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

• How do you think news organizations should handle their web archives?
• What do you think of The Post's decision to not alter web archives?