General Editorial Policies
The Phoenix staff recognizes that the newspaper’s audience is a small campus community; therefore, reporters and editors continue to strive for a balance between reporting events accurately and respecting the privacy of community members.
Given The Phoenix’s status as a community newspaper, and given the fact that it is staffed completely by students, students are urged to respect the boundaries of business and personal life in dealing with concerns about the paper or its content. Members of The Phoenix are deeply committed to maintaining open dialogue with students in a healthy and appropriate context. Thus, any threats or harassment of Phoenix staff will duly be considered serious.
Web Concerns
No Phoenix content will be withheld from web publication or removed from the site due to privacy concerns.
Staff Editorials
Staff editorials reflect the opinion of the editorial board, which excludes board members who by default operate in a non-editorial capacity, including editors emeriti and the webmaster. The members of the editorial board can be found on the masthead page.
Letters and Op-Eds
Letters and opinion pieces represent the views of their writers and not those of The Phoenix staff or Editorial Board. The Phoenix reserves the right to edit all pieces submitted for print publication for length clarity, and factual accuracy. The Phoenix does not edit op-ed or letter submissions for content. The Phoenix also reserves the right to withhold any letters or op-eds from publication.
The Phoenix does not accept anonymous submissions of letters or op-eds. Nor will The Phoenix accept pieces exclusively attributed to groups, although individual writers may request that their group affiliation be included. The senior editors may choose to publish submissions with a group listed as the sole author without the writer’s name in exceptional circumstances. In no case will The Phoenix publish the name of anyone submitting a letter or op-ed with a request for anonymous publication. Letters and Op-eds may be signed by any number of individuals, although for formatting purposes a full list will only appear online, not in print.
Please submit letters and report corrections to:
editor@swarthmorephoenix.com or
The Phoenix
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore, PA 19081
Web Comments
The Phoenix encourages the discussion of stories in our publication on our website as well as in letters to the editor. We do ask, however, that in commenting on stories on our website you follow a few guidelines to keep the discussion courteous.
While we approve most comments, we reserve the right not to approve any comment. In general, we do not approve comments that are:
- Hateful
- A personal attack or an attack on a particular group of people
- Spam
- Otherwise inappropriate
We reserve the right to close comments on certain articles and remove comments.
We reserve the right to publish web comments of particular note in print issues of The Phoenix.
We do not edit comments before publishing them, and will generally not do so upon request after publication either. You must provide a real email address when posting a comment, otherwise it will not be approved. Your email address will not be made public.
AI Policy
This artificial intelligence (AI) policy was created collectively by the Phoenix Editorial Board in October 2025 to respond to current technology and AI usage. It was inspired by and draws from the Poynter Institute’s AI Ethics Guidebook.
The Phoenix’s Editorial Board reserves the right to reject or edit any piece. In cases of inaccurate or questionable facts, the Editorial Board may request additional information from the writer, such as sources and interview transcripts.
The Phoenix does not accept pieces in which any content was written by generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Grammarly. AI is an acceptable resource for source finding; however, writers are required to independently verify any sources found through AI tools. Writers should be mindful of privacy concerns surrounding generative AI and should not enter sensitive information about any individual or group, including sources, into AI platforms. AI is not sufficient for independent fact-checking; writers must verify any information. Otter.ai, an online AI transcription tool, is an established exception to the Phoenix’s AI ban. Writers are heavily encouraged to review and edit generated transcriptions for accuracy, as Otter often mishears interviews.
The Phoenix will not publish AI-created graphics or images. For camera-captured photos, any alterations that distort or change the reality of the scene are not accepted. Tools such as the Clone, Remove, or the Heal features in Lightroom that remove or generate elements are not allowed to be used. However, using features such as AI Denoise that do not fundamentally alter the content of the image are acceptable. For example, using enhanced background blur on a portrait can be acceptable, though it is generally discouraged for news photography.
Editors will inform the writer if an article is pulled from publication or requires substantial edits with as much prior notice as possible and will make themselves available to answer questions and offer support.