Have you ever wondered about the various kinds of stories we publish and how you can grade the reliability of the content within the story. Here is a quick guideline . . .
We have three broad classes of stories we publish in the Tamborine Mountain Daily Star.
RAW MEDIA RELEASES
Media Releases are raw stories that come from the Scenic Rim Council, the Gold Coast Council and from various other government sources. Occasionally a media release from a local business is interesting enough to be published.
With Scenic Rim Regional Council, we have taken an editorial policy that we will publish all media releases from the Council as a community service. We are not paid to do this. In fact, unlike some other media outlets, we receive no advertising or funding from the Scenic Rim Regional Council what-so-ever.
This means we have no potential conflicts of interest when we choose to publish articles that are critical of the Council's political or administrative arms. Some local publications derive a commercially significant portion of their total advertising revenue from Council notices and advertising.
All Council Media Releases are clearly identified by the author's tag line which will read: By Scenic Rim Regional Council - A Media Release. We do not alter the text of such articles but we often spend time adding photographs, graphics or external links to make them more understandable and appealing to read. Occasionally we will add explanatory notes when a media release is unclear.
These media releases are published by the Daily Star as is, with no external fact checking. Any bias in the writing of these media releases will not be filtered out by us. If you have an issue with the content of a media release - please do let us know so. Then both you and the Daily Star can take up the issue with the organisation involved and challenge them on it.
Any story based solely on a media release will be clearly marked as such. We do not allow unaltered media release copy to masquerade as real news.
GENERAL REPORTAGE
Where we do independent reporting on a story we put the reporter's name and if they are not part of the Daily Star team, then we acknowledge where they do come from.
We frequently carry reportage from the Fassifern Guardian and this will always be clearly identified by the publication name and the reporter's name.
We do the same thing with our national and international stories from AFP. All of these carry the AFP name and copyright symbol.
In general reportage we try to be balanced in our reporting and present the facts associated with the story and quote our sources. 
If our facts are incorrect in any way, we invite comment and if it becomes clear our reporting is incorrect, we will correct the story immediately.
If in the reporting of a story we need to make editorial comments to clarify a point or to pass some form of opinion on the topic, this will be clearly identified in the story as an Editorial Comment.
Where an advertiser or potential advertiser has a story about them in the Daily Star, we will indicate those stories which we believe carry inherent editorial value to our readers and those that are purely "advertorial". In a small community news publication, this line blurs and in this case, if the story carries something of real interest or true news value, we will call it general reportage.
Where it is a straight commercial advertorial that is published only on the condition that there is a corresponding advertisement by a customer, then we will mark it as an advertorial so it is clear to our readers that there are purely commercial reasons that the article is being published by the Daily Star.
There is nothing wrong with this - it is a common practice in all local news. You just need to be told when something is news and when something is being paid for by linked advertising.
COMMENTARY, COLUMNISTS AND EDITORIAL
Where we express an opinion on a current event, this will be done with the name of the commentator clearly noted on the article. Opinions are not facts.
We do not enforce the strict need for balance in opinion pieces. Sometimes they will be satirical but we hope we will only publish those articles which are well written, interesting and challenging.
Where an author of some commentary is not specifically noted - say the Cranky Columnist - the responsibility for the article is the Editor's.
As an editorial policy, we want to have a broad spread of opinion in the Daily Star.
These types of articles will generally be filed in the Editorial Page or the Columnist Pages or marked in other ways to indicate that they are not reportage but commentary. We are trying to refine this approach so that commentary will more clearly indicated in the future.
Letters to the Editor also fall into the category of commentary where we publish other people's opinion as opinion not as fact.
The regular column by Cr Derek Swanborough falls into this category - as would material from the State and Federal Members of
Parliament. So too do regular contributors like Terri Taylor, Lance Cordingley and Chrissie Hannaford.
Our regular guest columnists bring subject matter expertise to the Daily Star and we acknowledge their businesses in an "Additional Links" panel on their pages. However their columns contain news and advice, not promotional material.
Comments on articles are an important part of the Daily Star. It allows you the reader to pass on your thoughts. Our policy here is to be as open as we possibly can be. The comments are the opinions of the person making the comment not of this publication.
All comments are checked for libelous material, abuse and defamation. We have had to reject several comments of a political or personal nature on this basis.
In all, we try to allow comments rather than restrict them - even if they are negative comments about the Daily Star.
We hope this is a useful outline of how we try to give you a clear indication of the source and status of every article we publish.
Please be aware we are a new online publication. We are operating in a new medium where the standards of journalism are still being properly formed. We are a tiny team without the legal and reporting resources of the Australian or the Courier Mail.
We try to do our best at all times. We try to be transparent and fair to our subject and particularly to you, our readers.
If we fail at either of these objectives in your view, please let us know so we can continually improve our service, so we offer you the best online news publication possible.
That said, we try not to back away from serious issues when they occur. We will always be passionate supporters of the best long term interests of Tamborine Mountain and the people who make their homes here. We make no apologies about that - in fact we are proud of it.