The Pourover Code of Ethics
In this day and age, it feels important and necessary to clearly state The Pourover’s core beliefs and principles.
General Principles
In this day and age, it feels important and necessary to clearly state The Pourover’s core beliefs and principles. These include:
- Trans rights are human rights. Every trans person should be able to live as their true selves, free from discrimination and bigotry.
- Black lives matter. The history of coffee is intertwined with the subjugation and exploitation of Black and Indigenous people, and that legacy continues to this day. Illuminating and, hopefully, helping to correct those injustices is central to The Pourover’s mission.
- Free Palestine. The Pourover stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and seeks to defend and promote their struggle.
- The Pourover is unequivocally pro-union and pro-worker. Capitalism is a scourge on both people and planet, and a key part of The Pourover’s mission is critiquing and scrutinising its impact on the coffee industry.
- The Pourover is explicitly opposed to generative AI.
Editorial Principles
The Pourover aims to produce accurate, deeply researched, and well-sourced articles that cover the coffee industry critically but fairly. Each article, unless otherwise noted, is researched and written by Fionn Pooler.
The Pourover respects copyright laws, and uses either original photography or images that fall within Creative Commons licenses. Primarily, images are sourced via Wikimedia Commons, Pexels, Unsplash, and Flickr.
Factual errors, should they occur, will be corrected promptly and prominently, with a reason given.
Editorial Independence
As an independent coffee publication, The Pourover does not accept guest articles, run ads, or allow sponsored posts of any kind. While public relations professionals sometimes send press releases, these are never used as the sole basis of a story and all information within is cross-referenced with other sources. Occasional collaborations, such as this one, are clearly noted.
Because The Pourover doesn’t run ads or accept sponsors, the newsletter’s only revenue channel is paid subscriptions. Occasionally, subscribers appear in articles as sources or as interview subjects for Q&As—in such cases, the relationship is acknowledged.
Strangely, this has never come up, but just in case: The Pourover doesn’t accept gifts, money, travel, or other largesse in exchange for favourable coverage.
Sourcing
The coffee industry is still dominated by white men, and this publication is written by a white man. As such, The Pourover strives to interview and spotlight as diverse a range of sources as possible, and showcase voices and perspectives that are less prominent within the industry—especially those of farmers and farmworkers.
All sources for Pourover articles are credited according to typical journalistic conventions, unless a source has requested a specific accommodation, such as anonymity. All facts and outside information, from quotes to book extracts, are credited, cited, and linked to directly.
Artificial Intelligence
The Pourover is explicitly opposed to generative AI, and will never use LLMs or chatbots in any part of the research, writing, or publication process. That means no help with outlining, drafting, editing, or image generation.
For a more comprehensive outline of The Pourover's stance, reference this piece:
Fionn Pooler
Conflicts of Interest
In addition to The Pourover, Fionn’s freelance work includes writing for a number of coffee industry publications, such as Fresh Cup Magazine, Sprudge, STiR Coffee & Tea, and others. Additionally, Fionn occasionally provides content writing services to a select few coffee companies.
Although conflicts of interest are avoided wherever possible, if at any time a company for which Fionn has written is the subject of a story, this fact will be acknowledged in the piece.
Other
This is a living document and will be updated or adapted as circumstances dictate. The most recent edit was made on Jan. 9, 2026.
This code of ethics was inspired by Dave Infante, who created a similar code for his drinks industry newsletter, Fingers.