Evan Benn, senior director of special projects and communications for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Emily Babay, coverage editor for The Inquirer’s Now Team, joined host Michael O’Connell on the It’s All Journalism podcast to discuss The Inquirer’s Up for Review policy. Listen here.
Launched in February 2023, The Inquirer’s Up for Review policy considers requests to edit or remove old stories from Inquirer.com that may have caused unintended or lasting harm. This policy is one of our Inquirer for All (Inq4All) initiatives, ensuring our newsroom makes decisions about reducing the visibility of older stories in a consistent, equitable manner, using the same criteria to evaluate each request, rather than doing so on an ad-hoc basis.
In most cases, if the Up for Review internal committee determines there is unintended or lasting harm, the remedy is to de-index the story. That means if you search for a person’s name or other terms to find a story on Google, the story will no longer appear. Links on Inquirer.com will still work, and the article will still be searchable on Inquirer.com. This makes the content less accessible while preserving the historic record.
The Up for Review submission form can be found at inquirer.com/upforreview. For a list of Frequently Asked Questions about Up for Review, please click here. Please direct comments and feedback on the initiative to upforreview@inquirer.com.
