The Constitution of Granite State Report

The rules Granite State Report operates under, binding on the editor, every contributor, and any successor. Public, dated, and changed only in public.

Jump to an article: I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII
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Preamble

Granite State Report exists because the people of New Hampshire own the records their government makes, and most of them never see those records. GSR's job is to get them, read them, and put them in front of the public with reporting that says plainly what they show.

This constitution sets the rules GSR operates under. It binds the editor, every contributor, and every business arrangement GSR enters. It is public, it is dated, and it changes only in public.

Article IName, Seat, and Legal Form

I.1The publication's name is Granite State Report (“GSR”). Its home on the web is granitestatereport.com. Its seat is Northfield, New Hampshire.

I.2GSR is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Dexter Dow under a trade name registered with the New Hampshire Secretary of State under RSA 349.

I.3GSR may change its legal form. A change of form does not amend this constitution. Any successor entity adopts it as written, and no governing document of that entity may contradict it.

I.4While GSR is a sole proprietorship, no person holds ownership in it and no person may be promised ownership. Any participation interest offered to a collaborator is a phantom unit under a written agreement with a written conversion clause, reviewed by New Hampshire counsel before signing.

I.5GSR's official contacts are granitestatereport@gmail.com and 603-931-9264. Every GSR letter, page, and signature block uses them.

Article IIMission

II.1The mission is the test for every story, page, product, partnership, and dollar. Work that does not serve it is work GSR does not take on.

Article IIIThe Record Comes First

III.1GSR reporting starts from documents: statutes, court filings, budgets, minutes, contracts, correspondence, and records obtained under RSA 91-A. Officials are asked to explain the documents. Their explanation does not replace them.

III.2GSR publishes or links the primary documents behind its reporting wherever law, privacy, and safety allow, so readers can check the work themselves. Statutes and court decisions are cited by section from their official text.

III.3Every load-bearing claim in a GSR article appears in a fact-check table, marked Verified or Attributed, with its source named. Every article ends with a sources block.

III.4GSR fabricates nothing. No invented fact, quote, number, date, name, case, statute, citation, or link appears in its work. A claim that cannot be supported is labeled as unverified or cut.

III.5When GSR finds no record of something, it says it found no record. It does not say the thing does not exist.

III.6A description of what a document does, such as “the only provision that…,” is itself a claim, and it is checked against the full text before it carries a story.

III.7Quotes are exact or labeled as paraphrase. GSR never puts words in a real person's mouth.

III.8GSR never reports an action it has not taken. A records request, comment request, or letter that was not sent is not described as sent anywhere: not in a story, an editor's note, a social post, or a page.

Article IVEqual Access and GSR's Own Records Requests

IV.1GSR files public-records requests on the same footing as any other requester. A press credential buys no better place in line under RSA 91-A, and GSR never claims one. The statute's only media category, in RSA 91-A:4, IX, concerns a fee, not access.

IV.2Each open records matter is tracked by agency and kept separate from every other matter and from unpublished reporting.

IV.3GSR publishes how public bodies respond to its requests, including compliance, delay, and denial, measured against the text of the statute and the dates on the record.

IV.4When GSR or its editor obtains records about the editor, GSR reports on them as it would on anyone else, with a disclosure.

Article VIndependence

V.1GSR is not owned by, funded by, or affiliated with any political party, candidate, campaign, political committee, government body, or corporate parent.

V.2No reader, subscriber, sponsor, commissioner, partner, or public official gains any say over what GSR reports, how it reports it, or when it publishes. Payment buys reporting work. It never buys a conclusion, a preview, or a veto.

V.3No one can pay to be covered, and no one can pay to be left out. GSR never offers to withhold, soften, or delay a story in exchange for anything, and never threatens coverage to get something.

V.4GSR does not endorse candidates for public office.

V.5Any person in a GSR editorial role who becomes a declared candidate for public office, or takes a paid or titled role with a campaign, party, or political committee, steps out of every editorial decision touching that race, office, or organization. GSR discloses the step-down publicly on the day it takes effect.

V.6Every outside business the editor owns or works for is named on the GSR site. A GSR story that covers a customer or prospect of such a business discloses the relationship. No such business pitches a sale to a public body that has an open GSR records dispute or an unpublished GSR investigation, and every customer is named on a public register within five business days of a sale.

V.7GSR accepts nothing of value from a person or body it covers, other than records and access available to any member of the public.

Article VIFairness and the Right to Respond

VI.1A person or body that a GSR story accuses of wrongdoing receives a specific request for comment and a reasonable chance to answer before publication, unless delay would put someone at risk.

VI.2A response is reported fairly. Silence is reported as silence, with the date the request went out. A person who declines to comment for a stated reason is never described as having failed to respond.

VI.3Opinion and analysis are labeled as such. Signed accountability and opinion work carries the Dexter Dow byline. Neutral explainers carry the GSR Staff byline. GSR never publishes under an invented name.

VI.4Headlines, images, captions, and social posts must be supported by the story they promote.

VI.5GSR never presents an altered or generated image as a real photograph. Every image carries a credit, and every illustration is labeled.

Article VIIMinimizing Harm

VII.1Private individuals receive more protection than public officials. GSR names a private person only when the public interest requires it.

VII.2GSR does not name a minor, or a victim of a sexual offense or of domestic abuse, without a clear public-interest reason and, wherever possible, that person's consent.

VII.3Before publishing any document, GSR redacts information that serves no public purpose and could cause harm, including identification and account numbers, medical details, and the home addresses of private people.

VII.4Documents submitted by readers are verified before GSR reports on them and are reviewed for private information before GSR posts them.

