Deaths this week this week: verified reports and corrections

Every weekly record has a moment when the window shuts and the page stops taking entries. What happens in the hours around that moment determines whether the page can be trusted afterwards, and it is the part of the process that nobody outside a records desk ever sees.

This article is about the closing pass: 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

• Closing a week is a review, not a formality. Every entry is re-read against its source, and any that cannot be re-verified is marked rather than removed.
• Items still held at the close are carried forward in the file, not on the page. Nothing unconfirmed crosses the boundary onto a published record.
• A closed page changes only by dated annotation. The closing stamp says what the page contained when it was finished, and that statement has to stay true.

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, and things become visible that were not visible entry by entry.

Two entries for the same person, added on different days from different sources. An entry whose source has since been corrected by its publisher. An entry whose date of death was recorded from a source that gave the date of announcement. A spelling that differs between entries and sources. An entry that a later statement has shown to belong to someone else with the same name.

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 Confirm that it still says what the entry says it says, that it has not been amended, and that it has not been withdrawn.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 rather than quietly, as commitments like the Associated Press statement of news values and principles undertake to do, are the ones this step can actually 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.

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.

That second verification is worth having because 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, which is why the holdings described in the Library of Congress newspaper research guide still settle questions that a dead link cannot. "Source last verified on" a date is the correct state for such an entry, and it is a better state than either silent retention or silent removal.

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 do not cross onto the page at all. They stay in the file. If they are confirmed next week, they are entered next week. If they are never confirmed, they stay in the file with their last state. The boundary between the file and the page is the boundary between what the desk has heard and what it can stand behind, and the close is not an occasion 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, to a later visitor, as a record of what was confirmed in a stated window, with a stated closing time, with sources against every entry, with a note of what was corrected during the close, and with 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.

A closed weekly page is the first stage of an archive, and anniversaries and archives covers how such records are later found and cited. The entries on it began as first-day reports, which deaths today explains, and they will be indexed later by month, where deaths by month sets out which calendar applies.

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.