The Greyhound

This paper exists so that a boy can say something publicly without his name attached to it, and be taken seriously. The policy below is the whole of it.

What we publish

Criticism of decisions, policies, structures and the way things are run here. Arguments you would not put your name to at assembly. Praise, when it is deserved. Anything a reasonable reader would recognise as an opinion honestly held.

Approval by an editor is a filter for spam and abuse. It is not a filter for opinion. A submission is never turned away for being inconvenient, embarrassing, or critical of the school or its staff.

What we do not publish

Accusations about named individuals. We publish criticism of decisions, policies and institutions; we do not publish allegations about a named boy or a named teacher. Write about the rule, the decision, or the pattern — not the person.

This is the one line that is not negotiable, and the reason is practical rather than squeamish: an unproven accusation about a named person exposes the editor personally, and it exposes the paper. A piece that makes its argument without naming anyone loses nothing and survives.

We also turn away:

• Slurs — racial, homophobic, or otherwise.
• Threats, harassment, or anything aimed at making one person’s life worse.
• Material that would identify the writer of an anonymous piece.
• Spam, and the same submission sent fifteen times.

Comments

Comments publish immediately. There is no approval queue for them, on any page. The only automatic intervention is a filter that holds the most severe slurs for review — everything else, including strong disagreement with anything printed here, goes straight up.

Every comment carries a report button. Three reports hold a comment for the editor to look at. That is a reactive check, not a gate.

Corrections

If we get a fact wrong, tell us through the tip form and the piece is corrected with a note saying what changed.

Who decides

One editor. There is no staff oversight of what appears here, and no member of staff sees a submission before it publishes.

Read next: how we protect your anonymity.