'Unpublishing' - the growing challenge for editors/publishers

I just came across some work by Kathy English, reader's representative for the Toronto Star, in which she looks at the growing number of requests for news organizations to "unpublish" information in their digital archives and on their Web sites.

English did her paper, "The longtail of news,"(PDF) for the AP Managing Editors. It should be required reading for every journalist, but especially every editor. (Here also is an earlier article from English on "Why the Star does not 'unpublish.' ")

It follows up on work that I, Larry Timbs and Will Atkinson did in 2007 in what we think was the first academic study of newspapers' "digital attics." It was presented at the annual Huck Boyd conference, and you can find our paper in the winter 2007 edition of Grassroots Editor.(PDF)

English finds much the same thing we did - there is widespread opposition against unpublishing. But requests seem to be growing. At the time we did our research, more than a quarter of those at community papers and more than half of those at larger papers said they had had requests to remove material from the archives. (Our research was based on responses from 63 editors at Southern Newspaper Association member papers. The response rate was disappointing, but given English's conclusion that this is a growing problem -- enough so that the APME commissioned her study -- I would hope future studies would see greater response.)

English's nine-question survey does not appear to ask directly how often the respondents (110 editors responded nationwide) have had to deal with such requests or the frequency. However, she cites one Gatehouse executive who says that while five years ago such requests were rare, now he deals with them almost daily. (On the other end, a Chicago Sun-Times editor says he rarely deals with such requests.)

She finds more than three-quarters of those who responded would consider unpublishing in some circumstances. That indicates a bit of a softening from the 95 percent who supported the statement in our study that changes should not be made unless there is clear error. But both studies still find strong opposition to unpublishing overall.

It is still disappointing to find in English's study that barely half of the news organizations she surveyed had some kind of policy for dealing with such requests. Our study found policies at about a third -- but this issue is too important, and growing, for any organization not to have considered what to do. Our paper, more than English's, goes into some detail on the legal horizon (and a principle, quickly disappearing, called "practical obscurity" - more in a 2008 NY Times article), and it is not at all certain that the legal system won't weigh in on such things. (A higher court later overturned the order to remove the stories from the Kansas City Star Web site, but we are likely to see more such cases.)

What our study does that English's doesn't is pose four scenarios to the editors and measure their reactions. I think you would find the results interesting.

The problem, of course, is not confined to the U.S. See this U.K. editor's ruminations from earlier this year and readers' responses  [2011: This link is now dead]. And in 2007, the same year as our study, one professor told the New York Times that archives perhaps should be programmed to eventually "forget" some information, much as people do. Brad Dennison, the Gatehouse executive interviewed by English, haswas, according to her paper, decided that instituting a pilot project at some papers in which most police blotter items would disappear from Gatehouse archives six months after their first publication (though he knows they may well live on in other cached parts of the Web).

English points out that police blotter reports posted online pose the potential for increasing problems. I can tell you from personal experience as founder of Hartsville Today, a community news site affiliated with the local twice-weekly paper, that such discussions have been a hot-button issue. (Unfortunately, a system crash late last year wiped out all the previous threads, but I think I may post something on the site asking for updated thoughts.) The thing that seems to infuriate people is that news organizations are willing to publish blotter items but then seldom follow up on the outcome to produce a complete record. (And, even if they do, they seldom use the ability to digitally link the stories.)

I think English has some good recommendations in her best practices section. That includes having a clear policy and making it known to the public. I especially like her recommendation that unpublish decisions should be made by consensus. As she notes, this provides a way for editors and publishers to deflect requests from powerful people and institutions. I can think of nothing worse than, if a news organization does unpublish, it gets a reputation of toadying to the powerful and ignoring the powerless.

About 50 non-journalists also answered English's survey, and she says most supported the resistance to "unpublish." I think it may be time to do some more extensive research in this area -- and then repeat it periodically. I have a feeling this is not going to be a static subject.

Also worth looking at:
This Jan. 5 article on Walletpop from Jason Cochran about newspaper archives in general being in jeopardy -- and with it major chunks of community history -- as the industry contracts.

Newspapers' digital archives pose ethical challenges

Interesting story in the Chronicle of Higher Education (free area) this week on how college alumni, including former student journalists are trying to rewrite history by asking that embarrassing material -- including stories they have written -- be taken down from college publication Web sites.

