Nov. 23, 2016 — We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about fake news, especially on Facebook. So we want to take this opportunity to tell you exactly what you can expect from us at The Penny Hoarder.
We’re not a traditional news site. We write our stories and headlines in a conversational, upbeat tone, because we want to help you have fun earning and saving money. We truly believe personal finance can be fun!
But just because our information and advice is fun to read doesn’t mean we don’t take our job — and your trust — seriously.
We verify everything we share with our community. If we can’t verify something for whatever reason, and we still think it’s worth sharing, we’ll let you know up-front in the story.
We might not be a traditional journalism outlet, but we hold ourselves to the highest standard when it comes to giving our readers helpful ideas, inspiring stories and accurate information.
Our writers spend their days talking to sources and fact-checking, and all of our stories go through a rigorous editing process. Our editorial team is led by Managing Editor John Schlander, a veteran journalist, formerly of the Tampa Bay Times. Our newsroom is built on ethics — we truly want to help our readers.
As a digital-only publication, we apply innovative web practices to our work. For example, we rely heavily on analytics and other tools to determine what our readers want to learn. We often take our research a step beyond traditional journalism, weaving in personal experience and trying out strategies ourselves, so we can make educated decisions about whether to recommend them to our community.
Like most websites, we sometimes work with advertisers to share their products with our community. Our advertising team’s first question is always, will this be useful for the reader? Because we’re only interested in brands, tools and ideas that will truly help our readers earn and save money, we turn down about half of the advertisers who want to work with us. Really! We are that dedicated to providing you with high-quality information.
We will admit we have something in common with fake news sites: We have a pretty big Facebook community. Millions of fans follow our main Facebook page, comment on our topic-specific Facebook pages on food and jobs, and interact in our Facebook group. Yet we believe in gaining followers by providing interesting tactics and stories of people who have used them, not creating fake news and sensationalizing it for clicks.
One of the coolest parts about having a large community is that you — our readers — often provide insight and feedback on our stories. You let us know when a fact seems inaccurate, you don’t agree with a detail of a source’s story, or there’s a better way to do something we write about. We appreciate this feedback and use it to improve the information we share with you, so please continue to send it our way!
The world of journalism is changing, and we’re proud to innovate as the country’s fastest-growing private media company. But one thing that will never change is our commitment to providing you with accurate information. When you visit our site, you can trust what you read.
Thank you for supporting us in this mission. We respect and appreciate each and every one of our Penny Hoarders!
With gratitude,
Alexis Grant, Executive Editor
