Our editorial standards

Independence

Editorial decisions at NASHVILLE are made by the editorial staff alone. No advertiser, sponsor, affiliate partner, or business contact has any say in what we cover, what we say about it, or where it appears. Advertisers do not see coverage before publication, and they do not get advance notice of critical coverage.

A commercial relationship neither earns a place a recommendation nor disqualifies it from one. If a business we work with commercially is genuinely the right answer to a reader question, we say so and label the relationship. If it is not the right answer, it does not appear.

Separation of editorial and commercial

Editorial and commercial are separate functions with separate reporting lines. Sales staff do not assign, write, edit, or approve editorial content. Editorial staff do not set advertising rates, negotiate deals, or hold revenue targets tied to specific coverage.

When the two need to talk, an editor is present and the outcome is a labeling decision, not a coverage decision. Sponsored content is written or reviewed to a separate standard, is visually distinct, and always carries a label. The complete list of what is and is not for sale is on the advertising page.

Sourcing

Practical details are taken from primary sources: the business itself, the venue, the event organizer, the operator’s own booking system, or a government or transit agency. We do not copy hours, addresses, prices, or dates from another guide, an aggregator, or a review site and present them as checked.

• Hours, addresses, and prices come from the operator or its official channels.
• Event dates and times are confirmed with the organizer or the venue’s own calendar.
• Claims about what a place is like come from firsthand experience by a named writer, or they are attributed to whoever made them.
• Where a detail is likely to change, we date it on the page so you can judge how much weight it carries.
• When a business will not confirm something, we say that it is unconfirmed rather than guessing.

Fact-checking

Before a page goes live, it goes through the same sequence:

• The writer submits the piece with a source for every checkable claim: address, hours, price, capacity, closure, ownership, and any superlative.
• An editor checks each of those claims against the source, not against the draft. Numbers, names, and spellings are checked individually.
• Every listing is stamped with the date a person last checked its practical details and a status showing whether that check is current.
• Anything that cannot be confirmed is cut, softened to what we can support, or marked as unverified in plain language.
• The editor who signs off is recorded on the page. Publication is a decision by a named person.

How places get considered in the first place, how often we re-check them, and what each verification state means is set out in how we choose.

Named authorship

Every article has a byline with a real person’s name, their role, what they cover, and a way to contact them. Pages that have been through a formal check also name the editor. We do not publish under invented personas, house pen names, or a generic staff byline used to obscure who did the work.

Bylines carry a publication date and, when a piece has been revised in a way that changes its substance, an updated date. Silent rewrites of substantive claims are treated as corrections, not edits.

How we use AI

Plainly: AI assists with drafting. It is used for first drafts, restructuring, summarizing source material we have already gathered, and routine copy tasks. The itinerary tool assembles plans from stored listings using set rules about timing, distance, and opening days. It does not invent places, and it can only return listings we have published.

A named human edits everything before it is published and is accountable for it. That person is responsible for the accuracy of every claim on the page regardless of how the first draft was produced. AI is never the source of a fact, never a byline, and never the reason an error stands. We do not publish AI-generated photographs presented as photographs of real places.

Errors and corrections

We correct errors quickly, in place, and visibly. A correction appears on the page it affects, dated, describing what was wrong and what it now says. We do not delete a page to make a mistake disappear, and we do not quietly swap a wrong fact for a right one on anything substantive.

Report an error to corrections@nashroam.com. The full policy, including what counts as a correction rather than an update, is on the corrections page.

Conflicts of interest

Writers and editors disclose to their editor any financial interest, employment, consulting work, family relationship, or close personal relationship involving a business we cover. Disclosure happens before an assignment, not after publication.

• Nobody writes about a business they own part of, work for, are paid by, or are related to the owners of. That assignment goes to someone else.
• Where a relationship is unavoidable and the coverage is still worth publishing, it is disclosed on the page in the reader’s view, not in a policy document.
• Staff do not accept cash, gift cards, equity, or personal discounts from businesses we cover.
• Press trips, comped meals, comped rooms, and free tickets are disclosed on the resulting page. Accepting one never comes with agreed coverage or approval over what we write.
• Outside freelance work for a business in a category we cover has to be cleared by an editor in advance.

Questions about a specific piece

Ask. Editorial questions go to editorial@nashroam.com, and we will tell you where a claim came from. Other routes are on the contact page.