Editorial Standards

Every article on The LA Actor Guide must trace its factual claims to a primary source, carry the date it was last verified, and be written by a named human with relevant experience. This page is the standard we hold ourselves to, published so you can hold us to it too.

What counts as a source

We rank sources in this order, and we use the highest one available:

1. The organization itself. SAG-AFTRA on union rules. A school's own tuition page on its own prices. Actors Access on what Actors Access costs. A studio's own rate card.
2. Government and legal sources. California Labor Code and the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act via official legislative sources. The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement on talent agency licensing. The DMV on residency deadlines. City and county wage ordinances on minimum wage.
3. Established published data. Named market reports for rent figures, cited and dated, presented as the snapshot they are.
4. Reported journalism and on-the-record interviews. For industry practice that no institution publishes, we cite named trade reporting or casting professionals speaking publicly, and we attribute the view rather than laundering it into fact.

What does not count as a source: forum posts, our own memory, "everybody knows", another blog citing another blog, or an AI model's confident guess.

Rules for facts

• No unverified fact gets published. If we cannot source it, it does not appear. A guide with a gap in it is more useful than a guide with a fabrication in it.
• Prices are ranges, sourced, and dated. Every dollar figure names where it came from and when we checked. Prices go stale faster than anything else on this site.
• We do not invent precision. If a school does not publish its tuition, we say it does not publish its tuition and link to their contact page. We do not estimate and present the estimate as a finding.
• Legal and union claims get quoted carefully. We describe what a rule requires; we do not give legal advice, and we say so where it matters.
• Named entities in full. SAG-AFTRA, not SAG. Breakdown Services, not "the breakdown site". Precision in names is precision in facts.

Rules for writing

• Original writing only. We never copy a school's marketing copy, another publication's phrasing, or a platform's help text. Short quotes are quoted, attributed, and rare.
• Answer first. Every article and every section answers its question in the first sentence, before context. If you only read the first paragraph, you should still get the right answer.
• No filler. We do not pad for length, repeat introductions, or add sections that exist only to hold keywords. Guides get cut, not stretched.
• Plain language. Industry vocabulary gets defined on first use and linked to the glossary.
• Los Angeles specifics. National advice is easy to find and rarely useful here. We name real neighborhoods, real commutes, real studios, and real market conventions.

Experience and attribution

Articles are written and edited by Joshua Michael Shelton, who has worked in the entertainment industry for approximately 20 years and coached actor headshot clients for approximately 18 years.

Where an article states his professional opinion or observation, it is set apart in a quotation and attributed to him by name. Where an article states a fact, the fact is sourced regardless of his experience. Experience earns the right to interpret facts; it does not replace them.

On reviewers: the brief for a site like this usually calls for a separate fact-checker. At launch, this site has one editor, so pages say "Written and edited by Joshua Michael Shelton" and nothing more. We do not name a reviewer who does not exist, and our structured data does not claim a review process we do not have. If a qualified second reader joins, they will be named on the pages they check.

Dates and updates

Every article carries three dates, visibly:

• Published: when it first went live.
• Updated: when its content last genuinely changed. We do not touch this date to look fresh.
• Last verified: when we last re-checked its sourced facts, whether or not anything changed.

Verification cadence: prices and platform costs are re-checked quarterly. Union and legal claims are re-checked at least twice a year and whenever a contract or statute changes. Anything an actor could lose money by getting wrong gets checked first.

Independence and conflicts

The LA Actor Guide takes no advertising, no sponsored content, no affiliate revenue, and no paid placement as of July 2026. See the advertising and sponsorship policy for the rules that apply if that ever changes.

The one standing conflict is disclosed everywhere it applies: the editor owns Headshots LA, a Los Angeles headshot studio. Our headshot guides carry a visible disclosure box, present the studio as his own rather than as a recommendation, and cite independent photographers' published pricing alongside it. No other page on this site links or promotes it. The review and ranking methodology explains how we handle judgment calls where we have a stake.

Corrections

We publish corrections visibly and dated on the article itself, not quietly in the background. Anyone can report an error, including the businesses we write about. The process, and what we will and will not change, is in the corrections policy.

Contributors

If contributors are ever added, they must: write originally, source to primary material, disclose every relevant business relationship, accept a byline with real credentials, and follow every rule on this page. Anonymous or AI-generated contributions are not published.