The Inquirer is launching the Up for Review initiative to consider requests to update old stories

The Inquirer on Wednesday announced it has created an Up for Review policy to consider requests to update or remove old stories from Inquirer.com that may have caused unintended or lasting harm. The policy is meant to address these requests in a timely and inclusive manner, as part of The Inquirer’s ongoing Inquirer for All and DE&I work.

» READ MORE: Up for Review: Frequently Asked Questions

In creating the Up for Review policy, The Inquirer formalized work that was already happening and created an Up for Review committee that includes staff with varying newsroom roles, backgrounds, and perspectives to review requests. The policy ensures that The Inquirer 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.

The main remedy the committee will take is to deindex a 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.

In rare cases, the committee may recommend that a story be edited to anonymize an individual’s name, updated to include new information, or unpublished. These rare remedies will require approval from The Inquirer’s editor and legal department.

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.