Eagle eyes might have caught some politically charged wire copy in the May 21 edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where an item about a student in Mississippi who was shut out of her graduation referred to the student as a boy and used male pronouns.

An item in the Sunday Arkansas Democrat-Gazette misgendered a trans student in Mississippi. It was an oversight, not a policy change, Managing Editor Alyson Hoge said.

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Other mainstream news outlets, including the Associated Press and CNN, honored the anonymous student’s gender identity by referring to her with female pronouns.

Sunday’s snippet marked a departure from the style the Democrat-Gazette has been following, which is to identify subjects by their preferred names and gender identifiers.

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Did the above item mark a new policy at the paper of record in light of recent anti-trans legislation at the Arkansas Capitol?

Nope. It was just a mistake. Managing Editor Alyson Hoge shared this explainer Monday:

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The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette follows Associated Press style on transgender references, which is to go with the preference of the person involved.
The item Sunday was not edited in accordance with that style. We are working on a correction. 

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