Privacy

We collect information you choose to provide, including email addresses for newsletters, account information for memberships, billing-related membership status, and messages or other material you send to The Badger.

We also collect basic technical and usage information, such as pages viewed, referral information, device and browser details, approximate location derived from network data, cookies, and service logs.

We use information to publish and deliver local news, operate reader accounts, send newsletter confirmations and digests, manage memberships, process payments, protect the service, debug errors, measure readership, and improve The Badger.

We may use aggregate or de-identified information to understand audience patterns, source performance, and product reliability.

Newsletter subscriptions use your email address, selected edition, cadence, source of signup, and confirmation status. You can unsubscribe through links included in our emails or update preferences from your account when available.

Reader accounts are handled through Clerk. Membership billing is handled through Stripe. We receive information needed to connect your account to your membership, such as email address, customer identifiers, subscription status, renewal status, and billing period. We do not store full payment card numbers.

The Badger uses cookies and similar technologies for authentication, newsletter preference state, site operation, analytics, and abuse prevention.

We use PostHog to understand product usage and reliability. Signed-in users may be associated with an account identifier and email address so we can connect activity to account features such as memberships and subscriptions.

We share information with service providers that help us run The Badger, including hosting, authentication, analytics, email delivery, payment processing, error monitoring, and infrastructure providers.

We may disclose information if required by law, to protect rights and safety, to investigate abuse, or as part of a merger, acquisition, financing, or transfer of assets. We do not sell personal information.

The Badger reports on public meetings, public documents, official records, and other newsworthy material. Information that is lawfully public or provided for publication may appear in articles, source links, images, newsletters, archives, feeds, and search results.

Do not send confidential, privileged, or highly sensitive information through public signup forms, newsletter forms, or other routine site channels.

You can unsubscribe from newsletters, manage membership billing through the membership account flow, sign out of your reader account, or use browser controls to limit cookies where supported.

You may request access, correction, deletion, or other privacy assistance by contacting The Badger through the address listed in the relevant edition or newsletter. We may need to verify your request before acting on it.

We keep information for as long as needed to provide the service, maintain records, comply with law, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and preserve journalistic archives.

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards, but no online service is perfectly secure. The Badger is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

We may update this policy as The Badger changes. The effective date below shows when this page was last revised.