Reader’s advocate plays watchdog role…

Two or three times a week I get calls from readers seeking help with consumer problems, such as the mother who said her child’s gerbil chewed its way out of its cage shortly after they got it home from the pet store.

Obviously there’s something wrong if a product sold as a gerbil cage doesn’t fulfill its basic function.

But I have to disappoint these callers, some of whom associate the role of reader’s advocate with a public service column called “Sound Off,” which was discontinued in 1987 after a 20-year run.

True, an …

Staffing the complaints department…

As you read see this column, your friendly neighborhood Listening Post editor will be returning from the Organization of News Ombudsmen’s annual meeting. Which makes this a good time for a reprise of what the Listening Post is all about.

Ever wonder what news ombudsmen talk about when they get together? Ever wonder what a news ombudsman is?

Unless you’ve been reading one of the few newspapers that has one, ombudsman is likely to sound like a foreign word – which it is: Scandinavian in origin, it means “intermediary” in English.

Newspaper ombudsmen address …

As ombudsmen see it

(The following is reprinted from the Winter 1994 issue of Nieman Reports.)

In response to a request from Nieman Reports for flagrant judgment calls by editors and reporters, ombudsmen sent the accompanying reports.

Readers’ Caution Exceeds Editors’

By Henry McNulty
The Hartford Courant

The reading public, so we are told, increasingly distrusts and dislikes the press; when it comes to credibility, journalists are right up there (or down there) with used-car salesmen, politicians and televangelists. Much of this antipathy, I am convinced, comes about because journalists and readers inhabit two different worlds governed by different value systems.

If common ground …