Deborah Dwyer
Chapel Hill
Doctoral candidate focused on threats to contemporary journalism including corporate ownership and #unpublishingthenews practices
Articles by Deborah Dwyer
Should News About Our Past Follow Us Forever Online? The Ethics of Unp
BY DEBORAH L. DWYER [PDF VERSION] Marco Verch / CC-BY-2.0By all accounts, Christopher Purtz was a rising star with a bright future ahead. In high school, he was student body president and an All-State football champion. He graduated with honors and earned a full athletic scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley, where he joined a fraternity and was named an All-American.
Policies | Unpublishing the News
My goal is to collect as many newsroom policies — both internal and external — to help newsrooms understand what others in the industry are doing to address third-party requests to take down or alter news content.
Policy Repository | Unpublishing the News
Stories published by the Gazette are archived online. This archive in intended to mimic the function of print archives, which are used as a historical artifact and public record of accurate information. Since content in the archive is often searchable, readers or sources sometimes ask that content be removed from the archive. This policy is intended to explain the function of the online archive and appropriate reasons for removing — or "unpublishing" — content.
Unpublishing challenges demand cohesion between pre- and post-publication policies
Newsroom project shows newsmaking and “news breaking” policies go hand-in-hand I met with several editorial leaders of the Columbia Missourian and KOMU-TV recently about our project to develop pre-publication policies that are crafted in consideration of the longtail of publishing. I’ve written about the importance of critically analyzing reporting practices in a previous article.
Taking a look at the Boston Globe’s “Fresh Start” program
Here are some key elements to consider Last week, the Boston Globe announced a new program to help reduce the impact of personal information found online. The Fresh Start initiative invites people to request a review of information about them in the news site’s public-facing archive, similar to some other efforts we’ve seen launched in the last year or so.
A streamlined unpublishing process is as important as thoughtful policy
An official request process and tracking form are vital — and we want to build you one. If I asked you to give me the basics of your last five unpublishing requests, could you do it? What about the last 10? Twenty? Fifty? Do you have any history about the requests that were received by the editor before you? If you were to leave, is there a record for the next one? If you can’t answer these questions, you are in good company.
Interlocking among American Newspaper Organizations Revisited: “Pressure from the Top” and Its Influence on Newsroom and Content
Corporations become “interlocked” when a person from one organization sits on the board of another. As a corporate function, interlocks facilitate collaborations among firms, influence practices and policies in organizations, and act as knowledge conduits and financial resources (Mizruchi, 1996). Interlocks provide environmental stability or what Pfeffer and Salancik (2003) called the “negotiated environment”—a desirable outcome in uncertain times.
When should you think about unpublishing? Before you publish in the first place.
It may be time to revisit basic editorial practices in your newsroom. Let’s talk about how we might reduce some unpublishing requests before they ever materialize. If you have spent much time thinking about unpublishing, it is easy and logical to think about it as a post-publication problem.
‘Unpublishing’ may be a catchy term, but does it accurately encompass the issue?
Most journalists would agree that the words we use to identify important issues are intrinsic to understanding them. New phenomena get labeled through the process of discovery by individuals who, naturally, do not yet fully understand them. I propose we may need a better term for what we currently refer to as unpublishing. The Unpublishing Project Advisory Board had its first meeting in September, and the challenge with current unpublishing terminology was on the agenda.
Unpublishing project advisory board gets rolling
The unpublishing project has gained significant momentum in the last few weeks, including an unpublishing webinar with editors RJI hosted in August. Much of the work has been behind the scenes, cementing the foundation I need to ensure the final result is valuable to newsrooms across the country. There is much work to be done in the coming months, but the advisory board I have assembled has the expertise and passion to help me make it happen.
Good intentions for unpublishing may create unintended inequities
If you are working in a newsroom, you probably already know the challenges surrounding low-level crime reporting today. Crime briefs and the publication of mugshots drive a substantial number of unpublishing requests by individuals looking to shield these digital reminders of their past, often about old arrests or convictions.
Facing the pressure to unpublish
This project represents my commitment to helping the industry solve a problem that editors say is rising in importance: how to respond to requests by members of the public to “unpublish”—typically meaning deleting or significantly altering—online news content that identifies them in a way that they would rather forget. Often, but not always, the request concerns an old arrest report or other embarrassing item that is just waiting to be discovered.
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