For press
Corrections and takedowns
If we’ve got something wrong, tell us and we’ll put it right. Email editor@lovelincoln.co.uk with a link to the story and what needs changing.
How we handle a request
Most requests aren’t really takedown requests. A business has closed, a person has moved on, a partnership has ended, or something that was true when we published it no longer is. There’s almost always a better answer than deleting the piece, so we work down this order:
- Correct. We got a fact wrong. We correct it, and the correction is marked on the page.
- Update. The facts were right at the time and circumstances have since changed. We append an update note. The story stays.
- Amend. Someone’s safety, a change of name, or a photo subject withdrawing consent. We remove the name, the photograph or the detail, and keep the piece.
- Unpublish. A legal requirement, a risk to someone’s safety, a subject who never consented, or a piece that has become misleading and cannot be fixed. Rare, and always by conversation rather than a form.
In practice the third of those resolves nearly everything. It’s why the fourth stays rare without us having to be unhelpful about it.
Two things we don’t do
We don’t unpublish for commercial reasons.A change of agency, a change of marketing direction, or a story that no longer fits this year’s messaging isn’t a reason to remove a piece that was accurate and fairly reported at the time.
We don’t quietly de-index either. Removing a story from search while leaving it up is the same request wearing a different hat, and we treat it the same way.
What unpublishing can and can’t undo
Worth being straight about the limits. If we unpublish a story it comes off the site and out of our sitemaps, but it doesn’t disappear from the internet. Newsletters that have already sent are a record of what we sent — the web edition of an issue doesn’t change after the fact, and the email itself is already in people’s inboxes. Search engines and social platforms keep their own caches on their own timetable, and we can’t clear those for you.
Right of reply
If you believe something we’ve published misrepresents you or a client, tell us what’s wrong and what you’d like said instead. We’d rather hear it directly than read it somewhere else.