Authorship & Anonymity Policy

Sarasota County Facts is a project of Local Government Accountability (LGAI).

All investigative reporting, data analysis, and original findings published on this site are produced under LGAI's Authorship & Anonymity Policy. Individual researchers, analysts, and journalists are not named publicly.

Why we do this

The work we do — forensic examination of public budgets, debt, contracts, compensation, and tax policy — regularly produces findings that powerful local interests and highly motivated political actors dislike. In the current climate, people who document verifiable facts from primary public records face elevated risks of harassment, professional retaliation, doxxing, and other forms of blowback. Protecting the people who produce the work is both a practical safety measure and a First Amendment practice.

Anonymity (or limited personal disclosure) is a long-standing American tradition that protects the free flow of information. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the right to anonymous speech as core First Amendment protection. The same principle allowed the authors of the Federalist Papers to write as “Publius,” and it has been used by investigative journalists and accountability researchers for generations.

Our credibility rests on the rigor of the research and the transparency of the methodology — not on personalities. Every factual claim is sourced to primary public records that any citizen can check. The work stands or falls on the evidence.

Historical and modern precedent

This practice is neither new nor unusual:

• Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran) — pioneering investigative journalist
• George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) — journalist and essayist
• Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) — newspaper reporter and columnist
• Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis) — first major female newspaper columnist in the United States
• Cassandra (Sir William Connor) — long-running Daily Mirror columnist
• Myles na gCopaleen (Brian O’Nolan) — Irish Times columnist
• Zero Hedge— publishes under the collective pseudonym “Tyler Durden,” stating that anonymity is “a shield from the tyranny of the majority” to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation and their ideas from suppression

We stand in that tradition. Critics who treat anonymity itself as proof of bad faith are either unfamiliar with the history of independent journalism or deliberately ignoring it.

Our commitment

LGAI accepts confidential tips and protects tipster identities to the fullest extent permitted by law. As a 501(c)(4), donor identities remain confidential. Researchers are expected to disclose conflicts of interest internally. Material factual errors are logged publicly.

The public record is the only authority that matters. We publish it so citizens can hold their government accountable.

For the complete mission, methodology, and editorial standards of the parent organization, visit localgovtinstitute.org.