Editorial Independence Policy

Columbia Insight subscribes to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:

Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.

Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.

 

Resolution on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Adopted February 13, 2020. The mission of Columbia Insight is to inspire, educate and foster a sense of community around environmental issues affecting the Columbia River Basin by publishing original, fair and balanced journalism that tells the untold stories of the region. To fulfill this mission Columbia Insight will include stories of special relevance to groups often underrepresented in the media and will reach out to diverse groups in matters relating to board membership, staffing, subject matter, writing, audience development and any other activity where a heightened sense of diversity, equity and inclusion will further our goals and promote fair and just solutions to the environmental challenges we face.

 

Columbia Insight Non-Discrimination Policy

Columbia Insight does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. These activities include, but are not limited to, hiring and firing of staff, selection of volunteers and vendors, and provision of services. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, and clients.

Columbia Insight is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Columbia Insight will provide reasonable accommodations (changes to the way things are normally done at work) to applicants and employees who need them for medial or religious reasons, as required by law.

Employees can report discrimination to the Executive Director and/or any member of the Board of Directors. Employees will not be punished for reporting discrimination, participating in a discrimination investigation or lawsuit or opposing discrimination.

Columbia Insight officers and directors will protect the confidentiality of employees who report discrimination or participate in a discrimination investigation, to the greatest possible extent.

The Executive Director and/or Board member will promptly respond with a thorough and impartial investigation of complaints. Effective corrective and preventative action will be taken when necessary.

Employees who file internal complaints be notified about the status of their complaint, the results of the investigation and any corrective and preventative action taken.

Adopted March 21, 2019

 

Donor Transparency Policy

Columbia Insight is committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.

Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions.

We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics, and special projects. Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.

We will make public all donors who give $5000 or more per year. For information contact info@columbiainsight.org

As a nonprofit, we will avoid accepting donations from anonymous sources, and we will not accept donations from government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates actively seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.

 

Privacy Policy

Our policy can be summarized in one sentence: we will not share your information with others without your prior consent.

Introduction

Any personal data Columbia Insight collects is used to help us monitor and improve the services we offer, and to provide personalized services unique to our users.

We collect personal information, such as email addresses, when you:

  • Request email newsletters
  • Sign up for events
  • Make donations.

We may collect anonymous, aggregated statistics from third party analytics, server logs, and similar technology. When we link personal information with other information, we treat all of the linked information as personal information.

In addition, as you navigate our website, certain information may be collected passively, which means it is gathered without you actively providing it. Here’s how:

  • Through your browser: Certain information is collected by most browsers, such as your computer type, operating system type, and Internet browser type and version.
  • Through your device: If you access our site through a mobile device or other network-connected product, certain information may be collected about that device, including your device type or network service provider.
  • Using cookies: Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type and pages visited. We and our service providers use this information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while using the site. To learn more about cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
  • Using monitoring tools: The site may utilize monitoring tools for the purpose of, among other things, compiling statistics about site usage and response rates, and tracking user activity.
  • IP Address: Your IP Address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever you visit the site, along with the time of your visit and the page(s) that were visited. We use IP Addresses for purposes such as calculating site usage levels, helping diagnose server problems, and administering the site.

It is always your choice to provide personal information. In some instances, if you choose not to provide personal information, you may not be able to use certain CI features.

Making Payments. When you make payments, such as a donation, you may need to provide your credit card number and billing address. That information will be provided directly to our third party payment processor. CI does not have access to and will not store or maintain your credit card information on our servers.

No disclosure of the information we collect to third parties

We may share your information:

  • with our third-party service providers
  • to comply with legal obligations
  • to protect our rights and property
  • with your permission

We do not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies for their direct marketing purposes.

Columbia Insight follows the relevant legal requirements and uses all reasonable precautions to ensure only responsible third parties see the information. However we are not responsible for any breach of security or any actions of any third parties who receive the information. Please note that we reserve the right to access and disclose individually identifiable information to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate our systems properly and to protect both ourselves and our users. Any data processors with access to your data in providing services on our behalf are subject to contractual restrictions to ensure that your data is protected, and not used independently by such third party. As Columbia Insight can contain links to other websites, we inform our visitors that CI has no influence on the content of outside web pages, nor on the adherence or non-adherence of these websites to data protection regulations.

Our principles are:

  1. We will respect your email privacy. We will be the only party to email you with information or queries about you, your needs, your donation or postings.
  2. We will not pass on any individual user details (including your email address) for third-party use unless we have your prior consent, neither will we sell your personal details to third parties or market this information in any other way without your explicit permission.
  3. We will only share anonymous aggregate statistics about our users, sales and traffic patterns with our partners.
  4. Persons under the age of 18 years should not communicate personal data to us without the prior consent of adults authorized to act on their behalf.

At your request, we will update or delete your personal data. Please submit any such request by e-mail to: info@columbiainsight.org 

Changes to privacy policy

Should we elect to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes here. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email all our registered users with the new details.

Questions and comments

For all queries related to our privacy policy, please contact: info@columbiainsight.org 

 

 

AI Policy

Transparency in any use or discussion of AI (artificial intelligence) will be our guiding principle.

Columbia Insight does not publish stories with text generated by AI. This applies not just to whole stories but also to snippets, captions and any other text published by Columbia Insight. It also applies to editorial text on other platforms, such as email newsletters.

If for any reason we make an exception to this policy in any format, we will disclose this use and provide an explanation for the exception.

This is for obvious reasons: The current AI tools are prone to both errors and bias, and often produce dull, unoriginal writing. In addition, we think someone who writes for a living needs to constantly be thinking about the best way to express complex ideas in their own words. Finally, an AI tool may inadvertently plagiarize someone else’s words. If a writer uses AI to create text for publication without a disclosure, we’ll treat that as tantamount to plagiarism.

Nor do we publish text edited by AI.

We specifically do not use AI-generated images instead of original or stock photography. Selling images is how many working photographers make ends meet. At least until generative AI companies develop a way to compensate the creators their tools rely on, we won’t use their images this way.

We may experiment with using AI as a research or analytical tool. The current generation of AI chatbots that Google and Microsoft are adding to their search engines answer questions by extracting information from large amounts of text and summarizing it. A reporter might use these tools just like a regular search engine, or to summarize or trawl through documents or their own interview notes. But they will still have to go back to the original notes, documents or recordings to check quotes and references and perform essential fact-checking. In this sense, using an AI bot is like using Google Search or Wikipedia: It might give writers initial pointers, but writers must follow the links back to the original sources.

Some working artists are now incorporating generative AI into their creative process in much the same way that they use other digital tools. We will consider commissioning work from these artists as long as it involves significant creative input by the artist and does not blatantly imitate existing work or infringe copyright. In such cases we will disclose the fact that generative AI was used.

This policy is adapted from a policy published by WIRED magazine. It is a living document that may be edited or amended to reflect developments in the AI/media sphere.