Standards

How we make the paper

Draft, pending legal review.

The rules every story follows, how we use AI, and how to tell us when we get something wrong.

Independent

The Grit Gazette is an independent monthly newspaper for gym owners and the people who train with them. No company gets favorable coverage, and no one can pay to be in a story, to review a story, or to keep something out of the paper.

Made with AI, approved by a person

We are open about this: The Grit Gazette is produced with AI agents. AI research desks find the news, an AI writer drafts the stories, an AI editor reviews them, and an AI designer lays out the pages. The chat assistants on this website are AI too.

A person, the publisher, sets the rules the agents follow, reviews every issue, and approves it before it is printed. Nothing is sent to readers, contributors or advertisers without that approval, apart from the website chat assistants, which answer only from our published information and pass anything else to a person.

AI never invents a quote, a person, a number or an event for the paper, and we never use AI to make a fake photo of a real person or event.

Sourced

• Every fact, figure and quote comes from a published source we checked, and the story says where it came from ("according to", "the company said").
• Quotes are copied word for word from where they were published or from a real interview, and checked against the original before print.
• We label what a claim is: reported, planned, company figures, a study in mice, or an observational link that does not prove cause.
• Anything we cannot confirm against a primary source does not print.

Ads are labeled and kept apart

• Every ad is labeled "Advertisement".
• Advertisers never see, review or influence stories, and buying an ad never buys coverage.
• An ad is not placed on the same page as a story about the same company.
• The editor can turn down any ad.

Opinion

Each issue has room for an Owner's View and a Member's View, written by real, named people from the gyms we serve and labeled "Opinion". The opinion belongs to the author; the facts in it are checked like any other story. We edit for length, clarity and accuracy, never for the argument, and nothing prints until the author approves the final text. We never ghostwrite or invent a contributor. People who sell to gyms cannot write about their own product category, and opinion space is never sold. Pitch a piece.

People in the paper

When we feature a member, coach or gym owner, we use their own words from an interview or a published source, and we print a photo of them only with their permission. If you are in the paper and something about you is wrong, tell us.

Corrections

If you find an error, send us the page, the sentence, and the correct information with a source, using the Help chat on this site or [TBD: corrections email]. The editor reviews every correction request. Confirmed corrections run in the next issue.