About
Last revised
The Monochrome Chronicles is a national daily newspaper published online, with a companion video channel on YouTube. It is published by Daniel Varrone in Connecticut, United States. He is its editor and is responsible for everything it prints.
Contact
Corrections, complaints and everything else go to editor@monochromechronicles.com. That is the paper’s address once its domain, monochromechronicles.com, is live. See the Contact page for what to include.
Ownership and money
The paper is owned by its publisher and paid for by him. It carries no advertising and takes no money from sponsors, parties, campaigns or interest groups. It is independent of any party, candidate or employer.
Our editorial line
The news pages are written to be fair: facts first, every fact in at least two reliable outlets, the strongest point of the other side stated fairly, and no conclusions the reporting does not support. The Opinion section is different and says so: its editorials argue openly from the center-left. The paper states that line here rather than hide it, rates the lean of each political news article in public, and keeps opinion out of the news pages.
What we cover
A national daily in eight sections: Nation, World, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Culture and Opinion. The paper does not cover sports, or stories whose main subject is gender or LGBTQ issues. It does not publish graphic violence and does not write about private individuals.
How the paper is made
The paper is small, and its methods should be plain. Articles are drafted with automated writing tools from the published reporting of other news organizations, which are listed by name and date at the foot of every article. The paper does not do its own interviews; when a quotation or a finding comes from another outlet’s reporting, the article says so.
Every article then passes five automated checks before it is published: format; house rules and scope; sourcing (at least two sources, each named and dated, none dated after the article); a fact-check review pass, which reads the sources, checks the article’s claims against them, flags anything it cannot confirm and rates the article’s political lean; and a check against repeating a story already run. When the review finds an error, the article is corrected and the correction is printed on the article and logged on the Corrections page. The editor publishes the paper and answers for it.
The video editions are written the same way and are narrated by a synthetic voice, not a person. Each video has a page on this site with its transcript and sources.
How we rate lean
Each political news article carries a lean rating on a five-step scale: left, center-left, center, center-right, right. The rating describes the article, not its subject: which facts it puts first, whose argument leads, what it leaves out and how its wording would read to a reader from the other side. It is set by the review pass after it checks the facts. Where the review has not yet rated a piece, the writer’s own rating is shown and labeled as such. The reviewer’s reason is printed with each rating. Editorials carry no rating, because they argue from the paper’s stated line.
Of the 131 political news articles rated so far, 35 center-left and 96 center. None has yet been rated center-right or right; the ratings are printed as they come.
Standards
The paper adopts the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. Its own rules for sourcing, headlines, corrections, photos, elections and health stories are on the Standards page.