By September 15, 1997, I had written enough informal hold notes to recognize their weakness. Each depended on someone remembering what I meant, finding the latest page, or asking me before using a name. A safeguard that lived in my head would leave the office whenever I did. I brought Maura and Owen a written proposal.
Maura read the first paragraph standing up. "How many signatures are you adding to every page?"
"Not every page. Identifying teasers involving allegations. And a separate rule for working names before that stage."
She sat, which I took as permission to continue rather than agreement. Owen moved his chair closer to the desk. I had given the proposal plain headings: source, corroboration, access, clearance. It was short enough to use while a telephone rang. I had discarded an earlier version that sounded like something written to impress an examiner.
"We record what an allegation actually rests on," I said. "A copy of a claim isn't another source. A genuine document doesn't establish every inference attached to it. We keep those distinctions in the assignment, not just in the final article."
Owen nodded at that paragraph. "And who gets the working name?"
"Only the people who need it for the reporting decision. Production gets cleared copy, not the identifying assignment packet. If a layout needs a placeholder, it uses a neutral marker that cannot be read as approved language."
Maura set the proposal down. "Sometimes I am production and the second editor and the person answering the printer. You haven't hired another body with this sheet."
"No. But the same person can't create an identifying teaser and be its only clearance. Another editor has to read the underlying support and sign. If there isn't a second review, the teaser waits."
"And we miss a slot."
"Sometimes." I made myself leave the word alone. There was no honest version of the policy that guaranteed speed, money, and protection in every case. Pretending otherwise would make it easiest to abandon when it first became inconvenient. "The cost has to be visible before the deadline, not discovered by the person named."
Owen asked what happened if his objection concerned the assignment rather than the headline. We added a place to record unresolved evidentiary objections and a rule that they followed the material into review. They could not disappear because someone made a cleaner copy. Maura insisted that objections be specific and written, not a late declaration that something felt wrong.
That was fair, and I said so. We revised the page at her desk. The resulting policy did not make any of us wiser by decree. It did make several shortcuts harder to take without leaving a record. Maura studied the second-signature line longer than the rest.
"A trial," she said. "We see whether this works in an actual week, not just in a discussion about your conscience."
"A trial," I agreed.
Afterward Owen stayed to discuss a neighborhood-service column. He wanted to examine ordinary failures that readers could act on: repair estimates, confusing notices, unanswered service questions. The work would require calls, records, and explanations rather than a dramatic premise. I asked him to bring a proposed first installment with a question narrow enough to answer.
"You aren't giving me this because I said no to the other thing?" he asked.
"I'm giving you room to report something useful. You'll still have to prove what goes in it."
He smiled at that, but only briefly. We worked through how to invite questions without inviting unsupported accusations. A reader's complaint could start a check; it would not become the column merely by arriving in an envelope. We would seek responses where appropriate and make clear what records established and what remained disputed.
Maura came back to the doorway and asked whether the column would fit the ordinary issue without extra production costs. Owen said he would design it to fit. She told him to show her a sample, then took a copy of the trial policy to her room.
I pinned the other copy where the assignment sheets were kept. It was not a memorial to the canceled supplement, and it did not identify Nora. It was a set of instructions somebody else could use when I wasn't standing there. Owen began a fresh page for the service column. For once, a new assignment had a purpose that did not depend on appearing larger than the facts.