Applying Poynter's ethics to The Union

3pm Wed - minor edit
(This post overlaps with yesterday's, perhaps excessively so.
emphases mine, again)

Something tells me the folks at Poynter aren't locals.

From the recent overview to Poynter's Online Journalism Ethics:

3. Written ethics guidelines ...are an essential ingredient in the decision-making required in various forms of emerging media. Such guidelines will be most useful if framed as aspirations as opposed to rules and if compiled or revised with the active participation of the audience.

4. Transparency is a necessary dimension of the relationship that journalists and news organizations maintain with their audiences. Transparency must be linked with accountability -- institutional as well as individual.

Some wonderful excerpts from the main document (an Ethics Wiki):

Editorial integrity is crucial in maintaining the trust of the public and the credibility of the brand.
[...]
The consumer's experience is paramount. ... The consumer should be clear about content produced by editorial or commercial interests. Advertising and sponsorships should be labeled.
[...]
Credibility is earned over time by continually delivering on promises of accuracy, transparency and fairness. We consider listening and participating essential tools to achieve credibility.
[...]
We will never knowingly publish or air falsehoods.
[...]
We will seek to display as much transparency as possible in regard to our processes and our relationships, both institutional and personal.
[...]
How do you decide when a user should be banned from publishing on your site?
[...]

I want that paper.

Now, let's come back in Nevada County. First, take a look at The Union's quite reasonable Comment guidelines:

The comments feature of TheUnion.com is a service for our readers to discuss stories online with other readers, and provide feedback to the staff.
[and]
TheUnion.com article comments must abide by the following guidelines:
-No personal attacks
-No profane or vulgar language
-No racial, ethnic or religious slurs
-No unlawful use of copyright material
All comments go to a human moderator, so will not appear immediately. Comments not adhering [to] the guidelines will not appear.

How well are the guidelines enforced? The nice thing about blogging, you can judge for yourself. The following comments were submitted (to the comments to the editor's column), but were either not published at all, or briefly published but then deleted.
Your task: identify which guidelines they violated.

(FYI, they go into tedious detail on 'relevance' (in small font) because The Union's editor wants comments to stay "on message". sorry.)

1. Jeff P., this (current) comment addresses your request (in the column) "feel free to provide feedback and suggestions"; it also addresses your request (from your comment above) "why don't you just contact me directly...?" (when I asked if I could interview you in future)
   
   My (free) feedback and suggestions:
   
   Feedback: The Union is insufficiently transparent about how the paper operates. This is a longstanding problem; it started long before you joined the paper, but it is continuing.
   
   Suggestion: Given that sunlight is the best of disinfectants, increased transparency (on the workings of the paper) could help to effect great improvements in the paper, particularly with regard to the "informing the readers" metric.
   
   So, in short - please consider consenting to an on-the-record interview. Wouldn't it be only fair to give citizen journalists on-the-record interviews, since you expect us community members to do this for your journalists?
   
   or at the very least, if your answer is "no on-the-record interviews", say it out in the open.
   
   thanks (hope i've pointed out how this comment is apropos to your column, hope you'll consider it, sorry to put you on the spot) -
   Anna
   
   (the above comment disappeared, and in its stead an anonymous parody comment appeared, seemingly referring to my [Spring 2005] interview (followup Qs here) with the previous editor.)
2. Trackback for fellow readers - I've blogged about this column (and what happened here in the comments) at ncfocus - tinyurl is tinyurl.com/2aa297 - Anna
3. fyi for fellow readers - I've blogged about this column (and what happened here in the comments) at ncfocus today.
   (apologies if this comment's a duplicate; the first time it didn't get published for some reason)
   - Anna
   
4. Jeff, what is The Union's policy regarding anonymous story comments from its employees?
   (If there isn't a policy on this, you might consider implementing one - and, IMO, asking that employees comment under their own names.)
   
   note - I believe this (current) comment is on-topic since
   1) in your column you asked for feedback and suggestions,
   and 2) the issue arose in response to an earlier comment. (the "Jeff, could I interview you with 57 questions" one, which seems to be a parody of a comment I'd made which got published but subsequently - and silently - deleted)
   
   Thanks much -
   Anna
   

When you've identified the guideline violations, please explain them in the NCFocus comments below - keeping in mind that there is no "comments cannot be dull" guideline.
:-}