So time for a little self-promotion here.

Larry Timbs, Will Atkinson and I did some of the first exploration two years ago into the ethical and operational issues raised by newspaper Web sites and the digitization of newspaper archives. We asked newspaper editors a wide range of questions, including some relating to four possible situations in which someone might ask that their picture or a story naming them be taken down.

You can find How America's newspapers handle (or don't handle) their 'digital attics': An investigation into ethical, legal and privacy issues emerging from publications' Web archives at the Grassroots Editor Web site. (The paper was presented at the 13th Newspapers and Community Building symposium.)

If you want the direct link to the PDF, here it is.

Exposed - the angst-filled blogger

The New York Times Magazine is fronting an article this week by one Emily Gould who regales the world with her angst as a blogger (both on Gawker and personally) who -- surprise -- finds out the world's scrutiny is not always a great thing and that when the tables are turned can be vicious.

Most of the comments (700+ so far) are, shall we say, not especially supportive. Can't say as I disagree with most that the article is long on -- well, just plain long, boring and generally shallow. (Although it does have a pair of neologisms I had not really come across before -- "oversharing" and "oversharer" -- that seem to perfectly capture the concept.)

I do continue to be fascinated, however, by the swirling, evolving ethos of the online world when it comes to this apparent national obsession of baring our souls digitally. A year ago, in New York magazine, Emily Nussbaum's take on it was of a "just deal with it" generation. (What is it about Emilys and this topic?)

Later on came a meme that, in essence, said: If I post it on the Web for someone to see and it's not designed for you , then it's your bad if you go and look at it.

Now, it seems, with the NYT Magazine article we have entered the angst phase, as boring and narcissistic as it is.

I just find it fascinating to watch things unfold as we deal with redefining our relationship to privacy. (I was going to write redefining privacy, but as I reread the article, it seems to me that Gould really is grappling with what has become for her a longing for the old-fashioned idea of privacy and how to achieve it in the self-promotional new media age.)

Online privacy - are our standards changing?

This past spring, I, along with Larry Timbs and Will Atkinson presented a paper to the Newspaper Association of America dealing with the ethical problems that having newspaper archives digitized and online can raise -- things that were not issues in the era when archives fell under what in legal circles was known as "practical obscurity."

(Here is a summary column I wrote on it. The paper has now been published in Grassroots Editor and can be found here (PDF).)

During the research, Emily Nussbaum wrote in New York magazine about an emerging generation for whom privacy was perhaps a bit of a nostalgic concept and for whom the operative method was now to simply deal with it, accept that invasions would be part of your life and move on. (That's an over-simplification, and you should read the article.)

Then recently I came across this post by Zach Echola, a media producer in the upper Midwest, in which he talks about his attitude toward the privacy dangers online. Essentially, he throws it back at those who would find the information:

The real voyeurs are those employers and companies that pry into our online lives unprovoked and unnecessarily.

Much of what is on the Internet is not intended for a mass audience and never reaches that–or any–audience.

It is delusional to think that everything that happens online has any relevance beyond its creator’s ego. In the case of drunken Facebook photos between friends, the intent is for other friends to view the photos, not anyone else. ...

Are people really so dumb that they can’t differentiate work from play on the Web? I think not. And I think there’s a generation of kids coming into the work force with a basic understanding of this. ...

The greatest flaw in thinking about the Internet, is thinking that bloggers (including me), Facebook users or people who post photos to flickr want mass attention and fame. We don’t (or at the very least, we don’t expect it). We target our message, whether it be photos of a night out with friends or posts about the Internet, to those few people who might perchance stumble across a slice of our digital selves (key word: slice). We are outliers. We are all Chris Anderson’s Tail.

15 minutes of fame has given way to being famous to 15 people. Mass media is dying, if it isn’t already dead. Get over yourselves.

Isn’t privacy a two-way street?

Is this a naive cry in the wilderness, or are we really seeing a defiant shift here to perhaps a time when the rules have changed and privacy is seen as an almost quaint notion that is your responsibility, not mine?

(In our paper, we suggested there might even be a legal basis for this shift - a theory that turns media into custodians of the information with a duty not to disclose, rather than simply distributors. It's one of those ideas floating out there that journalists need to pay closer attention to, as they should be doing with much of modern information policy.)

Lots to think about. What do you think?