As we all know, news ombudsmen and readers editors are used at some of the best newspapers in the world. Washington Post was one of the innovators. Folha de Sao Paolo, Le Monde, The New York Times, The Guardian and many others have followed the example during the last decades.

This kind of ombudsmanship builds on a strong tradition. Every newspaper has its own way of doing it, but the basics are the same. In other words: Here you have a well defined and well tested model that can – and should – be adopted by quality newspapers around the world.

But what about public service broadcasters? Could ombudsmanship be a useful model for them? That’s the question, I will try to answer here.

In the first part I will compare the newspaper-tradition with the issues that are facing us, when it comes to public service stations.

In the second part I will focus on some of the lessons I have learned in practicing ombudsmanship in Denmark during the last five years.

And finally I will try to suggest some ways to go ahead.

I. Newspapers vs broadcasters.

Let me start with newspapers and broadcasters. During the last decades more than 20 public service broadcasters have established a position as news ombudsman. Among them are broadcasters from The United States, from Canada and from around Europe.

But it’s important to emphasize, that the “model” for public service stations is by far as well established as “The Washington Post-model” is for newspapers. There are several special challenges:

First of all: It’s still early days regarding ombudsmanship on public service stations – and many stations work in a special national framework with a history of its own. It’s a highly diversified group.

Secondly: Almost by definition public service stations stands in the center of discussions over political influence and editorial independence. This turmoil is stronger than the one most newspapers face. The license payers often have very strong feelings about the public broadcaster and many politicians and governments are trying hard – in many different ways – to influence the editorial line of the strongest stations. So the environment is often much tougher.

Thirdly: It’s quite another type of media – the task is more complex: The good old printed newspaper is rather easy to overlook every day. A daily newspaper can normally be read in total in an hour or two. A specific place in the newspaper can be used every day for corrections and clarifications and a column once a week or biweekly can underline and explain the role of the ombudsman or the readers editor – or what title the paper have decided to use.

At most broadcasting corporations the output takes many more forms. Take for example my situation at DR – The Danish Broadcasting Corporation. It runs a multimedia operation – including and integrating tv, radio, internet, mobile-services etc. After the digital switch-over last year DR now have 6 tv-channels. The radio-side includes 4 FM-channels and 16 DAB-channels. All together DR employs a staff of more than 3000 – and reaches millions of Danes every day. There are so many channels and so many different news programmes that it’s of course impossible for one person to follow it all. And there are big differences in the audience from channel to channel – and during the day.

In other words: To have an ombudsman is a much more complex operation when you don’t have a well defined product on print every day as the turning point. It’s really a special challenge to develop ways and methods to make the function as listeners and viewers editor visible and effective on a big public service broadcaster.

This takes me to challenge number four:  Most of the public service broadcasters have a bad tradition when it comes to corrections and clarifications. At newspapers – at least the good ones – it’s only natural to try to get things corrected as soon as possible. It’s normally not a big deal to put a few lines of correction in a short one-column-story in next day’s newspaper. And it’s not the end of the world to offer the complainant to give his or her version on the opinion pages.

But on television and radio the attitude is often a very different one. For many tv-editors it is really a big deal to bring a correction in The Nine O’Clock News – or whatever it’s called today.

They come up with all sorts of arguments: It can confuse the viewers. Maybe many of them haven’t even seen the mistake in the first place and it can be difficult to put the correction into the relevant context if it’s a complicated story. And so on and so forth. But all too often these arguments are nothing but a way of avoiding admitting a mistake.

I have argued strongly for a corrections’ and clarifications’ site on the internet – covering all DRs broadcasting and news-sites. It’s now in place – and done in the same tradition as we know from quality newspapers. It does not solve the whole problem – it’s still a big fight to have all important mistakes corrected on the web and to have appropriate corrections published in the relevant tv- and radioprogrammes etc.

But I believe it’s an important battle to fight. And it’s actually getting more and more relevant because of the massive re-use of content across different media-platforms. The same story is often produced in a tv-, a radio- and an internet-version. And the same story is quickly copy-pasted on many other news-sites. And the tv-version is not gone, when it has been broadcasted for the first time. More and more programmes are also available on demand later on: So mistakes and errors can spread extremely fast nowadays – and be repeated again and again. The corrections must be able to compete – and public service broadcasters have a special obligation to take the lead here.

