For newsrooms

If you edit or manage a newsroom in the Policy Atlas, you'll be able to claim its record. That lets you publish the newsroom's own statement on the record and send us your policy. It doesn't let you change our findings.

What a verified newsroom account can do

• Publish a statement. Explain in your own words how your newsroom handles requests to update, anonymize, de-index or remove old stories, and who decides. It appears on the record under "From the newsroom", signed with your name and role (or your role only, if you prefer), and dated. Each new version replaces the current one, and earlier versions stay listed.
• Send your policy. A published policy page, a written policy you haven't published, or a description of what you do in practice. Once checked, it becomes evidence on the record, and a reviewer takes it into account the next time the record's classification is revised.
• Hear about changes. We email you when the record's classification is published or revised, or when a correction about it is resolved.

What it can't do

You can't edit the classification, the codes or the quoted sources. Those are the project's findings and change only when a reviewer revises them, citing evidence, with the change recorded in the record's history. If you think something is wrong, send your policy or ask for a correction; corrections are logged publicly.

Whose word counts most

1. What you publish. A policy anyone can read on your website outranks everything else.
2. What you tell us. A written policy you haven't published, or a description of your practice, is recorded as your newsroom's statement and labeled that way.
3. What our automated search found. It's a starting point, always marked unchecked.

If your statement and your published policy disagree, the record shows both.

How claiming works

1. Open your newsroom's record in the Atlas and choose Claim this record.
2. Confirm your email address from the link we send. A newsroom address speeds things up.
3. A person checks that you speak for the newsroom, usually from your masthead or staff page or with someone we already know there, such as an adviser or publisher. We email you either way.
4. Sign in with a link sent to your email; there's no password.

Access lasts until the end of August for student newspapers, since editors change every year (the following August if you're approved in July or August), and for a year elsewhere. Several people at one newsroom can each hold a claim. Your published statement stays on the record after your access ends.

What statements must stick to

Statements are checked before they appear, for scope, not for whether we agree. They need to be about your newsroom's policy and practice. They can't name or discuss any individual's request or story, because the people involved haven't agreed to be discussed here. That's the only reason we'd decline one, apart from abuse.

Conflicts of interest

The project's founder has a personal interest in one student newspaper. Claims, statements and policies for that paper can be decided only by an independent reviewer with no stake in the matter, under our conflict-of-interest rules; the software won't let the founder decide them. No such reviewer is in place yet, so they wait until one is.