Contributor Agreement

You’re responsible for what you publish

Every time you submit a story, or changes to a published story, you’re confirming that:

• The work is your own, or you have the rights to publish it, including any photos.
• Factual claims are accurate to your knowledge, and sourced where a reasonable reader would expect a citation.
• It doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights, defame anyone, or violate the law.
• It isn’t spam, duplicated content, or unedited AI output presented as original reporting.

Our review (below) doesn’t change this. ThePaper doesn’t verify facts, quotes or sources, and a story being approved doesn’t mean ThePaper has checked or endorses what it says.

How review works

Every new story is reviewed before it goes live, and so is every change to a story that’s already published. While changes are in review, the current version stays live; your changes replace it once they’re approved. If they’re not approved, the current version stays as it is. Changes saved as a draft aren’t reviewed or shown until you submit them.

An automated check looks for three things: factual claims with no source attached, content that violates platform policy, and spam or quality signals. It does not verify whether a claim is actually true. A story the check clears may go live straight away; anything else waits for an editor.

An editor may approve a story, ask you to make changes before approving it, or decline it. Any changes are yours to make. If a story is held, it’s kept (not deleted), you’ll be told why, and you can fix and resubmit it.

Repeated flags

If the review flags three of your stories within a rolling 30-day window, your account is automatically suspended pending manual review by an editor. This is a pattern check, not a judgment on any single story, and a suspension can be lifted once reviewed. It exists so that a genuine pattern of problems is caught even if no single story alone would be.

License and ownership

You keep ownership of what you write. Publishing on ThePaper grants ThePaper a license to host, display, and distribute it as part of the platform, and to remove it if it’s found to violate this Agreement or the Terms of Service.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify ThePaper against claims arising from content you published that violates this Agreement, for example a defamation or copyright claim over something you wrote.

Privacy

Your profile, bio, portfolio, and the credentials you add are visible on your public writer page. How we handle that and everything else tied to your account is covered in the Privacy Policy.