Ethics & Independence — The Stare
Ethics & Independence
Who we are
The Stare is a Kansas City news publication — small, locally owned, and run by people who live here. Its owner also operates other Kansas City ventures; The Stare runs behind an editorial firewall from all of them.
We tell you this up front because The Stare covers Kansas City businesses, and honest journalism means putting any relationship that could matter in plain sight rather than burying it.
The one commitment that matters
No business relationship with our owner or any of its other ventures — a listing, a partnership, someday a paid subscription — ever influences how The Stare covers anyone. Coverage is earned by being Kansas City news, nothing else.
Right now there is nothing to influence: no business pays us for anything. When that changes, this page changes with it, and the safeguards below take effect.
How we keep ourselves honest
We're a small operation — at the moment, mostly one person. We can't promise the kind of structural separation a large newsroom has. So instead of asking you to trust our intentions, we've built practices that make any bias visible:
- We disclose conflicts in the open. When someone deciding a story or an award has a personal or financial relationship with a subject, they step aside. When that isn't possible — when there's only one of us — we say so directly in the piece itself.
- Our awards show their work. Every Best-of award publishes its methodology: where the candidates came from, how the picks were made, and the full list of everyone considered — not just the winners. No commercial relationship is ever a ranking input, and we say that on every methodology page.
- We separate reporting from aggregation. Original Stare articles are written and bylined by us — see the note on our bylines below. The headline feed ("the Wire") links out to other Kansas City outlets, credits them by name, and never republishes their full articles. The two are kept visibly distinct so you always know which is which.
Our bylines
The Stare publishes its original reporting under a small, fixed roster of standing bylines. Those names are editorial personas — each one a defined desk and a defined voice — rather than individual staff journalists. Every one of them is bound by the standards on this page.
We put that here because a byline is a claim about accountability, and ours should not read as a larger newsroom than this one is. One person is responsible for everything The Stare publishes. What sits underneath the bylines is sourced and linked, so you can check it without taking our word for any of it. That part was never a persona.
Corrections
We get things wrong sometimes. When we do, we fix it in the open.
Email corrections@kcstare.com to flag a factual error. Substantive corrections are noted with a dated line at the top of the corrected article — we don't quietly rewrite history — and logged permanently in the public corrections archive. Typos we'll just fix.
Questions
Anything else — including questions about this page — goes to corrections@kcstare.com. Have a story instead? See how to reach us, including anonymously.