How a weekly deaths record is closed, rechecked, and frozen at the end of the week

The closing pass is the review of a weekly deaths record: what is checked when a week ends, what is carried forward, what "verified" means at that point, and how the closed page is left. No person is named here and no death is reported.

What to take away

What the closing pass is for

During the week, entries are added one at a time, each on the day its confirmation arrived, each checked at that moment. The closing pass is the first time anyone reads the whole page at once. Things become visible that were not visible entry by entry.

None of these is likely on any single day. Across a week, at least one of them is common. The closing pass exists to find them before the page is frozen.

For what a weekly window is and why it is a publication window rather than a window of deaths, the parent page on deaths this week sets it out.

The pass, in order

A closing pass has a sequence, and the sequence matters because later steps depend on earlier ones.

Re-read every entry against its source.

Open the source again. Confirm that it still says what the entry says it says, that it has not been amended, and that it has not been withdrawn. Where a source is no longer available, note that with the date, and leave the entry marked as "source last verified" on the day it was added.

Check identities across entries. Look for the same person twice, and for two people merged into one. Compare each entry's identifying details, not just names. Where two entries collapse into one, keep one, record the merger and its date, and keep both sources.

Check dates. For each entry, confirm which date is the date of death and which is the date of confirmation, and that neither has been recorded as the other. A source that gives only an announcement date should produce an entry with the death date marked unknown.

Check for later corrections. Where a source publisher has corrected or withdrawn its notice during the week, the entry follows: corrected with a dated note, or withdrawn with a dated note. Publishers that correct openly, as the Associated Press statement of news values and principles obliges, are the ones this step can catch.

Review the held file. Everything heard during the week and not confirmed stays in the file, with its state and its last check date. Nothing is moved from the file onto the page during the close. Anything that becomes confirmed after the close appears on the following week's page, dated there.

Write the closing note. Entries in the week, entries corrected during the pass, entries withdrawn, entries with sources that could not be re-verified. Dated, and placed at the top of the page.

A closing note might read: entries added, 12; corrected during the pass, 1 (confirmation date); withdrawn, 1 (source retracted); unverifiable at close, 1 (source unreachable, marked "source last verified" on the entry date). It is dated at the close.

Stamp and freeze. Replace the running "as of" stamp with a closing stamp giving the date and time of the close. From this point, the page changes only by dated annotation.

What "verified" means at the close

An entry on the day it was added was verified in the sense that a direct source had established it. An entry at the close has been verified twice: once at entry and once at the closing pass, against the source as it stood at each time.

Sources move. A notice is amended. A statement is clarified. A publication corrects a name. An entry that was right on Tuesday can be wrong by the close through no fault of the desk, and the closing pass is where the record catches up.

It is also where the desk is honest about what it could not re-verify. An entry whose source has vanished is not thereby wrong, but it is no longer checkable, and a reader should be told.

Printed sources fail far more slowly than posted ones. The holdings in the Library of Congress newspaper research guide still settle questions a dead link cannot.

"Source last verified on" a date is the correct state for such an entry, beating silent retention or removal. A daily entry that freezes into an archive depends on a source link that still resolves years later.

What crosses the boundary and what does not

The week's boundary is firm in one direction and porous in the other, and the asymmetry is deliberate.

Confirmed entries stay on the closed page. They do not migrate to the next week, even where the death they record occurred in that week's window, because the page is organized by confirmation date and their confirmation date is in this week.

Held items never cross onto the page. They stay in the file. Confirm them next week and they are entered next week. Never confirm them and they stay in the file at their last state.

The line between file and page is the line between what the desk has heard and what it can stand behind. The close is no reason to relax it.

Corrections and withdrawals after the close are added to the closed page, dated, because that is where the entry they concern lives. They do not appear on the next week's page as though they were new.

Leaving a closed page

A closed page should read as a record of what was confirmed in a stated window. It carries a stated closing time, sources against every entry, a note of what was corrected during the close, and any later annotations dated and visible.

Nothing else. No editorial summary of the week, no characterization of the deaths it contains, and no cause against any entry unless a family stated one publicly and it was recorded as their statement.

That restraint is what makes the page reusable. A page that says only what it can support can be cited years later. A page that adds interpretation carries the interpretation's errors forward with the same permanence.

anniversaries and archives covers how such records are later found and cited by readers, and deaths today explains how entries began as first-day reports and are indexed later, and deaths by month sets the calendar.

Common questions

Why re-check entries that were already verified when added?

Because sources change during a week. A notice can be amended or withdrawn after an entry was made, and the closing pass is where the record catches up.

What happens to a report that is still unconfirmed at the close?

It stays in the desk's file. If confirmation arrives later, it appears on the page for the week in which it arrives.

Can a closed page be changed?

By dated annotation only. Corrections and withdrawals are added visibly, with the original state preserved. The content as of the closing stamp is never silently altered.

An entry's source is no longer online. Is the entry removed?

No. It is marked as last verified on the date its source was last checked, and left. Removal would erase a record that was correct when made; silent retention would misrepresent its current state.

Does the closing note describe the week?

It describes what was done to the page: entries added, corrected, withdrawn, and any that could not be re-verified. It does not characterize the deaths, and it draws no conclusions about the week.