Editorial Policy
This page describes how Paper Matters produces its editorial — our essays, guides, and the rest of our writing — and where AI tools are part of that work. We set it out once, in one place, so the writing itself can stand on its own without a disclaimer on every article. It covers the site as it works today, and will grow to cover other channels as they open.
Site editorial
Our editorial is drafted in collaboration with AI tools, working from rules and direction set by Ivan A. Annikov, the founder and editorial director of Paper Matters. Two kinds of work go into it, and the line between them is the point.
What is Ivan’s, and not the AI’s: the curatorial perspective and editorial direction — the subjects we cover, the arguments we make, the positions Paper Matters holds. His own first-person encounters with the prints we write about, from the Pollock linocut that started the collection to the Whatson woodblock made with the Adachi Institute and the Harrington screen prints. The original photography of works in our collection. The methodology behind what we acquire and what we pass on. And the final review, and the decision to publish.
What the AI assists with: research and the surfacing of named authorities — catalogues raisonnés, institutional references, scholarly sources — for Ivan to verify; outlining; drafting prose from his direction and verified research; structural editing and copyediting against our house rules; fact-checking; and the routine search work of titles, metadata, and internal links.
The principle that separates the two is plain: AI handles the craft of writing; Ivan handles the perspective being written about. It is a tool he uses to produce content from inputs he alone has.
Every piece is then reviewed, refined, and published under his byline, and that byline is real attribution: Ivan is responsible for what goes out under his name, whatever part of the workflow a tool touched. Sources are part of that responsibility — a named authority surfaced in a draft is checked against the original before it runs, and a citation that wasn’t verified is an error to correct, not something the process permits.
It is a fair question how this squares with our manifesto, which keeps AI-generated work out of what we sell. The manifesto’s position — that the work we carry is made, not generated — is about art, where the making is a human act a machine does not originate. Editorial writing is not art; it is craft and argument in service of a perspective, and that perspective is Ivan’s whichever tool drafts the prose that carries it. So refusing to sell AI-generated work and using AI to draft our editorial are coherent positions, not a contradiction. We use AI for the craft, not as a stance against it.
Newsletter
Paper Matters does not yet publish a newsletter. When it does, its workflow will be described here — either the same as the site editorial above, or with any differences noted.
YouTube and video
Video follows the same division. Scripts are drafted with AI assistance from Ivan’s direction and held to the same verification as our writing — claims checked against named sources before they are spoken — while the narration and on-camera presence are his own.
Updates
This page describes how we work now. As the tools and channels change — as the newsletter launches, as video grows, as any collaborators join — we update it to match actual practice. It is a living description, not a fixed statement.