Privacy Policy

Last updated October 23, 2026

Effective October 5, 2026. This policy replaces the one carried over from our previous website.

The Painted Desert Tribune is published by Painted Desert Media Group, LLC, in Winslow, Arizona. This page says, in plain terms, what the website at tribunenewsnow.com and our mobile app learn about you, what we do with it, who else touches it, and how to have it corrected or removed. We wrote it from what the site actually does, and we will change it when the site changes.

The short version

You can read the Tribune without an account. We count visits with our own statistics, which use no cookies and never learn your name.
We do not sell or rent information about readers, and we do not share it with advertisers.
Advertising on this site is sold by us directly to local businesses. There are no ad networks, no advertising cookies and no tracking that follows you to other websites.
If you subscribe, sign up for a newsletter or send us something, we keep what is needed to deliver it and to answer you.
Card payments are handled by Stripe. Your card number never reaches our server.
There are no comment sections on this site, and we do not use Google Analytics.

When you read the site

Our own reading statistics

To know which stories are read and how the site is used, we record page views in a system we built and run ourselves. For each visit it notes the page, roughly how long it was open and how far it was scrolled, the website that referred you (the site’s name only, not the full address), and the name of any outside site you click through to. If you search the site, we keep the words you searched for, how many results came back and which result you opened, so the newsroom can see what readers are looking for; that record carries no name, address or identifier and is deleted after 400 days.

These statistics use no cookies. Your browser holds a random identifier in its own storage so that two pages read in one sitting count as one visit; it is not tied to a name, an email address or an account. Your internet address is never stored: the server shortens it, scrambles it with a secret value, and keeps only that scrambled fragment, which we use to filter out automated traffic. If your browser sends a “Do Not Track” signal, nothing is recorded. Rows are deleted after 400 days.

Server logs

Like every web server, ours writes a line for each request: the time, the page, the internet address it came from and the type of browser. We use these logs to keep the site running and to investigate abuse. They are deleted after 14 days.

The network in front of the site

Pages reach you through Cloudflare, which protects the site from attacks and delivers it quickly. Cloudflare necessarily sees each request, including your internet address, and may set a short-lived security cookie if it needs to check that a visitor is not an automated attack.

Free stories and day passes

Some stories are for subscribers, with a number free each month. The count of free stories you have opened is kept in your own browser’s storage, not on our server. If you buy a day pass, the site sets one cookie, pdt_day_pass, that says the pass is valid and when it ends; it expires with the pass. An older cookie named pdt_meter is still read if your browser has one.

Accounts and subscriptions

If you create an account or subscribe, we keep your name, your email address and a scrambled form of your password that cannot be read back. For a print subscription we keep the mailing address the paper goes to, and for a gift subscription the recipient’s name and address. We keep which plan you have, when it started and when it ends, and a record of changes to it.

Payment is taken on Stripe’s own pages. Stripe receives your card details; we receive only a confirmation and a reference number that lets us match your payment to your subscription and send you to Stripe’s page to manage or cancel it. While you are signed in, the site sets the standard sign-in cookies so you stay signed in.

We use this information to deliver the paper, to give you access, to send receipts and renewal reminders, and to answer you when you write to us about your subscription.

Email newsletters

When you sign up for a newsletter we keep your email address, your name if you gave one, and which newsletters you chose. You confirm your address before anything is sent. Each issue records whether it was opened and which links were clicked, so we can tell which newsletters and which stories readers find useful; that record is kept on our own server.

The emails are delivered by Postmark, a mail service that sends them on our behalf and tells us when an address has stopped working or a message was marked as spam, so that we stop sending to it. Every issue has a link to unsubscribe and a link to change your choices. Unsubscribing takes effect immediately.

Things you send us

When you use the contact form or send a news tip, we receive what you write along with the name, email address and phone number you choose to give. It goes to the newsroom and is kept so we can follow up. Tell us if you need your identity kept confidential, before you send anything you would not want attributed to you.

When you submit an event, a classified ad, an obituary, a public notice or a property listing, we keep your contact details so we can reach you about it, and we publish the submission itself. Anything you submit for publication becomes public, in print and online, and may remain in our archive. Paid submissions are charged through Stripe in the same way as subscriptions.

Advertising

Every advertisement on this site was placed by the Tribune for a business that bought the space from us. Ads are images and links served from our own server. We count how many times each ad was shown and how many times it was clicked, by day, and report those totals to the advertiser. The counts are not tied to you, and advertisers receive no information about individual readers. We do not allow advertising networks, advertising cookies or third-party tracking code.

If you are an advertiser, we keep your business contact details, your artwork, your orders and your invoices.

Other services your browser may contact

A few features load something from another company, and that company then receives your internet address as any website would:

Maps. Pages with a map load map images from OpenStreetMap.
Video. When you play an embedded video, it comes from YouTube or Vimeo, which may set their own cookies once you press play.
Live streams. A page showing a live stream loads its player from jsDelivr, a public software library.
Podcasts. Episodes are served by us. We count downloads per episode using the same scrambled address fragment described above, with no cookies.
Stripe. When you choose to pay, you leave our site for Stripe’s checkout page, which is covered by Stripe’s privacy policy.

Weather on the site comes from the National Weather Service and is fetched by our server, not by your browser.

Who else handles your information

We use a small number of companies to run the site. Each receives only what its job requires, under its own terms:

DigitalOcean hosts the server and holds our backups, which are encrypted before they leave the server.
Cloudflare delivers and protects the site.
Stripe processes payments.
Postmark delivers our email.
Google Workspace provides the newsroom’s own email, so messages you send to an @yourtrib.com address are held there.

We do not sell information about readers. We disclose it to others only when the law requires it, and where we are allowed to, we will tell you first.

How long we keep things

Reading statistics: 400 days.
Server logs: 14 days.
Backups: 30 days.
Account and subscription records: for as long as the account exists, and afterward for as long as tax and accounting rules require us to keep records of a sale.
Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe. We then keep only the address and the fact that you unsubscribed, so that we do not email you again by mistake.
Messages and news tips: for as long as they are needed for the reporting or the correspondence they belong to.
Published stories, notices, obituaries and listings: these are part of the newspaper’s record and are kept in the archive.

Your choices

Unsubscribe from any newsletter with the link at the bottom of every issue.
Turn on “Do Not Track” in your browser and our statistics will not record your visits. Clearing your browser’s site data removes the random identifier and the free-story count.
Ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and the information tied to it. We will do so unless we are required to keep a record, such as proof of a payment.
If something we published about you is wrong, write to the newsroom at the address below and we will look into it.

Write to newsroom@yourtrib.com, or by mail to Painted Desert Tribune, P.O. Box 278, Winslow, AZ 86047. Our office is at 118 E. Second St., Winslow, and the phone is (928) 524-6203. We answer privacy requests within 30 days.

Children

The Tribune is a general-interest newspaper and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, tell us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change how the site handles information, we will update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will say so on the site and in our newsletters before it takes effect.