Editorial standards

Last updated August 24, 2026

The Roundabout is read by people who can walk to the places we write about. That is a higher bar than a regional paper faces, not a lower one. These are the rules we hold ourselves to, written down so you can hold us to them too.

What we cover

Milton, and only Milton. Not Alpharetta, not Roswell, not Forsyth County, not "North Fulton" as a blur. If a story is not about Milton or does not directly affect the people who live here, it does not run, even when it is a good story. The regional outlets cover seven cities. We cover one.

Sourcing

We do not invent quotes, names, titles, votes, or numbers. Ever. When we report what the City Council did, it comes from the agenda, the packet, the minutes, or the meeting itself. When we report a number, it comes from the record that produced it.

Where a story rests on a public record, we say which record and, where we can, link straight to it. You should never have to take our word for a figure you could check yourself.

Corrections

We correct errors in the next issue, in plain sight, and we state the original error rather than quietly fixing it. A correction that hides what was wrong is not a correction.

If you spot something wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Full policy and how to reach us: corrections.

Elections

We do not endorse candidates. Not in local races, not in any race, not ever. We do not run political advertising.

During election cycles we publish voter guides. Every candidate in a race gets the same questions, and answers run verbatim and side by side. We do not add commentary, we do not rank the answers, and we do not decide who won the exchange. Readers do that.

Sponsors and reporting

The Roundabout is free to read and paid for by a small number of local sponsors. That arrangement only works if the line between the two is obvious, so here it is.

Sponsorship buys placement, and it is always labeled as sponsorship. It does not buy coverage, it does not buy a favorable mention, and it does not buy a say in what runs or when. No sponsor sees a story before it publishes. No sponsor is told what we are working on. Becoming a sponsor does not make a business more likely to be written about, and declining does not make it less likely.

Directory listings and news coverage are separate things. A business appearing in one of our directories has not paid for editorial attention.

Conflicts of interest

The publisher lives in Milton and runs other local businesses. That is normal for a paper this size, and it is also exactly how small publications quietly lose their credibility. So: when we cover something the publisher has a financial stake in, a personal relationship with, or any other interest in, we say so inside the story, at the point where it matters, not in a disclosure page nobody reads.

Where the conflict is sharp enough that a disclosure would not fix it, we do not run the story.

Tone

Brief, clear, and not snarky. We are writing about a place where the person in the story shops at the same Publix as the person reading it. We do not do outrage, we do not do manufactured stakes, and we do not do headlines that oversell what the story turned out to be.

Privacy of ordinary people

Public officials acting in public roles are fair game. Private residents are not. We do not publish home addresses, personal phone numbers, or personal email addresses of private individuals, including when that information sits in a public dataset we already have. We write about the neighborhood, not the neighbor.

Questions about any of this, or think we fell short of it? Email tips@readroundabout.com. Who writes and edits The Roundabout: the masthead.