Masthead & Standards
Reality Daily was founded in 2011 in a rented room above a former appliance showroom in Winchester, Virginia, by four people who had each been laid off from the same regional daily on the same afternoon. We publish investigative reporting on the documented record, principally on the subject of institutions that decline to produce documents.
We take no advertising from any entity that has ever issued a press release. We accept no grant funding. We are, as a matter of policy and also of circumstance, poor.
Editorial Standards
- Every claim is attributed. If we cannot name a source, we say why, and the Editor-in-Chief and the Standards Desk know the identity.
- Every story lists its sources at the foot of the page, where you can count them. We do not link out to a summary of our own reporting and call it citation.
- We publish what we could not confirm, in the same story, in the same typeface, at the same size as what we could.
- We seek comment twelve times before publishing without it. After the twelfth request, we publish, and we print the record of the requests.
- We hold space for a response indefinitely. Any response we receive is printed in full, unedited, at any length, with no commentary from us.
- We do not rate things. Ratings are conclusions dressed as findings. We describe what we found and let you conclude.
Corrections Policy
Reality Daily corrects errors of fact promptly, publicly, and at the top of the affected story rather than at the bottom of a separate page nobody visits.
We do not, however, correct findings merely because they are unpopular, and we do not describe a re-verification as a correction. Where review confirms the original wording, we say so and the original wording stands. Several readers have written to say this is confusing. We have reviewed those letters and the policy stands.
The Morning Record
The Morning Record is our weekly dispatch. It goes out once a week and carries everything the desks have filed since the last one. There is no advertising in it, because nobody has offered.
Your address is held in the subscriber ledger and nowhere else. We do not sell it. We do not have anyone to sell it to. Every dispatch carries a one-click removal link, and removal is immediate — though, consistent with our policy on the record generally, the entry is marked rather than deleted. We have never deleted anything.
The Morning Record
One dispatch each week. One-click removal in every issue.
The Staff
Founded Reality Daily in 2011 after nineteen years on the metro desk of a regional daily, the last six as assistant managing editor. Twice a finalist for regional press awards she declined to attend. Sets the twelve-request rule and enforces it without exception, including the three occasions it has cost the paper a story.
Nine years covering municipal procurement before joining Reality Daily in 2013. His reporting on a county sign-shop contract prompted two resignations and a fire. Works exclusively from paper records, does not use social media, and has never once been photographed for this website.
Runs the Standards Desk, which independently re-reads every source document before publication and maintains the correspondence file. Author of the internal memorandum "On the Difference Between 'No' and Silence," which is required reading for all staff and is not available to the public.
Files, tracks, and litigates records requests. Has filed 2,209 requests since 2014 with a fulfillment rate of 31 percent, which he describes as "unacceptable and also the national average." Photographs every page we obtain, including the blank ones.
Former commercial underwriter. Builds and maintains the paper's spreadsheets, including the 3,400-entry appearance log referenced in our founding series. Believes strongly that a number without a denominator is a rumor.
Ran the predecessor weekly from which this masthead descends. Retains no editorial role and no equity. Continues to send the newsroom handwritten notes about headline width, which are read aloud on Fridays.
Submit a Tip
We read everything. We answer what we can. If you are sending a document, send the whole document, including the pages you think are boring — the boring pages are usually the story.
- General: bureau@realitydaily.dsio.io
- Investigations: kettering@realitydaily.dsio.io
- Corrections: standards@realitydaily.dsio.io
- Post: The Winchester Bureau, P.O. Box 212, Winchester, Virginia
We do not confirm receipt of anonymous material, and we do not publish a document we have not been able to authenticate independently, however much we would like to.
About This Publication
Reality Daily is a work of satire in the tradition of The Onion and The Babylon Bee. Every reporter, editor, expert, institution, document, quotation, interview, statistic and event on this website is invented for comedic purposes. Nothing here is a factual claim about any real person or organization, and no part of it should be cited, forwarded, or believed as news.