VII.5GSR does journalism for the public. It does not do private investigation: no surveillance, no locating people, no background checks, no work for a party to litigation, and no private reports. Commissioned work is published as journalism or declined. GSR treats RSA 106-F, New Hampshire's licensing law for private investigators, as the outer edge of this rule.

Article VIIISources and Confidentiality

VIII.1GSR prefers sources who speak on the record and names them.

VIII.2A promise of confidentiality is made only by the editor, only when the information matters and cannot be obtained another way. Once made, it is kept. GSR tells every source plainly what it can and cannot protect.

VIII.3Information from an anonymous source is verified independently before GSR reports it.

VIII.4GSR never tries to identify a person who chose to send it material anonymously.

Article IXCorrections

IX.1Every correction states four things: what GSR published, what is true, what changed in the text, and the date and time of the fix.

IX.2Corrections run at the top of the article in house style and stay there permanently. GSR never fixes a factual error silently.

IX.3A correction goes out on every channel that carried the original.

IX.4The response scales to the error. A misspelled name gets a line. A wrong fact in the lede gets a standalone note and a social post.

IX.5When an error came from a source, the correction names the source and says whether the source was asked about it.

IX.6Corrections and editor's notes are never placed behind a payment or sign-up wall.

IX.7Anyone may request a correction at granitestatereport@gmail.com. GSR reviews every request and tells the requester what it decided.

Article XReaders

X.1GSR writes for a general New Hampshire reader, in plain English.

X.2Readers may comment, send tips, submit documents, and challenge the work. Comments are moderated under a published comment policy, and GSR never edits a reader's words to change their meaning. Reader polls run outside articles, never inside them.

X.3GSR collects only the reader information it needs to deliver what the reader signed up for, uses it for nothing else, and does not sell it.

X.4Any price GSR charges, and any rule deciding which work sits behind a payment or sign-up wall, is published on the site in plain terms.

X.5Community features on the GSR site, including reader profiles and resident verification, give no person, public official included, any influence over GSR's reporting. Information collected to verify a resident is used for verification only.

Article XIMoney

XI.1GSR may earn revenue from reader subscriptions and memberships, single-article and pass purchases, sponsorship of specific records requests, commissioned journalism under Article VII, licensing of its work, clearly labeled sponsorship, and grants that carry no editorial control.

XI.2GSR takes no commission, sponsorship, or grant from a political party, candidate, campaign, or political committee, and none from a person or body GSR is investigating.

XI.3A sponsor of a records request pays for that request. The sponsor gains no control over the request, its outcome, or the reporting that follows.

XI.4Payments to GSR are payments to a business. GSR does not describe them as charitable and claims no tax benefit for the person paying. If GSR becomes a tax-exempt organization, this section is amended under Article XVII before any such language appears.

XI.5GSR publishes a public accounting of reader support at the end of each year.

Article XIIPeople and Authority

XII.1The editor, Dexter Dow, holds final authority over everything GSR publishes and answers for every published word. Nothing goes live without the editor's approval.

XII.2Every contributor, collaborator, and partner agrees in writing to this constitution before their work runs under the GSR name. No partnership agreement overrides it.

XII.3GSR's recognition programs choose honorees from the public record. Recognition is never sold. Sitting elected officials and declared candidates are not eligible as individuals, with one exception: the Legislator of the Month, chosen from the public record and never by party.

Article XIIITools

GSR uses software tools in research and production, and names them on its methods page. No tool is a source. Nothing a tool produces is published as fact until a person has checked it against the record, and the editor answers for every error regardless of how it entered the work.

Article XIVThe Archive

XIV.1Published work stays published. GSR does not quietly remove or rewrite a published story. If law or safety requires a removal, GSR posts a note saying what was removed and why.

XIV.2Every document in the Granite State Archive that a GSR article relied on links to that article.

XIV.3Standing pages carry a version log. A standing page is not changed without a log entry.

Article XVContinuity

If GSR stops publishing, the editor will publish notice, keep the archive and its corrections online for as long as he reasonably can, and refund prepaid reader support for service not delivered, prorated.

Article XVIInterpretation

XVI.1Where any other GSR policy, page, contract, or plan conflicts with this constitution, this constitution controls.

XVI.2Where a rule in this constitution can be read two ways, the reading that gives readers more and GSR less controls.

XVI.3No court enforces this constitution, and under the First Amendment none could. Its force is that it is written down where anyone can read it, and that a breach can be reported to the editor and answered in public.

Article XVIIAmendment

XVII.1The editor may amend this constitution.

XVII.2Every amendment receives a new version number and date and a public changelog entry stating what changed and why. Earlier versions remain available to the public.

XVII.3An amendment that loosens any rule in the articles on the Record, Independence, Fairness, or Corrections is published at least 30 days before it takes effect.

XVII.4No amendment removes or alters a correction, disclosure, or editor's note already published.

XVII.5Anyone may propose an amendment at granitestatereport@gmail.com. Every proposal gets an answer.

Article XVIIIAdoption

This constitution takes effect when signed and dated by the editor below, and it is published on granitestatereport.com with its version log.

Signed, Dexter Dow, Founder and Editor
Version 2 · October 14, 2026

Version log. v2, October 14, 2026: first published, as adopted by the editor’s signature. v1 was an unsigned same-day draft, never published; v2 added Article XVI (Interpretation), V.3, the comment rule in X.2, the methods-page line in XIII, and XVII.5, and replaced numeric cross-references with article names. Under Article XVII, every amendment is logged here with its version, date, and a one-line description, and earlier versions stay available on request. This page is never edited without a log entry.