Spring cleaning. Think about office drawers filled up with spiral-bound notebooks. What do you do with all those pages of hieroglyphics? What should you do with them? Turns out, there is consensus. Here's what three well-known go-to people in Texas newspaperdom have to say.
Wanda Garner Cash, S. Griffin Singer professor, UT School of Journalism:
 “Consistency is the most important thing to remember regarding retention of reporters' notes. If you routinely save all your notes, a judge won’t like it if you suddenly discard notes in a potentially litigious situation. Whether you keep everything or purge on a monthly or quarterly basis, make sure you do it consistently. The best way to stay out of trouble is to avoid margin notes that contain subjective and potentially inflammatory observations.”
Don R. Richards, attorney, Richards Elder & Green, LLP:
 “Newspapers need to establish a policy — prior to an issue arising — regarding the maintenance of notes. If a reporter is ever challenged on a quote, notes are helpful to prove accurate quoting. However, notes can be very harmful in a lawsuit, especially regarding the writing and editing of a story — it allows an attorney to probe a reporter’s thought process on why certain quotes were used and others not used, or whether too much emphasis was placed on certain quotes, etc. Generally, most attorneys for media clients consider it much more legally sound advice to have reporters destroy their notes. You cannot destroy notes once a problem arises. That would be destroying evidence and the court sanctions can be very serious, regardless of the intent. My suggestion is that the newspaper develop a policy that notes will be destroyed at a given time (10 days, 30 days, etc.) after a story is published; or at the end of the week, or month, etc. You need a set policy, and it needs to be regularly followed. The shorter the time frame before destruction the better. If notes are routinely destroyed based on a consistently applied policy, then there is no destruction of evidence.”
Tommy Thomason, director, Texas Center for Community Journalism, TCU:
 “Bottom line, frequently, is that reporters like to keep stuff and many lawyers say to get rid of it. Reporters' notebooks have as much potential to get us into trouble as to keep us out of it. I think the best thing to do is for the paper to set a policy and to put that policy in writing. The policy may state that all notes are to be kept for, say, one month unless they are in use as part of a continuing series, are part of some question/controversy/issue over the story in question, or litigation is current or pending. Then, they should just be dumped. Everybody should do it — problem comes when some do and some don’t; you’d really get into trouble if everything were kept except notes that dealt with a contested story. If the paper has a policy and the policy is adhered to, then you’d be pretty safe in getting rid of routine notes.”
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