B Square Bulletin Privacy, Ethics

Privacy Statement

The B Square Bulletin is an independent local news outlet. This site collects only limited information needed to operate the website and deliver email updates.

Email subscriptions

If you subscribe to receive emails from The B Square Bulletin, the site stores the email address you provide. That address is used only to send the newsletters or alerts you signed up to receive. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link included in every email.

Emails sent through the site may include standard email metrics, such as whether an email was opened or which links were clicked.

Website analytics

The site may collect basic information about visits, such as page views, referring pages, browser type, and approximate location. The purpose of this data collection is to understand how the site is used and improve coverage. This information is aggregated and not used to identify individual readers.

Cookies and site functionality

Like most websites, The B Square Bulletin uses cookies or similar technologies to make the site function properly. On sites powered by the Ghost publishing platform, cookies may be used to manage subscriber sessions, maintain login status for members, and measure general site traffic.

Reader communications and submissions

If you contact The B Square Bulletin by email or submit information for publication, the information you provide may be used to respond to your message, verify facts, or consider the material for reporting or publication.

Public records and published information

As a news organization, The B Square Bulletin regularly reports on public meetings, government actions, and public records. Information that appears in those public records or in reporting may include names, statements, or other details connected to matters of public interest.

Sharing of information

The B Square Bulletin does not sell, trade, or rent reader information.

Third-party services

Some functions of the site rely on third-party services, such as hosting, email delivery, analytics, or embedded content. These services may process limited technical information (such as IP addresses or device information) as required to provide their service.

Changes to this statement

This privacy statement may be updated occasionally to reflect changes in site features or services.

Contact

Questions about this privacy statement can be sent to dave@bsquarebulletin.com

Ethics

The B Square Bulletin generally follows the reporting standards and style guidance of the Associated Press. That means our reporting aims to be accurate, fair, transparent, independent and grounded in verifiable facts.

As a small local newsroom focused on life in Bloomington and Monroe County, The B Square Bulletin applies those principles in a practical way suited to local government coverage, data- and document-based reporting, elections, public finance, planning and development, and community life.

Accuracy and verification

The B Square Bulletin strives to get facts right the first time. Information that could reasonably be disputed should be attributed to a source, document, public record, interview or direct observation.

Quotations have to be accurate and in context. When quotes come from recordings, they have to be checked against the original audio. If an automatically generated transcript is used for reporting, any quotation published from that transcript will be verified by listening back to the source audio before publication.

Original documents are cited and linked whenever practical, especially for stories involving public meetings, budgets, ordinances, court filings, campaign finance reports, contracts or development proposals.

When factual mistakes are made, corrections will be made promptly and transparently. Corrections will be made inline using HTML tags such as and so readers can see exactly what changed. Corrections will also be added to The B Square Bulletin’s standalone Error Log. Euphemisms such as “clarified” or “updated” will not be used when the issue is a factual error.

Fairness and independence

The Bulletin does not allow sources to approve stories before publication. Questions may sometimes be shared in advance for accuracy or scheduling purposes, but editorial control remains entirely with the newsroom. The Bulletin does not pay for interviews or information.

Coverage decisions are made independently and are not influenced by advertisers, donors, sponsors, political organizations, government officials or civic institutions.

Attribution and sourcing

The Bulletin uses on-the-record sourcing whenever possible.

Anonymous sources are used rarely and only when the information is important, cannot reasonably be obtained otherwise, and the source is judged to be credible and in a position to know the information firsthand, or when a desire for anonymity is reasonable under the circumstances.

Information taken from another news outlet will be credited. Public documents, reports, databases, maps and archival materials will likewise be identified as sources.

Because The B Square Bulletin values primary original-source reporting, readers will often see direct links to original documents, agendas, ordinances, court filings, spreadsheets, GIS maps or public records.

Images, audio and visual material

Photographs and video published by The B Square Bulletin are not materially altered in ways that change the meaning of events or mislead readers.

Routine technical adjustments are permitted, including cropping, resizing, sharpening, exposure correction, color balancing and denoising. These are treated as technical production tasks, not editorial alterations.

Artificial intelligence tools may be used for technical image cleanup, such as sharpening or noise reduction, so long as the content of the image is not changed.

AI-generated or substantially AI-altered images used for illustration, satire or conceptual purposes will be used rarely, but when they are, they will be clearly labeled. An example of a standard attribution used by The B Square for fully AI-generated images is: “This image was created by DALL-E, an AI image generator developed by OpenAI.”

The Bulletin does not use AI-generated imagery to depict real news events.

Use of artificial intelligence tools generally

The B Square Bulletin may use AI tools for newsroom chores, production assistance and structured data processing. AI tools are not used as substitutes for editorial judgment.

Human oversight is required whenever AI tools are used in a reporting or publication workflow.

Examples of acceptable AI-assisted chores include:

• automatic transcription of meetings or interviews
• OCR extraction from scanned public documents
• conversion of campaign finance forms into structured spreadsheets or databases
• extraction of tabular data from PDFs
• coding assistance for publication tools, election dashboards or document processing
• routine copyediting advice on AP style
• headline brainstorming
• thesaurus-like assistance with wording alternatives

Any AI-generated output used in reporting must be checked by a human before publication.

For example, if campaign finance filings are converted into structured data using AI-assisted extraction, the resulting file will be visually verified line-by-line against the original filing before publication or analysis.

Automatically generated transcripts are treated as aids to reporting, not authoritative records. Quotes must be checked against the original recording before publication.

AI systems are not permitted to make editorial decisions about what is newsworthy, what facts are reliable, what context is important, or what conclusions should be drawn from reporting.

Routine use of AI as a sophisticated spelling, grammar or wording assistant generally will not be separately disclosed, in the same way traditional spellcheckers or thesauruses are not separately disclosed.

Data, documents and structured reporting

The B Square Bulletin frequently works with public datasets, spreadsheets, campaign finance records, election returns, utility filings, tax information, zoning materials and other structured records.

Data analysis should be reproducible and grounded in identifiable source material. When calculations, aggregations or transformations are performed, the underlying methodology should be explainable.

The Bulletin places special emphasis on publishing underlying source documents whenever legally and practically possible through linked publicly available records repositories.

Social media and public conduct

Social media activity connected to The B Square Bulletin is held by The B Square to the same standards of accuracy and fairness expected in published reporting.

Community mission

The B Square Bulletin approaches local journalism as the creation of a durable civic record, not merely the publication of frequent news articles.

Coverage emphasizes local government, public meetings, elections, public finance, planning, infrastructure, education and other civic institutions that shape community life in Bloomington and Monroe County.

The Bulletin aims to provide readers with direct access to source material, historical context and factual detail so that residents can make informed judgments for themselves.

If questions arise about the B Square’s reporting, we will use this community mission as a lodestar.