published

Editorial policy

A Century Late publishes each day the American newspaper that appeared on the same calendar date exactly one hundred years ago. The original text is reproduced, not rewritten. The scanned page is shown beside it. Later context is added separately, marked as such, and never mixed with the text of the period.

The publication is worth something only if it is true. Any decision that would bring more readers but weaken the truth is turned down.

Responsibility for everything published is human and ours, however automated its production.

Reproduction, not amplification

Reproduction means publishing an article as it appeared, whole, in its place in the day's edition, with the newspaper, the date and the page given. Readers reach it because they opened the edition or searched for it. It is a historical document made available.

Amplification means picking something out and putting it where it cannot be missed: a front-page headline, a cover image, a clip on social media. That is no longer reproduction. It is an editorial decision taken today, and we answer for it.

The language of the period

The press of the 1920s contains everyday racism, sexism, approving accounts of violence and terms that offend today. The rules below do not censor the text. They decide where it appears.

Published verbatim, on the article page: articles that use terms offensive today in an ordinary report; the opinions, prejudices and errors of the period; advertisements with false claims or stereotypes. Each carries the permanent note described below.

Never placed where it is amplified, whatever its interest: racial or ethnic slurs in an edition headline, a page title, a search description, a file name, a page address or a cover image; photographs of lynchings or executions; propaganda, manifestos or calls to hatred reproduced in full without critical apparatus; and any such material on social media, in any format.

A headline that contains such a term does not remove the article. The original headline stays only with the reproduced text, at the head of the transcription. In the page title, the edition list, the page address and the search description, a one-line description written by us takes its place. That line never contains the term, or any other on the list, and the article then also carries a paragraph of critical context. Without both, it is not published.

Published only with critical apparatus: an item of the first kind that enters the day's selection carries a paragraph of context written by us, placed above the original text, explaining what that language represented at the time, and an account of what happened next, with its sources. If the sources do not support that account, the item is not published. Such items never reach the front page automatically.

The permanent note

Every article page carries this note, under the “i” beside the label of the reproduced text, “Transcription of the original newspaper text”:

Reproduced unchanged from [newspaper], [date], page [n]. This text reflects the language, attitudes and errors of its time. A Century Late publishes it as a historical document.

The reproduced text is set apart from ours by its type and its label, without a box; the newspaper and the date are in the credit line under the headline. A reader should be able to tell at a glance what they wrote and what we say.

Every item names its source: the newspaper, its city, the date of the edition and the page, on the article page, in the edition list, in our videos and on printed products. An item without newspaper, date and page cannot be published; the check is automatic and blocks publication.

What we correct in the text, and what we do not

We correct the errors of optical character recognition: letters and words the machine read wrongly.

We do not correct the spelling of the period, old-fashioned wording, the newspaper's factual errors or its opinions. An error printed in 1926 stays in the text; if it is worth pointing out, we say so in the context, not by changing the original.

Images

In this order: the photographs printed on the reproduced newspaper page; archive photographs from collections whose rights are verified, with full credit; otherwise no image.

Images generated with artificial intelligence are allowed only for generic ornaments with no real subject, and are marked as such. We never generate or regenerate the faces of real people, historical or living, and we never make up scenes that did not happen.

Content written automatically

The text of 1926 is not generated; it is reproduced, and it is not labelled as generated. The clarifier lines under headlines, the summaries, the context paragraphs, the accounts of what happened next and our videos are produced automatically. On the article page, the summary and the context sit under the label “Context - Explained by ACL”, which leads to How we work; the clarifier line and the account of what happened next carry no label of their own there. That page explains the whole process: what is reproduced unchanged, what artificial intelligence writes, what is checked automatically and what a person checks after publication.

Validation

There is no daily human approval. Publication happens without manual intervention, and this policy is applied by an automatic chain of checks. The rule that governs the chain: when the system is not sure, it cuts. An edition of ten correct items is better than one of twelve with a single problem among them.

Editorial responsibility remains human. What goes away is the manual check of each item, not the responsibility.

The decision register

Each day of publication leaves an internal record: the items published and why they were chosen, with their score; the items refused by the checks, and why; the items refused by hand, and why; and who approved the edition. Nothing refused is deleted.

Comments

There are no comments. If they are ever opened, they will stay closed on articles that reproduce the language described above, and be moderated before publication everywhere else.

Errors and corrections

Any error reported to us is checked against the primary source. If it is confirmed, it is corrected on the page and a dated correction note is added at the end of the article. Nothing is changed silently.

What we never do