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Trust · Editorial Standards

How we make what we publish.

One accountable editor, evidence-only sourcing, human fact-checking, and a plain policy on how AI is — and isn't — used.

Maintained by Rachel Julian, Founder & Editor-in-Chief · Effective July 17, 2026
Direct answer: Every editorial conclusion, ranking, and verdict here is a human judgment made and owned by editor-in-chief Rachel Julian. We score on published commitments only, verify every statistic against a resolving primary source, disclose sponsorship, and correct in public. AI may assist with drafting or research, but it never authors a conclusion, and no AI-touched fact is published without human verification.

Who is accountable?

Rachel Julian, founder and editor-in-chief, owns every score, verdict, recommendation, and consequential editorial judgment. The one bounded exception is the daily Business Travel News synthesis, which is attributed to The Sales Traveler News Desk and labeled as AI-generated rather than silently assigned to Rachel. There is no undisclosed committee; the public method says exactly where human judgment ends and automation begins.

How do we source and fact-check?

We score and cite on published commitments only — what a brand or provider states in writing, not what we assume or infer. Every factual claim is anchored to a real, resolving, primary or authoritative source. A statistic that cannot be confirmed on a source that actually loads does not get published, no matter how good it sounds. Fresh-looking numbers are often laundered through secondary blogs; we trace them to origin or drop them.

How do we use AI?

Plainly, because readers deserve to know:

  • AI does not make consequential judgments. Rankings, verdicts, scores, recommendations, adverse findings, outreach, pricing, and attribution decisions remain human-only. A model does not decide what is Sales-Ready or which trip is worth taking.
  • The daily Business Travel News brief has one disclosed, bounded exception. An automated agent may turn a committed headline and attributed RSS summary into a question, reader summary, and “Sales Traveler Note.” It does not read the full linked article. The page identifies the News Desk and the AI method rather than assigning the words to Rachel.
  • The exception is fail-closed. Deterministic checks reject missing or malformed output, unsupported numbers, quotations, recommendations, adverse characterisations, and source-field changes. A failed model call means no brief publishes. The source link and attributed feed text remain visible so readers can check the basis.
  • Every other AI-touched factual claim is human-verified against a primary source before it publishes. No AI-generated statistic, quote, or citation is trusted on its own.
  • We never publish AI-generated images presented as real, fabricated reviews or testimonials, invented sources, or a synthetic person presented as a real contributor.

Independence, disclosure & corrections

A partnership buys reach, never a rating. Sponsored content is disclosed; commercial relationships never move a score, ranking, or conclusion, and a request to the contrary ends the relationship. When we get a fact wrong we fix it, label it a correction with a dated note, and log it — see the corrections ledger and the full scoring governance. Scored companies hold a verbatim right of reply on a published clock.

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