The woes of the web

Before the days of computers, to get a Post archive, you’d probably have to dig through clips somewhere in a dusty room or on microfiche. Now – despite some glitches in our system – finding a story is as easy as typing the keyword.

Of course, people that were arrested on pretty minor marijuana charges in 1999 are not so happy with this. A Post online article might be the first hit their name gets in a Google search.

The executive editors at The Post often receive e-mails asking us to remove certain articles or names from the database.

Our initial reaction was “this is absurd!” These are our archives, and we’re not taking them down years later for you! But then we really had to powwow about what to do.

Petty crimes in college can be detrimental to a person’s family and job, as some e-mails have pointed out. And I sometimes feel sympathetic toward people who were unlucky enough to be in the news right when the news had a surge in availability.

Some people allege that the reporting was incorrect years ago. But for the most part, this should have been brought to someone’s attention years ago. We can’t make a judgment about writers long gone from The Post, and so we just trust these faceless student journalists of the past — which is kind of a scary thought. But if there really is a problem with a story that someone can prove, then of course we would consider changing a story.

From the editors
Editor Brittany Kress sought the opinion of the executive editors over the summer and we all agreed to have a policy of keeping the archives up. In the future, we’ve discussed finding ways to block names in searches. Brittany sums up our decision on the matter in an e-mail:

This is interesting because it's something journalists have probably never had to deal with before the last 10 years or so. There are a lot of ways we're setting a precedent at The Post; however, this is one of the more serious. In my opinion, we shouldn't allow our archives to get altered in any way -- unless they are factually wrong, of course. We wouldn't ever destroy a print version of an archived story, for example. The difference is that no one would have probably seen that story bound in a book on some dusty library shelf, but now it's showing up as a top search hit on Google. Nonetheless, I stand by the practice of not altering or destroying our work.

Later, she told me she decided to formulate a usual response to any further requests, which makes our policy on the matter clear.

Associate Editor Justin Thompson has interesting thoughts on the topic in an e-mail:

It's not fair to the integrity of our archives to cut or remove articles that someone suddenly is ashamed of. These papers are historical record once they're published and The Post archives are the best documented history of Ohio University and Athens. As for fairness, the angle and bias of the article is itself part of the document. For instance, the NYT [New York Times]wouldn't remove editorials condoning slavery simply because prevailing morality is at odds with that.

In one instance, someone who wrote a radical letter years ago wanted us to take down the letter, attesting that their views had changed. Culture Editor Caitlin Price shares her thoughts on this, using a famous letter writer to us in the newsroom. Said letter writer has written some fairly absurd things, which we often publish. Her e-mailed thoughts:

If he were to say, ‘Don't run that,’ or ‘Take that off your Web site,’ I'd say too bad buddy -- you knew you were writing it, you knew we could run it, and we did. If you didn't want it to run, you would have never written it.

Caitlin then mentions that as a writer, many of her stories from the beginning of her time at The Post are crappy in her opinion years later, but she would never want them to be taken down. This made me think: What if old Posties wanted stories taken down? If we take one thing down, it might turn into a snowball of requests. And somehow, knowing that our archives might not be our real archives damages our credibility as a news organization.

As journalists, the overarching thing to remember is that we must never hinder our accessibility. The interest of the public and technology will continue to be at odds, but we must always, in my opinion, error on the side of being too accessible rather than covering up public information for the privacy of a few.

Feedback

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Political correction ...

In the newsroom, sometimes nothing is as offensive as using the word “p.c.” It makes our neck hairs rise as student journalists. We are not trying to write about puppy dogs and community, we say. We are not trying to make everyone feel great. We tell it like it is.

That attitude is one I am willing to expose, and I think a lot of journalists would relate — because alas, journalists are people too.

These past couple weeks, editors at The Post have put a lot of thought to what is p.c. and what is not. When is it necessary to bring up race, gender or disability, and how should a journalist do that?

Our flaws
These thoughts were mostly brought on by a blunder when the word “cripple” ran in a staff member's commentary (Between the Lines: Students Should Practice (Excuse Me) Escalator Etiquette) and our succeeding apology (Associate Editor’s Note: Flippant Flagrancy).

The mistake was unintentional in a rather lighthearted column, but offensive nonetheless. And when we say offensive, we don’t mean oh-we-hear-people-are-mad-so-we’ll-pretend-to-care offensive. Editor Brittany Kress said in an e-mail that the final sentence was unnecessary and offensive, and therefore did not belong in the paper. It’s safe to say that people noticed, including a a letter writer (Your Turn: Offensive word choice demeans people with disabilities ) and a bartender at The Union, where a bunch of us stopped in after work one day.

Sunday, Jan. 7, the apology letter was slotted to run next to a letter from a reader in the Monday paper. Right next to it, humor columnist Warren Locke used the word “crippling” to describe something. Crippling as an adjective simply means (in the Merriam-Webster definition that is our default dictionary) “being lame, flawed, or imperfect.” This is OK to use in some instances without being offensive. However, myself and the copy chief, who were both working late that night, decided it was disrespectful in any form on the page on this particular day. To be safe, we decided to interchange it with another word, until we could put “cripple” and its different uses into our stylebook. Some editors might not have handled the situation in the same way, but I decided it was the best choice. Maybe we were being too p.c.

What we learned is that a snarky, off-the-cuff remark might seem like it’s nothing to us, but it’s not exactly funny to everyone else. Someone who is obsessive-compulsive might not enjoy someone using “OCD” in a colloquial sense, for instance.

Avoiding the race card
Brittany and I, with help of a designer and copy editor, spent over a half hour trying to come up with a label headline (the first two words) for the interracial dating story last Friday. This shows how worried we can be about putting the wrong thing to offend someone. (Complementary couples: At OU, interracial dating promotes tolerance, presents challenges, broadens horizons)

It’s fairly common for us to get a letter from someone complaining that we didn’t refer to their race in the right way. What we try to do is just be consistent, and generally follow the Associated Press style for everything. However, this year we have made specific strides to be flexible. If we think the AP style is wrong, we’re not afraid to plug in a better one.

What about gender?
Gender can sometimes be tricky and less obvious to catch. The other editors at The Post know that I am likely to go on a tangent about this, but it’s still worth mentioning. Gender, similar to race and disability, probably shouldn’t be mentioned if it’s not pertinent to the story. But gender slips in a lot more often than the other two.

For instance, our refer (the teaser that runs at the top of the page) on Jan. 9 said “First female speaker sets tone for Congress.” I found it to be rather unncecessary, but Justin and Brittany disagreed. As Brittany said in an e-mail: “I can see why it might not be necessary, but it’s also not something that should be intentionally left out with the intent of being neutral or politically correct. I’m sure there were handfuls of other papers that ran almost exactly the same thing.”

Associate Editor Justin Thompson explained that because it was Nancy Pelosi’s first act in Congress and she was the first female speaker, it wasn’t out of line. It would have been inappropriate to say something such as “First female rebuts President’s plan.”

All of these decisions are serve as interesting case studies for debates that happen every day in The Post concerning gender, race and disabilities.

Matt Burns, assistant managing editor, told me it’s always better to error on the side of being p.c. “As journalists, sometimes what other people perceive as a lack of sensitivity we see as treating everything on the same level,” he said. “We need to realize that regardless of what we think, people think it’s insensitive.”

Feedback

• Have you noticed a time when you disagreed with how The Post or another publication chose to present gender, race or a disability?