What I’d like to see under The Star-Telegram’s tree…

May each of you, dear readers, be blessed during this holiday season. May your cup runneth over with love for others and for yourselves.

I did not want to weigh you down with heavy reading this Christmas Day. So while I was debating whether to even write a column, my guardian angel whispered, “Why don’t you tell them what an ombudsman would like to find under his tree today.”

Good idea, G.A. So here are gifts I would have like to have for myself and my colleagues. Note these are all non-material gifts, …

With fewer humans handling stories, (only) the computer is t…

Errors in “Around the County” stories in last Monday’s city and final editions show how much this business has changed in the 25 years since I started as a reporter for The San Diego Union.

When I covered education, I remember watching in horror as the late Walter McArthur, then an assistant city editor and later the newspaper’s first ombudsman, held a ruler to pages of my prose that had been glued into a long strip. He ripped my story in half.

Those were the days of manual typewriters, rubber cement and Teletype machines; …

Washington Post’s Joann Byrd challenges “good practice”

By Richard P. Cunningham
Quill © 1994

Joann Byrd carried 40 years of newspaper experience into her job as ombudsman at The Washington Post, but she also carried a graduate degree in philosophy with a focus on ethics.

That ethics training sets her columns apart from the columns of two dozen or so other North American ombudsmen who write about their papers’ foibles. The others tend to make judgments based on that tangle of conventions and ideals call “good journalistic practice.”

By contrast, Byrd tends to ask just how good is good journalistic practice.

Here are some recent examples:

On …

New” concept in journalism urges advocacy”…

Likely, by now you’ve heard a little something about “public journalism.”

It’s a means of delivering information, sometimes liberally punctuated with opinion, that the American Journalism Review has termed “the hottest secular religion in the news business.”

Other words for the same approach are “civic journalism,” “community-minded reporting” and “community-spirited journalism,” and prominent among its many buzzwords is the term “community connectedness.”

It is such a hot topic in the news industry that a session on public journalism was included in a recent seminar on ethics that drew approximately 30 editors, reporters, teachers, etc. …

Ombudsman: A veteran news editor sees paper from a new persp…

When the phone is answered in the ombudsman’s office of The Times-Dispatch, invariably the caller will say, “I’m not certain you’re the one to speak to…”

I’m the one.

This month marks the start of the third year of the ombudsman position on The Times-Dispatch. A few Richmond-area residents even have learned how to pronounce the name (AUM’-budz-man). Some have been surprised to discover such a position exists. Not all understand the job description.

That job description appears on Page A2 daily under the “Reader Services” heading: “The news ombudsman investigates complaints of unfairness, inaccuracy …

Error is human; Refusal to admit error is journalism

This presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium entitled “Press Regulation: How far has it come?” in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

By William Morgan
All rights reserved

I am …

Why did one news council fail and the other succeed?

This presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium entitled “Press Regulation: How far has it come?” in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

By Richard P. Cunningham
All rights reserved

This …

The ombudsman as internal critic

(The following presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium titled “Press Regulation: How far has it come?” in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens’ Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.)

By Joann Byrd
All rights reserved

It …

Interacting with newspaper readers

This presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium entitled “Press Regulation: How far has it come?” in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

By Lynne Enders Glaser
All rights reserved

I …

News Ombudsmanship: Its History and Rationale

This presentation was made in June 1994 at a symposium entitled “Press Regulation: How far has it come?” in Seoul, Korea. The symposium was presented by the International Communication Research Institute, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and the Citizens Coalition for Media Watch. The Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and Korea Press Center were hosts. Among the participants were Joann Byrd, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Richard P. Cunningham, professor, New York University; Lynne Enders Glaser, ombudsman, The Fresno Bee; Arthur C. Nauman, ombudsman, The Sacramento Bee; and William Morgan, ombudsman, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

By Arthur C. Nauman
All rights reserved

We …