Perhaps it’s time to revisit some thoughts I wrote about the matter previously.

I first wrote about this phenomenon for Keeping Free Presses Free back in 2007 (here’s a link to the entire article).

From my anecdotal observations so far, the requests for removal of information from college media web sites usually come in two flavors: embarrassment and privacy concerns.

1. Youthful Indiscretions: By far, this is at the center of most requests. A student is arrested for a minor in possession charge, or something more serious. The arrest shows up in the student newspaper’s police blotter, and then on the web site. Five years later, the (now former) student is trying to clean up the search engines while trying to find work.

2. The learning curve is steep: The second factor is what I might call embarrassment about youthful expression. Several advisers have had requests from former newspaper staffers who are now ashamed of the quality of their writing or arguments.

3.  privacy or personal security: Some people have requested material be taken down from the Internet because, were it to fall into the hands of the wrong individual, there would be the potential for harm.

There are probably other concerns that people voice in hopes of getting material taken out of a web archive, but those are the ones I’ve heard of most often.

I don’t have any easy answers to number 3. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, as the saying goes. But it can be difficult to predict how such situations will play out, or whether the situation is as dangerous as presented.

Number 2 is the easiest of the three to deal with. You wrote an article and submitted it to the student newspaper/media outlet for publication. Own your work. If you are a journalist and you wrote some grammatically-challenged copy in college, welcome to the club. If you wrote an opinion piece expressing an opinion you now regret, welcome to life. Many people change their minds over time about issues and events. It reflects growth (mostly). Taking down an article from an archive because you’re embarrassed by its quality is extremely hard to justify, especially for a journalist.

Number 1 is the most delicate of the three because there is a tremendous potential for future harmful repercussions if incorrect or incomplete information is available online. And, quite frankly, news media do a horrible job of following up on most of the mundane (to us) items that appear in a police blotter. A former editor at the Pitt News had an interesting approach to this: printing the police blotter with names in the newspaper, but not placing names online. Might be something to consider.

If someone was arrested, but never prosecuted, or was found innocent, where is the follow-up that would display that information on the web? Frequently, there is none.

This is my take: Err on the side of the facts. Add to them when they are available (but be sure to verify – don’t just take someone’s word that they were cleared of charges). There’s no need to antagonize a former student if the facts are on their side. That doesn’t mean take the article down, but you should add a note to the original article with additional information.

Above all, as I mentioned earlier, you should develop a policy (in consultation with student editors) so there is some kind of map to follow in handling these situations, which are bound to come up more and more.

There are very few instances where I’d counsel someone to remove an online article or archived item. Better to shine more sunlight on the situation.

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Over the life of this blog, and in my studies of the online news business since 2001, I have seen so many efforts to rein in online comments that my eyes roll when I see a new round of pearl-clutching from news editors and publishers about how nasty commenters are on their web sites.

But of all the efforts, this effort by the Sun Chronicle in Massachusetts has got to be the prize-winner for ways to kill off a commenting community. The SC not only wants readers to register to comment using their real names and addresses, they want users to give up credit card information and pay a one-time fee of 99 cents for the privilege!

The opportunity to post comments on stories on Sun Chronicle websites will be restored this week, Publisher Oreste P. D’Arconte announced today, with posters required to use their real names.

To enforce this change, all posters will be required to register their name, address, phone number and a legitimate credit card number.

The credit card will be charged a one-time fee of 99 cents to activate the account.

Look, I can understand the desire to have a well-functioning, civil community of readers commenting on your web site. I can even understand the desire to have people use their real names when commenting (although I disagree). But demanding that readers give up sensitive financial information and then billing them just to leave a comment on a web site is … well, I can’t use the words I’m considering right now on a family web site.

Of course, if the Sun Chronicle were serious about wanting comments, they could use Facebook Connect. It’s not 100 percent foolproof, but it would tie a comment to a user’s online identity in a more meaningful way and discourage or eliminate “anonymous” comments (pro-tip: when a user puts a name – even a made-up name – in a comment box, it’s not technically “anonymous,” but “pseudonymous”).

More likely, this change will drop the Sun Chronicle’s commenting community to near zero. And if I were an enterprising web denizen in one of the paper’s communities, I’d be busy putting up a web site that allows users to comment on SC-related articles without registering. Just provide headline links to SC stories in blog posts and allow comments on those posts. No need to steal content.

I’ve often gotten the vibe that a vast number of news media professionals hate comments, and would rather not deal with them at all. After all, people on the Internet can be real jackasses when their name is not associated with what they write.

