About The McClure Standard

In 1902, a journalist named Ida Tarbell began publishing a series of articles in McClure's Magazine about the Standard Oil Company. She spent five years investigating court records, financial disclosures, railroad shipping agreements, interviews with former employees, executives, and competitors.

The series ran for nineteen installments. When it was finished, Standard Oil – the most powerful corporation in America – was broken up by the United States Supreme Court.

Tarbell had the conviction that the public had a right to know how the money moved. McClure's Magazine and its contemporaries – Lincoln Steffens exposing municipal corruption, Ray Stannard Baker documenting racial injustice – created what Theodore Roosevelt dismissively called "muckraking." The name was meant as an insult. Journalists have since worn it as a title.

Muckraking resurfaces every time the distance between what a corporation tells investors and what it actually does becomes wide enough for someone to notice.

The McClure Standard is a business accountability publication. We compare what companies say in presentations with what they put in filings, what they tell employees with what they tell the public, and what they report to investors with what's actually happening inside the building.

Our reporting is independent, source-protected, and built on documentary evidence. We do not accept advertising. We do not publish rumors. We ask companies for comment before publication and include their responses in full.

McClure's Magazine proved that rigorous, patient, evidence-based reporting could hold the most powerful institutions in America accountable. That was true in 1902. It is true now.

The McClure Standard Is Our Standard

Every claim is corroborated before publication – through documents, public filings, or independent sources. Nothing runs on a single source alone.

Sources are confidential by default. We do not identify anyone without their explicit consent.

Financial data is drawn from SEC filings, earnings transcripts, and corporate disclosures. Insider accounts are verified against the documentary record.

We contact companies before publication and run their responses in full.

We carry no advertising and hold no financial relationship with any company we cover.

When we are wrong, we say so.

The standard is the standard.

Founded: 2026
Contact: mcclurestandard@proton.me
Signal: Available Here