Ethics and Standards

Coverage

Content you see on my platforms falls into two categories: Editorial and Sponsored.

Editorial stories are stories I decide to cover on my own with zero editorial input from any external parties.

Sponsored stories are stories I do through paid ad campaigns where a brand or client pays me to make a video or write a story. Sponsored content is always clearly labeled as a paid partnership or an ad.

Ad Disclosure

I always disclose if a sponsored piece of content is sponsored.

I will never accept brand offers that ask me not to disclose it.

Not doing so is a violation of Federal Trade Commission guidelines and violates my audience's trust.

Corrections

I do my best not to make factual errors. However, when it does happen, I note the correction in the caption and/or a pinned comment.

Funding Sources

This is how In The Hyphen makes money as of August 2026:

Programmatic Ads: These are ads inserted automatically by YouTube/Google AdSense on my long-form videos on YouTube. They play at the beginning and middle of my videos. I have no control over what brands show up here, but I do get a cut of every impression.

Host Reads: These are 60- to 90-second ad reads in my long-form videos. They usually start with something like, "I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video." The segment is always marked as an ad with text on screen. While the client has control over what is said in that ad, they have zero control over the rest of the video.

Sponsored Short-Form Videos: Brands and clients pay me to make a dedicated short-form video about a product or initiative. These are usually published on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and/or TikTok and always clearly marked as ads or paid partnerships.

Newsletter Sponsorships: These are similar to sponsored short-form videos, where a brand pays me to be the presenting sponsor of a newsletter edition. This usually means there logo is at the top of the newsletter accompanied by "in partnership with "text. There is a blurb that is marked as an ad in the newsletter, too.

Content Partnerships: These are either editorial partnerships where an outlet pays me to make editorial videos (i.e. Remezcla, Independent Lens, PBS). These are generally posted as collaboration videos. This can also be a licensing deal, where I license my content to a third-party platform and get a share of ad revenue generated by it.

Teaching: I teach journalism part-time at the University of Southern California.