Record Policy

The Massachusetts Times · Published by The Massachusetts Times Company · massachusettstimes.us/policies/record · Effective October 16, 2026

This policy states how The Massachusetts Times treats its own published record — the discipline that makes the Archive and Permanence Terms true day after day. It is the direct antithesis of the quiet-rewrite culture, and every sentence here is kept today.

1. The Standing

1.1. The published record is permanent. Publication here is entry into an archive this institution maintains as itself, not a feed that scrolls away, and the reader of thirty years from now holds the same claim on it as the reader of tonight.

1.2. The Archive and Permanence Terms make that enforceable by you. This page is the desk-side discipline that keeps it from ever needing enforcement.

2. No Stealth Edits

2.1. Nothing published is quietly rewritten. There is no side door to the archive: a published work changes only through the correction machinery, and a substantive change — anything altering what a reasonable reader takes from the work — is annotated on the work, in daylight, dated, under the classes of the Correction Terms.

2.2. Repairs beneath substance are made without ceremony, and the arguable case is treated as substantive, in the reader's favor, always.

2.3. The discipline is total because the alternative is useless: an archive that is almost never stealth-edited certifies nothing.

3. The Grammar of the Record

3.1. Every claim in our pages occupies one of five states, and the state is legible to the reader:

— Established. Verified under the Verification Policy, in the record, dated. — Corrected. Was wrong, and now says so: marked on the work, fixed in daylight, entered in the public ledger. — Contested. Raised by the evidence but not settled by it — held, labeled as contested, never served as settled fact, resolved when the evidence resolves it. — Refused. What we could not establish, stated as unanswered. The honest gap stands in the record as a gap, because a confident patch over an open question is the quietest form of fabrication. — Withdrawn. Removed on the stated grounds of the Archive and Permanence Terms, with a dated notice standing at the work's own address, saying what stood there and why it no longer does.

3.2. Nothing in our pages occupies a sixth, unlabeled state. A claim that fits none of the five does not publish.

4. Annotation Over Substitution

4.1. The past gets more record, never less. An old work that reads badly against later knowledge — a finding superseded, a subject vindicated, a term aged poorly — receives a dated annotation; the original text stands as published.

4.2. We do not launder our own history into whatever the present would prefer to have said. The remedy for an aged page is context in daylight, and the Archive and Permanence Terms forbid the alternative to us and to every successor.

5. Unpublishing by Stated Standard

5.1. Removal of a published work has exactly three grounds — a law or order binding on us, a demonstrated danger to a person's safety, or a failure of our standards so complete that correction cannot cure it — and no fourth ground exists, including every form of displeasure.

5.2. Unpublishing is a considered act of the masthead, taken against the stated standard, never a reflex against pressure, and it always leaves the dated notice. An address that held the record never pretends otherwise.

6. The Desk Against Itself

6.1. This policy binds our future management more than anyone. No later editor, owner, or fashion gets a quieter instrument than the one on this page, and the assignment article of the Terms of Use carries this discipline, whole, to any successor.

6.2. A buyer of this business buys this page.

7. Why

7.1. The record's value is that it cannot be negotiated with. A press whose archive can be lobbied after publication is a press whose journalism can be lobbied before it, and every quiet rewrite teaches the powerful that pressure works. This page is where that lesson is made unteachable.

8. Holding Us to It

8.1. A stealth edit, an unlabeled state, a missing notice — each is a defect, reportable through massachusettstimes.us/corrections and handled under the Correction Terms, with the Accountability Policy's ladder above it and the open courts of the Dispute Terms behind it.

9. The Record of This Policy

9.1. This policy is kept in dated versions at its address. A page about the permanence of the record obeys itself first.

This policy is one of the Policies this publication keeps.