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Republication Terms

Interested in republishing Floodlight stories?

Here’s what you need to know:

Floodlight stories (unless otherwise specified) are meant to be republished, freely, with some constraints, which are listed here. If you have any questions, contact us.

License type

Content is made available under the BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons license. This means the content can be freely republished in any medium or format, so long as it’s attributed, and not remixed or altered — except for the following: 

  • The headline may be rewritten.
  • Content may be lightly edited to align with in-house style (e.g. % vs. “percent,” honorifics, etc) and to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
  • Content may be shortened, as long as its core meaning is preserved and comments from key sources are maintained in full. However, any such condensing must be explicitly approved by Floodlight by writing to contact@floodlightnews.org.
  • Photos and art are available for republication only where noted.

Republication process and terms

  • Only original Floodlight stories may be republished under these guidelines. Publishers may not republish stories from the Floodlight website that are not authored by Floodlight. Those wishing to republish content from outside Floodlight should consult the original source of the story for republication terms.
  • Story text and elements can be acquired by copying and pasting from floodlightnews.org into your Content Management System (CMS), or by accessing the Google folder link provided in the publisher notification email.
  • Credit Floodlight and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, “Author Name, Publication(s)” is preferred. At the top of the text of the republished story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Floodlight.”
  • If republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on Floodlight’s website, including all of the links from the original story. 
  • If you use canonical metadata, please use the publisher’s URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
  • It’s OK to republish stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against the publishing news organization’s stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support the publishing news organization’s work.
  • You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of the material to any third parties.
  • This means that you cannot actively publish or submit republished work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. It is understood that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
  • You can’t republish the material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. 
  • You can’t use the publishing news organization’s work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
  • Translation of stories into another language is generally not permitted. (But please contact us if translating may help Floodlight work reach key audiences.) 
  • Any website the publishing news organization’s stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
  • If you share republished stories on social media, tagging Floodlight and its partners is appreciated.
  • Please let us know if you plan to republish our story at contact@floodlightnews.org.

When photos and art are noted as available for republication

  • You have full rights to republish the images submitted, free of royalties or other licensing payments.
  • Images can be republished but must have the provided attribution and captioning terms.
  • Images may not be altered besides cropping for size.

Updates

Floodlight’s rigorous editorial policies aim to avoid the need for clarifications and corrections, however they may sometimes be necessary. We ask that republishers stay subscribed to our ‘Publishers’ email alerts in case the need for a clarification, correction or update arises.

These terms were inspired by and adapted from the Institute for Nonprofit News, ProPublica, The City, Wisconsin Watch and States Newsroom.