But shutting off comments on your site – or trying to get people to pay to do so – is no real solution. It just drives people to other places on the Internet where they can comment without fearing for their jobs, or their social status, or whatever.

Last year, Va. Tech’s Collegiate Times student newspaper went through a similar type of situation. A campus committee was dismayed that there were racist comments showing up in the comments on the Collegiate Times’ web site. So the committee’s solution was to try to get the news org. to stop allowing anonymous comments by cutting off university funding.

Brilliant!

No mention of, you know, actually dealing with the disgusting underbelly of racism that brings these comments out. Just sweep the problem under the rug so the campus community looks pristine.

The truth of the matter is that managing an online community of commenters is work. It’s like tending a garden. If you don’t put in the work to root out the weeds (abusive commenters), you won’t get the vegetables (cogent commenters) to flourish.

The Sun Chronicle‘s recently announced policy roots out the weeds by digging up the entire garden.

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The Editor’s Note above the article reads:

Editor’s note: The last name of the main subject of this story, Ashref, and his family members has been removed from this story since its original publication. The source became concerned of the negative implications that may come from speaking critically of the Tunisian government and its programs upon his return to his home country.

link: Tunisian visitor shares philosophies, views of the U.S. | mndaily.com – Serving the University of Minnesota Since 1900

Dan thinks this is the right decision in this limited instance.

Obviously, in most cases the decision needs to be ‘no changes allowed,’ especially in respect to the most common related requests- people simply having a change of heart about something said or done or sources’ concerns over embarrassing Google results. But I do believe the paper acted properly in this instance.

I’ve discussed this issue previously, and also believe this is likely the right decision.

I’d also suggest to all college media outlets that they think about these issues in advance and develop a policy on the issue. Rather than making changes after the story has gone online, they should consider whether such semi-anonymity should be granted in advance when dealing with sources who come from areas of the world with repressive governments.

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The Daily Bruin at UCLA ran a “wrap” advertisement around their paper today. Ordinarily, I have no problem with “innovative” advertising ideas (well, except for those cursed roll-over web ads), but this ad went way beyond “innovative” and ventured into the area of “deceptive” and “unethical.”

Here’s the real Bruin front page:

And here’s the “wrap” that ran today:

Now, I don’t know about you, but, with the exception of the “Paid Advertisement” words below the flag, that’s a pretty close knock-off of the editorial design of the real Daily Bruin (the editorial staff did get the advertiser to change the font on the nameplate of the ad). All to market some kind of honey-related ice cream crap.

The student editors weren’t pleased, and said so in an editorial:

Many of us volunteered to forfeit our pay in order to ensure that the ad would not run, but because some of our staff members could not afford to use their paychecks to make a statement, we have been forced to go along quietly.

The reality of our financial situation is grim, and the fact of the matter is that we would have been forced to cut thousands of dollars from an ever-tightening budget if we had not run this advertisement.

We were forced to make a decision we find distasteful at best – and dishonest and unethical at worst – because of the ever-present and unrelenting reality of the economy and the downturn of the journalism industry.

Much of our staff, the members of this board especially, are invested in the Daily Bruin and the practice of journalism on a personal level, and nothing pains us more than to see the cover and name of our beloved publication sullied for the sake of survival.

Editor Anthony Pesce published an editor’s note on the real front page:

Today’s Daily Bruin was wrapped in an advertisement specifically designed by a clever marketing department to fool you into thinking – if only for a few seconds – that my staff wrote the content that appeared on the front page.

If you’re reading this, you have discovered our real front page, fully educated about the plight of the honey bee, and I’m glad you are taking the time to read our newspaper. I want our readership and our community to know that there will not be another advertisement like it for the rest of the year. We will not be selling these kinds of ads as long as I remain the editor of this newspaper – which is at least for another nine weeks. Many on my staff were vehemently opposed to this ad for a variety of reasons. Mostly, though, they were upset and concerned that our front-page news content was displaced, and that it was displaced by an advertisement designed to mislead our readers.

Apparently, financial pressures overruled journalism in this instance. I’m with the students.

Look, it’s one thing to place an ad around your content. It’s one thing to think up new ways to make money on innovative marketing ideas. Heck, I even applauded when the New York Times started running front page ads!

But this is just wrong. Shame on the marketers for concocting this sad little ploy to trade on the tradition of a 90-year-old journalistic enterprise, and shame on whoever it was who forced the issue to trade that journalistic tradition for a few pieces of gold.

In an age when newspapers are fighting for their lives and the credibility of the news industry is not that great, this type of “advertorial” is not a step in the right direction.

I welcome your thoughts.

Update: Please answer the poll question

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