Notes from the Horizon
Masthead & standards
Notes from the Horizon covers Central Florida’s lakes, land and water: what the record says about the water people live on, and what is happening on it this week. It is published by Horizon Marine, a licensed marine contractor in Lakeland, and edited independently of that company’s sales.
Who edits it
Edited by Seymour Shore. The editor sets the assignments, holds the standards below, answers every correction, and decides what is not worth publishing. Seymour Shore is the name this desk edits under.
Reach the editor at editor@notesfromthehorizon.com.
How a story gets checked
Every factual claim in a story is written down with the page it came from, and the publication’s own system re-reads those sources before a draft can be saved: it confirms that the claim’s figures and distinctive terms actually appear on the page cited. One claim that fails rejects the whole draft. A story that cannot be sourced does not run, and “no story” is a normal week’s work here.
Every piece is then read for voice and for the habits that make writing sound manufactured, and sent back to its writer when it fails. Nothing publishes without the publisher’s approval.
Corrections
We fix what we break, on the story itself, with the date and what was wrong. There is no time limit: an error found in a three-year-old piece is corrected the same way as one found today. Every correction is listed on the corrections page. A story we withdraw keeps its address and says plainly that it was withdrawn and why, rather than quietly disappearing.
To ask for a correction, write to the editor with the story and what is wrong. You will get an answer in writing, including when we conclude the story was right.
Older stories. Stories published before we began filing a claim list do not carry a source block. That does not mean they were written from nothing, but it does mean you cannot check them the way you can check a recent one. If something in an older piece looks wrong to you, write and say so. We would rather hear it from a reader who knows the water than leave it standing.
What the editor’s inbox is for
It takes four things:
- corrections
- tips and documents
- a request for a story about a specific lake
- replies to something we published
The editor will never promise coverage in exchange for anything, confirm an unverified claim back to the person who sent it, name a source who has not agreed to be named, or pass anything commercial to the sponsor. A sales enquiry gets a one-line reply pointing at Horizon Marine’s own contact page, and nothing else.
The sponsor
Horizon Marine pays for this publication and appears in a labelled block outside the story, never inside it. The sponsor does not choose subjects, does not review stories before they run, and does not see them early. When a story touches the sponsor’s business — docks, seawalls, shoreline permits, its competitors or its customers — that interest is disclosed in the story.
Where it comes from
The reporting leans on public record: water management district reports, county and city files, state agency documents, historical archives and local newspapers. Where the record disagrees with itself, the story says so rather than picking the tidier version.