Editorial Policy

What this publication is

The Harbor Ledger is a demonstration newspaper. The city of Port Meridian is invented, and so is every person, company, agency, team, and institution that appears in our pages. We publish this material to build and test a realistic publishing environment — page layouts, section archives, typography, and advertising placement — not to report on real events.

We state this plainly because a publication that looks like a newspaper carries an obligation to say whether it is one. No article on this site should be cited, quoted, or relied upon as an account of anything that actually happened.

Sourcing

Within the fiction, we hold ourselves to conventional standards: stories name their sources and give their titles, figures are attributed to the document or official that produced them, and anyone criticised is given room to answer. Where a story turns on a contested decision, we present the strongest version of the opposing argument rather than a token line.

Independence

Advertisers have no influence over what we cover or how we cover it. Commercial staff do not see stories before publication, and no advertiser is given advance notice of coverage that concerns them. Sponsored material is labelled as such and is written separately from the newsroom.

Corrections

We correct errors of fact promptly and visibly. A correction is appended to the article itself rather than made silently, and it says what was wrong and what the correct information is. If an error is serious enough to change the meaning of a story, the correction goes at the top.

To report an error, write to newsroom@theharborledger.com with the headline, the passage in question, and what you believe is correct. Ourcontact page lists the relevant desks.

Bylines and authorship

Every article carries a byline, and every byline has a page collecting that writer's work. Ourcontributors page lists the full masthead.

Use of AI

The articles on this site are machine-generated fiction, produced to populate a realistic publishing environment. They are not the work of human reporters, and the bylines are invented personas rather than real journalists. We disclose this rather than leaving it to be inferred.

Reader privacy

We do not track readers. See our privacy policy for what the site does and does not collect.