So to sum up from this first part: The ombudsman-model from the quality newspapers should be a great inspiration for public service broadcasters – but it can’t just be copied. The model needs to be developed further to fit the special demands of broadcasting and public service – and the many experiences from different countries have to be discussed and examined.

II. The Danish lessons

This takes me to the Danish part of the story. What have been learned up there?

I am the first news ombudsman at DR – The Danish Broadcasting Corporation – and I have been in office for more than five years. The position was established following a major Danish media-scandal. It started with claims in several newspapers about a documentary produced by DR.  One sequence was heavily manipulated – and only slowly the management realized, that there could be no excuse – whatsoever – for such a manipulation. In the end the director general apologized.

But the case wouldn’t die. It was used heavily by critics of The Danish Broadcasting Corporation – and the board of governors wanted to see some action. They demanded initiatives that could show a firm commitment to high ethical standards. They wanted a more responsive organization.

Part of the outcome of this discussion on confidence-building was a decision to introduce a new position as the listeners and viewers editor. The daily management was against, but the board of governors insisted.

The new editor was given several tasks:

One of many was to head a new appeal system – all complaints should in the first place be answered by the relevant editor and departments around the organization – but as a new initiative complainants should be advised about their possibility of appealing a negative response to the listeners and viewers editor. After investigating the case the listeners and viewers editor should present his or her findings to the director general – who has the final say.

The first couple of years proved to be an uphill battle. There were lots of scepticism among journalist and the majority of the daily management was opposed to having an independent listeners and viewers editor.

The fighting about the construction went on in many different disguises, but we did found some common ground because no one wanted a confrontation with the board of governors. When I first engaged in public debates it became a matter of controversy among senior managers. One of them even tried to stop me from publishing one of my columns – but in the end I got it my way.

I have now been in office for five years and many things have changed fundamentally since the reluctant reception I got in the beginning.

The appeal system is up and running – and so far the DG has agreed in almost all my findings.
A new set of ethical guidelines have been developed in close cooperation with key people from all over the organization. I have detected a number of serious faults in the handling of complaints from listeners and viewers – and consequently tried to improve the system.

Three years ago the Danish radio- and tv-legislation was up for renewal. Among other changes Parliament decided to mention the position as listeners and viewers editor in the law. With a big majority it was made mandatory for DR to have such an editor because it had proved to be a good method of self-control. Furthermore the board of directors was instructed that they should hire the editor – in order to ensure his or her independence. Now I am hired by the board of governors – which gives me a stronger and more independent position.

In my daily work I concentrate on the critical voices and the complaints. I am monitoring the development in the critique – and discuss the problems with the director general and top-editors.
When I join the heated public debates on DR’s programming my focus is whether DR follows its own code of ethics – which also includes a strong obligation to be a critical and independent media.
There is a great paradox here:  My best channel for telling listeners and viewers about my critique is in fact the newspapers and their websites. During the last year I have been quoted in approx. 400 articles. I have only been on air at approx. 15 occasions.

When a case attracts great public attention it also gives me a window of opportunity to raise my voice. But often I refrain from commenting – I have to try hard to concentrate on the most important cases. It’s also essential that every comment in itself demonstrates the independence and the principles you follow. 

It’s much easier when it comes to the web-users. I have a reasonably well-functioning website with lots of information – all my columns and press-releases are to be found there – as well as my findings in the appeal-cases and an assessment of each of the topics, that have attracted the highest numbers of complaints recently. I usually publish approx. 40 of these every year – I call it the complainant’s hit-list – and it often gets media-attention. Some of the issues have to do with technical problems – many regarding the web-services – and complaints about problems with hearing the spoken word. When it comes to the content, the biggest group of complaints is about bias in the news coverage.

I also publish biannual reports – they describe my work rather comprehensively. I find that useful. I am supposed to control others – but no one controls me directly. Consequently I have to show transparency when it comes to my own work.

In my reports I also include concrete proposals for greater openness, stronger ethical guidelines, better ways of dialogue and so on.

Am I busy? Yes indeed! I only have a halftime assistant and I could easily use much more help. But its part of the story, that DR has a special division for customer information. I have a good working relation with them. They handle around 80.000 questions and comments a year – and every day I forward the more banal stuff to them.

