Policies
Editorial
The Piedmont Highlander, a publication conceived, planned and produced by students, is also the product of an academic elective program. Certain guidelines must be put into practice ethically and legally.
Journalistic in nature, TPH attempts to inform and entertain its audience in a broad, fair and accurate manner on all subjects that affect the readers in the areas of academics, clubs, sports and all other aspects of student life. The entire student body of Piedmont High School constitutes the target audience of the newspaper with secondary audiences including school personnel, community members and other journalism groups. Content focuses on coverage that will meet the wants and needs of the majority of the student body.
The staff not only allows but also encourages constructive criticism of any part of the newspaper before or after distribution, but final decisions will be made by the editorial board and adviser.
If deemed necessary, the administration will be consulted concerning questionable material. No material, opinionated or otherwise, that is libelous, irresponsible, advocates an illegal activity or which the editorial board or adviser deems in poor taste will be printed.
Comments
TPH encourages feedback from students, parents, faculty and others. However, we reserve the right to remove website comments at our discretion. Grounds for removal include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Hateful or libelous comments
- Posts that specifically reference the author of a story but not its content
- Falsely assuming the identity of a Piedmont student, faculty member, or others related to a story’s content
- Unrelated comments, spam, or other unauthorized advertising
Equity
TPH maintains a policy not to discriminate through published material against any person or group on the basis of race, gender, nationality, religion, creed, age, sexual orientation, profession or disability. If you feel TPH has strayed from this policy, please contact Faculty Adviser Beth Black.
Advertising
TPH has the right to accept, reject, edit or cancel an advertisement at any time. If already paid, the payment will be refunded in full. Advertising shall be free of all offensive statements, illustrations or implications, Advertisements that are sexist, racist or offer an illegal product for sale will not be published. Ads accepted by TPH are not an endorsement from the staff, adviser, administration, or the PUSD. TPH is a ROP program through Contra Costa Country.
Corrections
In the case that TPH has published incorrect information on tphnews.com, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram , a correction will be made with a note of what was changed at the bottom of the story or attached to a social media post.
Online Privacy
When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data displayed in the comments form, as well as the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string, to assist in spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also known as a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to determine if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After your comment is approved, your profile picture will be visible to the public in the context of your comment.
If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience, so you don’t have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
Articles on this site may include embedded content, such as videos, images, and articles. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor had visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the email used for the password reset.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This allows us to automatically recognize and approve any follow-up comments, rather than holding them in a moderation queue.
For users who register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profiles. All users can view, edit, or delete their personal information at any time, except for their username, which cannot be changed. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data that we are required to retain for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
