Maintenance
Part of How to handle corrections and newsroom transparency after an error report
Newsroom correction workflow checklist, from flag to published fix
Newsroom correction checklist for intake, evidence review, severity, label selection, notice drafting, channel repair, audit records, and postmortems.
What to take away
- Preserve the disputed version before making any edit.
- Prioritize errors involving safety, identity, death, accusation, money, or public action.
- Make the notice specific enough to repair a reader's understanding.
- Track every publication channel to completion.
- Review the control failure after the public record is fixed.
Use this checklist for reported errors in text, images, audio, video, data, alerts, and platform posts. Record "not applicable" with a reason instead of leaving a blank item. Serious errors may require simultaneous review and immediate public repair.
Intake
- Assign a case identifier.
- Save the complainant's exact claim and evidence.
- Record article URL, title, format, author, editor, and publication time.
- Capture the disputed version before editing.
- Save alerts, social posts, newsletter copies, feeds, audio, video, and partner versions.
- Acknowledge receipt when contact information is available.
- Name the reviewing editor and deadline.
Immediate risk triage
- Does the content give unsafe instructions?
- Does it wrongly identify, accuse, locate, or declare someone dead?
- Could it affect money, voting, medical care, legal rights, or public response?
- Is the wrong claim still being distributed or broadcast?
- Should scheduled publication be paused?
- Is standards, legal, security, or executive review needed now?
- Can confirmed correct information be published before the full postmortem?
Evidence review
- Copy the exact published claim into the case record.
- Identify the evidence relied on at publication.
- Review notes, recordings, messages, documents, calculations, and source files.
- Check dates, versions, jurisdiction, context, denominator, and attribution.
- Contact the reporter and editor.
- Seek a response from affected people when useful and fair.
- Determine whether the statement was wrong then or changed later.
- Record evidence that conflicts with the correction request.
Decision
- Factual errorcorrection.
- Materially misleading ambiguityclarification.
- Later developmentupdate.
- Serious process or review issueeditor's note.
- Central unreliabilitywithdrawal or retraction.
- No error foundreasoned response and appeal route.
- Determine whether an apology is appropriate.
- Set correction prominence based on harm and original reach.
The Office of the Federal Register's rules for correcting a published document are strict. An agency that finds an error in its own document must issue a signed correction in the appropriate format.
Correction label decision tree
What is the nature of the error?
Factual error -> Correction
Misleading ambiguity -> Clarification
Only narrow non-substantive slips, such as an obvious misspelling, can be repaired without one. Sorting trivial from substantive is the decision, and anything substantive is answered on the record, not quietly.
Notice drafting
- Begin with the label "Correction," "Clarification," "Editor's note," or other selected term.
- Add date and time when sequence matters.
- State what the earlier version said.
- State the correct information.
- Explain the source overlap or method error when needed for understanding.
- Name affected channels already repaired.
- Avoid euphemisms such as "refreshed for accuracy."
- Avoid blaming a source for the newsroom's publication decision.
- Remove unnecessary private or harmful detail.
- Obtain the required editorial approval.
Web article repair
- Headline and deck.
- Body text and quotations.
- Tables, calculations, charts, and footnotes.
- Photo and video captions.
- Alt text and accessibility descriptions.
- Structured data and metadata.
- Page title and social-preview fields.
- Correction notice placement.
- Corrected publication and modification times.
Distribution repair
- Mobile and browser alerts.
- Home page and section promotion.
- Social posts and replies.
- Newsletter and email editions.
- Broadcast scripts and rundowns.
- Podcast audio, transcript, show notes, and feed.
- Video, captions, subtitles, thumbnail, and description.
- Wire, syndication, translation, and licensing feeds.
- Search and archive copies under newsroom control.
- Partner notification and receipt.
Federal guidance on captions and transcripts reminds us one story creates many artifacts. Captions must match the audio and stay synchronized. A transcript follows its own rules and must sit with the recording.
A checklist should follow the error into each format. Do not assume a repaired source article fixes every derivative copy.
Affected-party contact
- Notify a person wrongly named, accused, quoted, or given an incorrect status.
- Provide the correction text and links.
- Explain where the repair has been distributed.
- Offer one contact for remaining factual concerns.
- Record contact attempts without exposing private details publicly.
Audit record
- Original version or file hash.
- Discovery time and source.
- Evidence reviewed.
- Decision maker and approvals.
- Exact correction language.
- Corrected version or file hash.
- Time each channel was repaired.
- Partner responses.
- Public complaints and follow-up.
- Postmortem date and owner.
Postmortem
- Identify the first control that failed.
- Identify later controls that could have caught it.
- Check staffing, deadlines, handoffs, templates, and tooling.
- Determine whether similar content remains live elsewhere.
- Assign a process change with owner and due date.
- Test that change on a realistic example.
- Review recurrence after an agreed interval.
Sign-off
| Role | Name | Time | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reviewing editor | |||
| Standards or legal, if needed | |||
| Channel coordinator | |||
| Postmortem owner |
Common questions
Should publication wait until every channel is ready?
No. Correct the main public record at once, then move through the channel list quickly and record completion.
What if the complaint is hostile?
Assess the factual evidence independently of tone. A hostile complainant can identify a real error, and a polite request can be wrong.
Is a CMS modification timestamp enough transparency?
No. It does not explain what changed or whether the change repaired an error.
Who owns partner corrections?
Assign one person to transmit the notice, track receipt, and escalate uncorrected copies.
