Editorial Standards

We believe there is room for a publication that takes the practice of thought leadership seriously, holds itself to real reporting standards, and is honest about the difference between editorial and commercial work.

This page describes how we operate.

What we publish

Three categories of work appear on thoughtleadership.com.

Editorial features are reported pieces written by our team. We choose the subjects. We decide the angle. The people we interview do not pay to be featured and have no contractual control over the final piece. This is the majority of what we publish.

Practitioner Profiles, Deep Features, and Case Studies are paid placements. The subject (or their organization) compensates us to produce a deeply reported piece about their work. These pieces are clearly labeled and adhere to the same reporting standards as editorial features. What changes is who initiated the piece, not how rigorously it is reported.

Research and analysis includes original surveys, data studies, and longer-form analytical pieces, sometimes commissioned by partners and sometimes produced independently. Commissioned research is labeled as such. The data and analysis are ours either way.

We maintain a minimum 2:1 ratio of editorial to paid features at all times. If we ever cannot meet that ratio without sacrificing quality, we publish less paid work.

The editorial standard

Whether a piece is editorial or paid, the same baseline rules apply.

Interviews are real interviews. Our writers ask follow-up questions. They push back on claims that do not hold up. They ask for evidence. They are willing to leave material on the floor when it does not survive scrutiny. A subject who wants only flattering questions should hire a publicist.

Claims are checked. Numbers, dates, attributions, and factual claims are verified against primary sources. Where a claim cannot be verified, we either remove it or attribute it clearly ("according to the company," "in their telling") so readers know what kind of fact they are reading.

Sources are named whenever possible. Anonymous sourcing is reserved for situations where naming someone would create real professional risk for them, and is approved by the editor before publication.

Quotes are accurate. We may tighten quotes for length or clarity, but we do not reshape someone's words to mean something they did not mean. If a subject objects to a quote, we go back to the recording.

Voice belongs to the writer, not the subject. The piece is written by us. Subjects are not co-authors and do not get to rewrite their own profiles.

Subject review and the line we hold

Subjects of our pieces, paid and unpaid alike, see a draft before publication. They can correct factual errors, flag misquoted material, and request the removal of information that is confidential or genuinely off-the-record.

They cannot:

• Demand the removal of accurate information they wish had not been included
• Rewrite the piece in their own voice
• Add promotional language, calls to action, or product pitches
• Require the deletion of skeptical analysis, counterpoints, or context that complicates their narrative

If a subject and our editorial team cannot agree on a piece, we have three options: publish it as written, publish it with mutually agreed changes, or kill the piece. For paid features, killing the piece means refunding the work in full. We have done this. We will do it again.

How paid features differ (and how they don't)

When someone pays us to produce a feature about their work, three things change:

1. We agreed to produce the piece because they came to us, not the other way around
2. The piece is clearly labeled as a Featured Profile, Deep Feature, or Case Study
3. We disclose the commercial relationship at the top of the piece

What does not change:

• The reporting standard
• The writer's editorial independence
• Our willingness to ask hard questions
• Our right to walk away from a piece that is not working
• The fact that the piece is written by us, not by the subject

Paid features are not press releases with our logo on them. They are reported pieces, produced under the same standards as anything else we publish, that happen to have been commissioned. If you want a press release, hire a PR firm. If you want a piece of journalism that takes your work seriously, examines it honestly, and produces a permanent record on a publication that means something, we may be the right fit.

The bar to be featured

We turn down a meaningful share of inquiries for paid features. We do this because the value of being featured here depends entirely on our willingness to say no.

We typically decline when:

• The subject's claimed expertise cannot be substantiated through track record, results, or original work
• The subject does not have anything genuinely interesting to say, meaning a defensible point of view, a specific story, evidence, or a perspective that would survive an editor's questioning
• The subject's primary goal is link-building, SEO, or generic visibility rather than telling a real story
• The work involves multi-level marketing, get-rich-quick programs, or other categories where the "thought leadership" is really a recruiting funnel
• There are unresolved legal, ethical, or reputational concerns that would compromise the piece

We are not gatekeepers of who gets to call themselves a thought leader. We are gatekeepers of what gets published on this site under our masthead. Those are different jobs.

Conflicts of interest

We disclose financial relationships. If a subject is a current agency client of ours, we say so. If we hold equity, advise, or have any other material relationship with a subject or their company, we say so. If a piece references a tool, product, or service we have a commercial relationship with, we say so.

Our staff and contributors do not accept gifts, paid trips, equity, or other compensation from subjects of pieces they work on, beyond standard reporting expenses.

Use of AI

We use AI tools in our workflow. Specifically: we transcribe interviews with AI, we use AI to help structure first drafts from transcripts, we use AI for research synthesis and to identify pull-quotes, and we use AI-assisted editing for clarity and grammar.

We do not publish AI-generated content as our own analysis. The voice, judgment, and editorial decisions in every piece are human. The reporting is human. So is the pushback, the follow-up questions, and the calls about whether something is true or interesting or worth saying.

We disclose AI involvement when it is meaningful to the reader's understanding of a piece (for example, AI-generated visualizations of data we collected). We do not feel obligated to disclose AI as a transcription or first-draft tool any more than we would disclose using a word processor.

If we ever publish a piece that is substantially AI-generated, it will say so at the top, in plain language.

Corrections

We make mistakes. When we do, we correct them in place, with a visible note describing what was wrong and when it was fixed. We do not silently edit pieces after publication to remove errors. If a correction materially changes the meaning of a piece, we say so prominently.

If you find an error in something we have published, please let us know via our contact page. We read every one.

What we will not do

For clarity, here is an explicit list of practices we have seen elsewhere in the industry and will not engage in:

• Selling guaranteed-positive coverage
• Allowing subjects to write their own features under our masthead
• Publishing pieces without naming a human author
• Creating fake bylines or attributing pieces to staff who did not write them
• Removing critical or skeptical content from a piece because a subject objected
• Hiding the commercial nature of paid placements
• Selling contributor-style author seats where the subject controls what gets published
• Trading coverage for advertising commitments
• Pay-for-removal of accurate negative coverage

If a publication you are working with does any of these things, we would encourage you to ask hard questions about what their byline is actually worth.

Get in touch

All inquiries go through our contact page. This includes editorial pitches, paid feature requests, corrections, ethics concerns, and questions about our work. We respond within five business days, including to inquiries we decline.

A closing note

These standards exist because we believe they are the only basis on which a publication called thoughtleadership.com can credibly operate. The domain is a promise. The standards on this page are how we keep it.

We will revise this document as we learn what works, what does not, and what new questions the practice of thought leadership poses. The version date is at the bottom of this page. Earlier versions are preserved in our archive.

Last updated: April 26, 2026