Journalist Guide

Your Primary Contributing Location

This is your "home base" — the community you primarily cover. Set this in your profile settings.

• Pick your community's hub — Choose a central point like the town center or city hall. Use the map picker to drop a pin on the exact location.
• Why it matters — If you live 20 miles outside a small town but cover that community, setting your Primary Location to the town center ensures your content appears in that town's feed — even if you're writing from home.
• Travel flexibility — When you're traveling, you can choose to publish content to your Primary Location instead of your GPS location, so your stories still reach your regular readers.
• Change limit — Your Primary Location can only be changed once per month. This helps maintain authentic community coverage and prevents misuse.

Your Area (Automatic Location)

When you create content, we automatically detect your approximate area — no GPS permission needed. This becomes the content's default location for appearing in local feeds.

• No permission prompt — Your area is detected automatically at the city level, so you can publish immediately without granting GPS access.
• Precise when you need it — If you're covering an event at a specific location, you can opt in to GPS for more precise placement.
• Privacy protected — Readers only see city-level location information. Your exact coordinates are never shown publicly.

Choosing Where Your Content Appears

When publishing, you can choose which location to use:

• Your Area — Uses your approximate location automatically (no GPS needed). Great for most posts.
• Precise Location — Use your exact GPS location if you're writing about where you physically are (covering a local event, reporting from the scene).
• Primary Location — Use your home community if you're writing for your regular audience while traveling or working remotely.

AI-Assisted Writing

Using AI to help outline, draft, or refine your writing is fine. But you are responsible for fact-checking everything you publish. AI is a collaborator, not a source — treat its output the same way you'd treat an unverified tip.

AI-Generated Media

AI-generated images, video, and audio must never be used to depict something real that didn't happen. A fabricated photo of a public official, a doctored video of an event, synthetic audio presented as a real recording — these are prohibited.

AI-generated visuals used for creative or illustrative purposes — artwork, graphics, visual storytelling that isn't pretending to be documentary — are welcome.