Editorial Methodology & Standards
0.4%editorial correction rate in 2024
Among the lowest in digital publishing — and every correction, retraction, and methodology update is timestamped and publicly auditable since January 2023.
“A source is not where a fact first appeared — it is the conversation that produced it. Gawlo's editors read Discord servers, private Slack groups, niche Substacks, and academic preprints because the story has usually been living there for weeks before the press release. We publish when we can trace a claim back to the room it began in.”
The workflow
How a piece moves from pitch to publication.
Five operational pillars — applied to every long-read, briefing, and field report that reaches the homepage. No exception, no expedited lane.
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01
Sourcing
Every claim must trace to a named conversation, document, or named human source. Discord screenshots, Slack logs, and preprints are first-class sources — annotated and archived against the byline. Anonymous sourcing is permitted only when the source faces material risk, and is logged with two editors' sign-off.
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02
Verification
A second editor — never the byline author — independently re-traces each factual claim against its primary record. Numbers are re-keyed from source documents; quotations are compared against the original recording or chat export. Verification is logged per paragraph before publication.
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03
Fact-checking
A dedicated fact-check desk runs a third pass on every piece above 1,800 words. The check covers names, dates, institutional affiliations, and quantitative claims. Output is filed alongside the article and referenced in the published editorial footer.
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04
Corrections handling
Every correction is published as a dated, signed note appended to the original article — never silently overwritten. Substantive corrections are also flagged in the next day's Gawlo Brief. Our 0.4% correction rate in 2024 reflects this discipline: errors are caught, declared, and learnable.
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05
On-chain timestamping
Since January 2023, every correction, retraction, and methodology update is written to a publicly auditable ledger. Readers can verify that the version of a story they read on a given date was the version Gawlo published on that date — and nothing has been quietly rewritten since.
A signed pledge
What Gawlo guarantees to its readers.
We will name our sources where we can, and explain why when we cannot. We will distinguish reporting from analysis, and analysis from opinion. We will correct every factual error we find — including ones that cost us a headline — and we will publish the correction in the same place a reader found the original claim. We will not retroactively rewrite history: the version of an article you read will remain the version you read.
This pledge is not aspirational. It is the operating standard of a newsroom that includes three former Reuters investigative reporters, two ex-Bloomberg tech correspondents, and a Pulitzer finalist — coordinated by 38 full-time staff across Lisbon, Berlin, and Mexico City, alongside a network of 140 contributing analysts in 31 countries.
— Marta Quintas & Daniel Hofstetter, on behalf of the Gawlo editorial board.
The work behind the record
Read the work that produced this record.
Start with the free Gawlo Brief.
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