Masthead

How we hire, and one post we cannot fire

Every editorial vacancy at this newspaper is advertised publicly, including internal moves, and every appointment names the person who made it. We do not recruit through personal networks and we have never made an appointment that was not advertised. Four of the twenty-two people above came to us from outside journalism — a physicist, an air traffic controller, a hospital pharmacist, and eleven years in a state records office — and the desk that hired each of them says so on their author page.

The public editor is different. She is appointed on a five-year, non-renewable contract; reports to the readers rather than to the editor-in-chief; may not be dismissed for anything she writes; attends no news conference; sees no story before publication; and is barred from taking any other work from They Buried during her term or for two years after it. The terms exist so that the one person paid to attack this newspaper cannot be made comfortable, and they are printed here so you can hold us to them when it stops being convenient.

The Trust

They Buried is owned by the Buried Trust. Its trustees are listed, with their occupations, on the ownership and funding page, along with every source of the newspaper's income to the nearest percentage point.