How to Remove Newspapers From the Internet
It used to be that anything negative that was published about you in a print source such as the newspaper was quickly forgotten. As soon as the next big story or bit of information hit the papers, people pushed your news out of mind. News sources weren’t easy to search, either: you could spend days digging through piles of old newspapers or viewing them on microfiche and microfilm.
That’s all changed with the Internet.
Options For Removing Newspapers From Google
These days, whatever is published about you on the Internet tends to linger around in digital archives around the Web. Sometimes that content is even syndicated to other sites or bloggers republish it, meaning that once it’s out there, it can be quite difficult to locate. If your digital presence is clean, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
But if you have a blemish on your online reputation, you might be looking for ways to not only locate those stories, but also remove them.
In fact, you might find that you wish to have online newspaper content removed for any number of reasons: the story contains false, damaging information, it’s slanderous in nature, a court case has been dismissed or expunged, and so on.
Your first inclination might be to go right to the search engine and ask for the content to be removed. Bear in mind, however, that Google does not control what content is posted on the Internet, and they are very adamant about this. You can petition them, but barring a court order, they will not remove any links. Instead, they will tell you to contact the webmaster at the site in question and ask to have the content removed.
The problem is that the webmaster’s information can be difficult to find, and that’s still no guarantee that the site will agree to remove the content that can damage your online reputation. When dealing with newspapers in particular, know that they are particularly opposed to removing content because they are in the business of building archives. It’s their duty to report the news, but it is not their duty to take your online reputation into consideration. All too frequently, newspapers will report on a story when it breaks, but won’t see it through from start to finish. This could mean that only the parts that are damaging to you are published.
Online reputation management is something to be taken seriously, particularly if you are a business or high profile individual. Doing it on your own, however, can become an arduous task. An online reputation management service has the resources and know-how to help you restore and maintain your good name.
Did you know that only about half of all newspaper publishing companies have policies in place to handle requests for removing (or “unpublishing”) content? Even those who have established policies for managing requests to remove online newspaper content are not uniform in their policies.
For example, one newspaper might refuse to unpublish any material whatsoever without a court order. Another might be willing to remove content for an individual who makes a good claim (a job-seeker who was wrongfully implicated, say). Another might be willing to correct or update the story or print a retraction. Yet another might have a “sunset policy” in place, which mandates that all police blotter information is removed from their site after a certain period of time in order to avoid causing permanent damage to the online reputations of those involved. Still another might only be willing to work with professional online reputation management service companies.
If you choose to make requests to these newspaper publishing companies to have online content removed and you don’t know what you’re doing, you actually stand to damage your reputation even further. There do exist cases, unfortunately, in which individuals who have petitioned newspapers have actually done more damage by becoming angry and demanding, in addition to not educating themselves on that publication’s policies and procedures. The goal is to avoid adding any new negative content, especially while you focus on removing the old.
Did you know that even when a newspaper article is removed from the Internet through an individual petition, it can remain at the top of your search results as an archived page? While you might have been successful getting the original removed, it can be quite difficult to go from there. Online reputation management services have the technology and know-how to identify where the article remains and remove it, as well.
Online reputation management services are familiar with existing policies and know best practices for approaching those publishing companies without them. This is knowledge that most individuals don’t possess, and thus one of the great benefits to working with such a service. Working with a professional service means that someone else is taking care of the heavy lifting for you, leaving you time to work on building a positive online reputation through new content that will help to push down the old.