A photo may be worth 1,000 words, but readers thought this o…

It’s all too easy for a newspaper to rile its readers’ sensibilities, as the following instance illustrates.

A Page One photo Nov. 16 showing an African-American police officer peering out a window at a Cedarbrook murder scene brought dozens of complaints from readers who felt The Inquirer was making “a deliberate attempt to denigrate black people,” as one put it.

John Costello’s photo was a compelling news shot of the policeman at a second-floor window at the home where Hope Thomas was murdered. A headline declared “Nightmare in Cedarbrook,” while the caption read: “A …

Not all of our opinions confined to editorial page…

“Put it on the editorial page.”

Many of you readers hate it when our columnists meander out of their chosen territory: A business columnist writes about sports. A sports columnist writes about business.

“That’s opinion,” you charge. “It doesn’t belong in that section.”

Your wrath illustrates a newspaper failing: We play by rules we too rarely explain.

Here’s Rule One: Columnists in every section of the paper are allowed to have opinions and voice them. The best do it strongly, clearly, with passion. So how can a reader know whether it’s opinion or straight …

Philip M. Foisie’s memos to the management of The Washington Post

(The following information was provided to The Organization of News Ombudsmen for transfer to this web site by Geoffrey Foisie in December 1995. It relates to the early history of ombudsmanship and the significant role played by his late father, Philip M. Foisie, the first ombudsman at Stars and Stripes, former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune and former foreign editor of The Washington Post.)

November 10, 1969

TO: Ben Bradlee, Gene Patterson
FROM: Phil Foisie
RE: A proposal for an ombudsman for the Post

I suggest that the Post select, or cause to be selected, by some method …