutional clients, and licensees are disclosed annually; and when a story's subject is also a significant counterparty, that relationship is disclosed inside the story itself.

Article XII — Effect and Construction

The Charter is the governing editorial document. Where it conflicts with any other company document, it wins; where it conflicts with law, the company follows the law and discloses the conflict. Its ambiguities are to be resolved in favor of editorial independence, transparency, and the reader.

This is a summary, current as of launch. The Editorial Charter is the instrument being adopted as standards is formed; on adoption it is the binding instrument, and where this summary and the Charter differ, the Charter governs.