Editorial Policy

Effective September 15, 2026

Readers trust us with their weekend. This page is how we earn that, written plainly so you can hold us to it.

Independent and local

South Shore Digest is owned and published by AF Mello Solutions Inc, doing business as South Shore Digest, here in Suffolk County. No chain owns us, no group publishes us, and nobody outside this operation signs off on what runs.

Our editorial picks are never for sale. A business cannot buy its way into Top 5, Family Picks, Date Night, Free and Affordable, Community Board, or Fresh Local Highlights. Not with money, not with a trade, not with a friendship.

How we label anything paid

When a placement is paid for, we say so at the top of it, in the reader's line of sight, labeled "Sponsored" or "Advertisement." Never at the bottom, never in small gray type, never a vague word like "partner" standing in for the truth.

Paid directory listings are labeled as paid listings too, so a business that bought a spot never reads as a pick we made.

Sponsors see their own placement before it runs. They do not see the issue in advance, they do not influence the six sections, and they do not get to ask that a competitor come out. If a sponsor ever made that a condition, we would give the money back.

Fresh Local Highlights

Fresh Local Highlights is our editor writing about a place he actually walked into that week. It is never written from research alone, and it never runs without a real visit.

We go unannounced and we pay our own way. If anything is ever comped, we say so in that write up, in the write up itself, not on a policy page you would have to go find.

We do not do takedowns. If a visit is not worth writing about, it simply does not run. That is not the same as pretending everything is great. We write what earned the mention and we leave out what did not.

Gifts, trades, and freebies

We sometimes get offered a meal, a ticket, or a gift by a business hoping for coverage. Taking one does not buy coverage, and when we do accept anything of value connected to something we write about, we disclose it inside that item, not in a footnote somewhere else.

Press tickets to a public event are treated the same way: if we got in free and we write about it, we say so.

Affiliate links

We do not use affiliate links today. If that ever changes, the disclosure goes at the link, so you know before you click that a purchase could pay us something.

Photos and illustrations

Photos in the newsletter and on this site are ours, taken by us, or used with the permission of the person or venue who owns them, with credit where credit is due.

When an image is an illustration rather than a photograph of a real moment, it is labeled as an illustration. We never run a made up image of a place or an event and let it read as a photograph of it.

If a photo of yours ran and you would rather it did not, email support@southshoredigest.com and we will take it down.

Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes. A time, a price, a name, a date.

When you tell us, we check it against the source and fix it on the page, with a short note at the bottom saying what changed and when. If the mistake went out in an issue, we note the correction in the next issue too. We do not quietly edit a mistake and pretend it was never there.

Send corrections to tips@southshoredigest.com. The faster you tell us, the fewer neighbors drive somewhere for an event that moved.

Naming readers and neighbors

When we thank a reader or write up a community shoutout, we use a first name and a town, and only after the person says yes. No last names, no photos, no home details.

For anyone under 18, we need a parent or guardian to say yes first, and we still keep it to a first name and a town.

Community Board

Community Board items, like drives, volunteer calls, and civic notices, run because they are useful to neighbors. Nobody pays for a spot there, and no organization is guaranteed one.

Tell us when we slip

If something on our pages looks like it broke one of these rules, write to tips@southshoredigest.com and say so. We would rather hear it from you than have you quietly stop trusting the issue.