In order to respect individuals’ current and lived identities, The Herald has adopted a new policy regarding requests from transgender or nonbinary individuals to replace their deadname and/or change their pronouns featured in previously published work on The Herald’s website. Upon receiving such a request, The Herald will make the gender-affirming changes online in a timely manner and without a correction or editor’s note marking the change.
This policy is intended to respect transgender and nonbinary individuals. We will not include an editor’s note announcing the gender-affirming change(s) made in response to such a request because we believe such a note would risk outing the individual and causing harm. Because the information included in the article was accurate at the time of publishing, we do not feel this raises questions about transparency or accountability.
We think this policy reflects both our commitment to accuracy and our ethical obligation to minimize harm. We are eager to see how other newsrooms, both our student peers and at professional news organizations, address this and similar questions in the coming months and years.
If you would like to request a deadname or pronoun change on our website, please reach out to herald@browndailyherald.com.
Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 131st editorial board: Kayla Guo ’22.5, Henry Dawson ’22.5, Li Goldstein ’22, Emilija Sagaityte ’22, Kate Ok ’22, Emily Teng ’22 and Kamran King ’22
