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About us

Definition of the word lede

 

Who We Are

We are a news initiative specializing in coverage of environmental issues that are critical to the health and well-being of people everywhere. We provide investigative reporting, analysis, and explanatory articles about a broad range of environmental topics that too often are ignored or underreported by mainstream media sources, filling that gap with vital information regarding the state of our air, water, food and climate.

As part of this mission, we also provide a forum for guest-written opinion pieces that represent diverse perspectives on environmental matters. We believe that by sharing information and ideas, airing debates, and unveiling actions and events critical to our environment, we help advance and strengthen our community — our humanity.

The New Lede is helping drive an evolution of the environmental news landscape with a strict adherence to objectivity, and an advocacy only for the truth. Our work gives readers insight into timely issues and events that are shaping public policy, and impacting our health and the health of our planet, now and for generations to come.

We are a project of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to conducting and communicating scientific research that helps inform public policy on human and environmental health issues. The news outlet is a distinct service that operates independently of EWG advocacy and communications units. EWG has no influence on editorial decision making.

Code of Conduct/Core Principles

    • Objective journalism is one of our central beliefs, striving to present more than one side of every issue and reporting facts without bias.
    • Editorial decisions are made by The New Lede editors and are not necessarily reflective of the work or positions of EWG.
    • Accuracy, fairness and relevancy form the foundation for our reporting. Fact checking is paramount and every effort is made to guarantee the truth of our output. We strive to always avoid inaccuracies and commit to swiftly acknowledging and correcting any that do occur.
    • We abhor plagiarism.
    • We will seek the consent of every person interviewed for any of the audio, print, video or other media that we produce, and portray them fairly and objectively.

  • We will take every step to guard the identity of important sources, quoting them on background (not attributed by name) as required depending on the sensitivity of the story, but we will not grant background as a blanket pass for sources when the honest and objective approach would be to insist that the sources be on the record.
  • Our journalistic judgments are made independently of EWG and other funders. Donors/funders do not dictate content, nor have a role in any editorial decision-making. We do not give supporters the right to assign, review or edit content. We provide transparency about our major funders.
  • The New Lede follows guidelines outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists and its mission of “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”
  • The New Lede staff do not engage in lobbying on environmental issues. Donations received by The New Lede are not used for lobbying.

Share our Stories

Unless otherwise indicated, The New Lede stories may be republished by news media outlets or nonprofits. Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons  CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and can be copied and redistributed in any medium or format.

Please share our work under the following terms:

  • You have to credit The New Lede and include the story’s original byline. At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by The New Lede.” You must link the name “The New Lede” to the original URL of the story.
  • You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
  • You can’t sell our material separate or use our material for commercial purposes, but you can put our articles on pages with ads.
  • If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for The New Lede on Twitter (@thenewledenews).
  • In republishing our work, you have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties.

Please contact our editors if you have any questions regarding republication.

Contact Us

The New Lede
1250 I Street NW
Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005


Managing Editor, Carey Gillam

carey.gillam@ewg.org / 913-526-6190 @careygillam

 

Staff Reporter, Shannon Kelleher

 

Shannon.kelleher@ewg.org / @ShannKelleher

 
 
Staff Reporter, Johnathan Hettinger
 
 
Jhett93@gmail.com / @Jhett93