The job is interesting and demanding. Sometimes my mailbox overnight gets filled with hundreds of mails. On such an occasion I sometimes long after the old days when the broadcaster was sitting in a fortress when deciding what to air.

But that’s not an option nowadays. We have entered a period with a very intense dialogue on many new platforms. As a public broadcaster DR-programmes are intensely debated around the clock at hundreds of debate-sites and thousand of blogs.

It can sometimes seem overwhelming and difficult to cope with. It is. But there is no place to hide – and no way to avoid a frank and open discussion about all issues of real concern to the public.
I can’t of course be the point of contact for several million listeners and viewers and web-users. But I am their active and visible ambassador – and I am the one they can appeal to, if they believe the editors and the managers have got it wrong in a very important case.

I believe it matters. And that it makes a difference. Of course a system like this will always be up for debate. That part of it. But it has been broadly recognized as a part of making DR a more accountable and a more responsive broadcaster.

It’s also a risky position. You are never better than the quality and relevance of your last comment or your last finding.

III. What’s next – a way ahead?

Now – finally: A few remarks on how to proceed? What can be done to spread this useful model?
One important part of this is ONO – The Organization of News Ombudsmen. ONO is an international network of professionals working for transparency and accountability.

This organization brings together news ombudsmen from around the world. Here we share lessons learned. Here we discuss the fundamental changes in the media-landscape. And here we make plans for promoting the ideas and principles of ombudsmanship.

I guess this is extremely important when it comes to ombudsmen on public service stations. We still need to describe the different model with more clarity. We still need a better overview of how things are being handled around the world. And we need to help and give advice and have an open dialogue with people that are trying to follow our example.

I am in the process of setting up at group of all the news ombudsmen and viewers and listeners editors from public service stations around the world. When ONO meets for its annual meeting in Oxford, England in May this year we will have a special meeting for the public service stations. My hope is that in a year ore two we will be able to promote ombudsmodels for public service stations with the same clarity as we promote the Washington Post-model for newspapers and with a strong record of good examples to learn from.

Public service broadcasters should be transparent and should be held accountable. But how can it be done without loss of editorial independence and integrity? Part of the answer is – in my opinion – the kind of self-control that is the core of ombudsmanship.

I hope all this could prove to be at useful input for you. Whenever you are involved in discussions on promoting ombudsmanship, please feel free to mail me or ONO and inform us on results and problems – and ask for ideas and support from the international network.

Good luck.

This speech was delivered at the Conference on Professional Standards and Self-regulation in Media in Istanbul on Feb. 23, 2010.

A lot of very important things came into focus on Sept. 11 last year. Before 9-11 or after 9-11 has become one of those universal markers, a way to date things without explanation, without elaboration.

But for the future of journalism in the public interest, one of the things that occurred on 9-11 was that — for millions of Americans — timely, accurate and abundant information suddenly became important again.

Broadcast and cable television stations recorded numbers unseen since the Gulf War. National Public Radio’s audience reached an all-time high. The Internet search engine Google reported a stampede to newspaper and television Web sites. Hits on the news-related sites increased by a factor of 60 within hours of the first attack.

After nearly two decades during which Americans turned away from serious news and immersed themselves in a world of babbling voices marinated with advertising and entertainment, suddenly we rediscovered the inescapable virtue of reliable, verified information.

In a newly unpredictable and dangerous world, journalism in the public interest was again distinctive, inherently more valuable to help us cope with the unpredictable and understand the nature and sources of danger. In a world awash in unlimited forms of communication, what we all reached out for was information that had been verified, information that had been put into meaningful context.

The kind of depth and context that Dan Fisher has written about recently from the ombudsman’s beachhead in the Internet he established at MSNBC.com.

The kind of news we so often in the past have reached for when confronted with a challenge — whether the challenge of a natural disaster, an economic disaster or a war. But as the galvanizing moments of agony and destruction of 9-11 receded, and as we organized as a nation to respond to the challenge, the government and much of the public is anxious to curb our appetite for independent, timely, reliable information.

At a time when the basic institutions of our society are under threat, and a self-governing people most need accurate, independent information, journalists are told to stop asking questions, stop challenging authority. They are asked to restrain their aggressive monitoring or the people and institutions of power, to curb their skeptical nature.

