Our Policies & Guidelines

LymeLine Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) formed by members of the Lyme and Old Lyme communities in 2025, continues the tradition of fair, accurate, and nonpartisan reporting set by its previous owners. Our Board of Directors has established the following policies.

Editorial Independence

LymeLine’s primary mission is to produce original reporting for the towns of Lyme and Old Lyme based on facts and seeking the truth, as opposed to focusing on opinion or simply curating or aggregating news produced by others. We strive for editorial excellence that is inclusive, representative and engaging, reflecting the diversity and the needs of the towns we serve.

We are committed to remaining independent. Our reporting serves to inform the public and the communities we serve. We intend to limit our advocacy to supporting basic human rights, democracy and the right to free speech and a free press accorded by the First Amendment to the Constitution. If we opine or publish a point of view on an issue or news item, our approach will be explicitly transparent and allow for alternative perspectives to be published.

Transparency

LymeLine will be transparent about our operational and ethical policies. Our website will identify our board and key staff members and contain information describing our conflict-of-interest policies, staff diversity, and journalistic values. We will not accept donations from sources that our board of directors determines present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.

(please include some way to separate those board policies from the following guidelines – like a line or a box or something)

The following guidelines are in place to promote civil discourse and the flow of ideas in letters to the editor, op-eds and article comments. We are grateful to readers for abiding by these rules, which have been in place in various forms for more than 20 years.

Letter to the Editor Guidelines

We welcome Letters to the Editor. The following are our general rules relating to publication of letters on LymeLine.com:

Letters should be addressed to editor@lymeline.com.
Letters must not exceed our 600-word limit.
Letter writers must supply their first and last names, hometown, and telephone number for verification purposes. They must note any political or town memberships/affiliations and/or any connection to political candidates. Only first and last names and hometown will be published.
We will publish a maximum of one letter every two weeks from any individual letter writer.
We will not publish letters that include abusive, defamatory, indecent, libelous, obscene, off-topic, pornographic, profane, threatening, unlawful, vulgar, or otherwise objectionable comments.
Personal attacks on anyone or any group or organization are not permitted.
Letters that include code of any kind or hyperlinks to objectionable material will not be posted.

Commenting on any Letter to the Editor will be closed 48 hours after its original publication date.

The editor’s decision is final.

Commenting Guidelines

We welcome comments, and encourage respectful, friendly, and civil debate on articles. Please observe the following rules when submitting a comment.

Comments must include a first and last name, and a verifiable email address. Comments will not be published under pseudonyms or “creative” e-addresses such as customerservice@abc.com or anonymous@gmail.com.

Comments must be 350 words or less.

We will not publish comments that:

are abusive, racist, defamatory, indecent, libelous, obscene, off-topic, pornographic, profane, threatening, unlawful, vulgar, or otherwise objectionable.
are threatening, disparaging, grossly inflammatory, false, misleading, fraudulent, inaccurate, unfair, contain gross exaggeration or unsubstantiated claims, violate the privacy rights of any third party, and/or are unreasonably harmful or offensive to any individual or community.
contain expressions, epithets or slurs with racist or hateful language.
include photographs or illustrations in poor taste.
include inflammatory attacks of a personal, racial or religious nature.
include code of any kind, and/or hyperlinks to objectionable material.
contain copyrighted or other proprietary material of any kind.
include advertising or solicitation of funds for any purpose.

Personal attacks on any person or organization, including other commenters, are not permitted.

Commenting on any Letter to the Editor will be closed 48 hours after its original publication date.

We reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions.

The editor’s decision regarding publication of all comments is final.