Mission Statement

The record, in public, for the people who paid for it.

Vision

To be New Hampshire's leading transparency and public-records newsroom, and to leave the state a public record that is easier to get than when we started.

The mission, line by line

• Tell the truth. Every fact we publish rests on a document or an on-record source we can show you. If we cannot stand behind a claim, it does not run. When we find no record of something, we say that, and nothing more.
• Hold power accountable. We file the records requests, follow the paper to the people who made the decision, and ask them to answer before we publish. We report how public bodies treat the Right-to-Know Law, including when they ignore it.
• Give people a voice. Residents send tips, documents, and challenges, and we read all of it. A Northfield resident with a records fight gets the same hard look from us as a press release from Concord.
• Build stronger communities. We explain how New Hampshire law works so people can use it without us: how to file a request, what a town policy can and cannot do, who to call when a body goes silent. We also name the public servants who do the job right.
• Create opportunities for the next generation. Our methods, templates, and public tools stay free and in plain view, so a student, a first-time reporter, or a frustrated taxpayer anywhere in the state can do this work too.
• Make a lasting difference. Published stories stay published. Corrections stay attached. Documents stay in the archive. The measure is a public record that outlasts any single story, and a state where getting that record takes less of a fight.

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

Download the mission statement (PDF) · Read the Constitution of Granite State Report

Version log. v2, October 14, 2026: first published; the six lines and the one-paragraph mission as adopted. (v1 was an unsigned same-day draft, never published.) Every later revision of this page is listed here with its date and a one-line description of what changed. This page is never edited without a log entry.