Editorial Standards

These are the rules The California Magazine holds itself to. They apply to everything we publish, including work that was paid for.

Original reporting only

We publish our own work. We do not republish other publishers' articles in whole or in part, and we do not run machine-generated rewrites of material published elsewhere. Where we quote or cite another outlet's reporting, we say so and link to it.

Verification

Factual claims are checked before publication, whether or not the article was commissioned. Figures attributed to a company are checked against its filings or its own published statements. Awards, rankings, and credentials are checked against the awarding body's own records. Anything we cannot support does not run.

Paid features

Some articles are commissioned and paid for by their subject. Those articles carry a Paid Feature label in a banner above the headline, before the reader reaches any of the reporting.

Commissioning buys the commitment to report and publish. It does not buy approval over the finished piece, and it does not lower the standard of verification. Subjects see quotes attributed to them before publication; they do not have final approval of the article.

Every outbound link supplied by the subject of a paid feature is marked so it passes no ranking signal to search engines. This is a condition of publication and is not negotiable.

Advertising and editorial

Advertisers have no influence over editorial coverage. Buying advertising does not secure coverage, and it does not prevent it. Display advertising is visually distinct from editorial content and labelled.

Sources and anonymity

We prefer named sources. We grant anonymity only where a source faces a concrete risk — to their job, their safety, or a legal position — and where the information cannot be obtained on the record. When we do, we tell readers why the source is unnamed and what their vantage point is.

Conflicts of interest

Writers disclose to editors any financial interest in a company they are covering, and do not cover companies in which they hold a position. Where a conflict is unavoidable and the story is in the public interest, it is disclosed in the article.

Artificial intelligence

Some explainers published under our desk bylines, such as The Business Desk or The Tech Desk, are researched and drafted with AI tools. Each is built from public records, official data and published reporting, and lists the sources it relies on.

Before publication, a separate review compares every fact, figure, date and quotation in the draft with the saved source pages, corrects what the sources do not support, and holds the article back if anything cannot be confirmed. Articles are not rewrites of any single outlet's reporting.

A desk byline names a team, not a person. The publication takes responsibility for every article that carries one, and our corrections policy applies to them in full.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it on the article, note what changed, and update the revision date. Substantive corrections are not made silently. Requests to remove accurate reporting are declined.

Report an error to corrections@thecaliforniamagazine.com.

How corrections appear, and what we correct, is set out on the corrections page.

Contacting us about this policy

Questions about these standards go to editorial@thecaliforniamagazine.com.