We have a strict policy on unpublishing: We don’t. On “unpublishing,” meaning removing a story entirely from the Web: “Clarifications should be rare and must be approved by the editor-in-chief, or managing editors.”Īnd here are Mr. A serious error must be noted at the top of the story, blog or graphic.” “Placement for corrections reflects gravity of error. “We should never ‘unpublish’ stories from the Web.” The memo appeared Wednesday on Jim Romenesko’s blog,, and The Post’s new rules were summarized as follows: Here are The Post’s new rules, with some responses from Greg Brock, senior editor for standards at The Times. So, when The Washington Post (which has a new editor, Martin Baron) this week unveiled some revisions to its online corrections policy, I thought it might interest readers to see how they compare with those at The Times. And, as with many things at The Times, there are rather formalized rules about them. The Times takes this seriously enough that it has a senior editor and a news assistant who deal exclusively with corrections. Printed corrections to material that has been published in the print edition of The Times appear most commonly on Page A2. Thus, they write and publish corrections. Newspaper people try to get everything right, but given that they are human beings writing and editing huge amounts of copy on unforgiving deadlines, often they don’t.