Government officials and neighbors alike are asking: Are you an American first, or are you a journalist? But this question is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of journalism in a democratic society. And it is a misunderstanding that the press allow to remain unchallenged only at its peril.

I believe it is vital to the interest of the journalist and the public alike that we engage in an urgent, forceful and consistent campaign to educate the public with the knowledge that in a democratic society the journalist is, in fact, exercising the highest form of citizenship by monitoring events in the community and making the public aware of them and their import; by skeptically examining the behavior of people and institutions of power; by encouraging and informing forums for public debate.

We need to make it clear to the public that the journalist best expresses citizenship by functioning as a committed observer, especially when the community is under stress or undergoing rapid, disorienting change.

Far from being the disinterested, disengaged outsider many people consider journalists to be, because they do not take a direct activist’s role in civic affairs, the journalist who works in the public interest is one who is interdependent with the needs and hopes of his fellow citizens and uses his independence to help all members of the community engage effectively in civic life.

This special interdependence flows from the public’s need for timely, accurate, independent information and the journalist’s need for an interested public. This interdependent role of journalist is one of the defining characteristics of our democracy.

A journalist is never more true to democracy — is never more engaged as a citizen, is never more patriotic — than when aggressively doing the job of independently verifying the news of the day; questioning the actions of those in authority; disclosing information the public needs but others wish secret for self-interested purposes. And this sort of interdependent role is not independent to journalists. Our society recognizes such independent, often infuriating, behavior by others in order to protect our freedom and the rights of citizenship. We recognize, for example, such independent behavior in doctors and lawyers.

We may be upset, but we understand when we learn that a doctor, at the scene of a prison riot, saves the life of a convicted child molester before treating a less seriously wounded policeman because deep down we know that is what a doctor’s role requires and it is in the interest of all of us that the doctor does so.

We recognize such independent behavior by lawyers who diligently and aggressively fight on behalf of a defendant in court against the government even in the most troublesome cases — witness the aggressive defense of John Walker Lindh. And deep down, we understand that it is just such adherence to the rule of law that protects all of us.

It is important that we help the public come to an understanding of this role for the journalist, which history makes clear.

The first publications we would recognize as modern newspapers that developed in Western Europe in the early 17th century made public opinion in an organizing world possible. Before publications like the Parliament Scout promised to “search out and discover the new” in England in 163, there was no common base of information upon which a public opinion could form.

Without journalism, without a steady, reliable flow of independent information without which the creation, care and continuation of a public opinion would not be possible — self government would disappear. Journalism and self government will rise or fall together.

This is the reason that Federal District Judge Murray Gurfein, in his ruling in the Pentagon Papers case in the 1970s, reminded the government, which was attempting to suppress information about the War in Vietnam, that the “security of the nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of free institutions.”

One of the most important of those, Judge Gurfein said, was public knowledge about the behavior of government, especially in wartime.

We need, also, to let the public know that we know it is because of the special role a journalist plays in our society that we also have a special responsibility.

If journalists are to effectively pursue the independence that their work requires, it is important that the public understand and accept that role as a valid one. The only way to assure that is for the journalist to act with the responsibility commensurate with the freedom their independence requires.

And despite the fact that Sept. 1 seems to have reminded us of the fragility of the basic freedoms upon which our way of life is based, too many still take these freedoms too much for granted or fail to understand what they all mean.

Let me juxtapose four recent events for you to illustrate this concern.

The first pair of events is from two weeks ago. One was publication of an op-ed piece by a graduate student at Harvard in The Washington Post in which he argued that he thought ABC was correct in seeking to replace Ted Koppel and Nightline with David Letterman because the late-night chat shows, Saturday Night Live and MTV were more important links between a cynical nation and its government than traditional journalism.

The piece appeared the same day a traditional journalism organization — the international consortium of investigative journalists — announced its annual award winners, including Jacques Pauw, a television journalist who, at the risk of his own life, went undercover to document the involvement of an Anglican bishop in the genocide in Rwanda; Mark Davis, who defied defamation proceedings of the Australian government to disclose that government’s effort to suppress details of massacres in East Timor; and Rick Tulsky’s findings of a pattern of behavior by U.S. Immigration judges of refusing asylum claims and returning the people to those from whom they are seeking asylum. None of these stories appeared on late-night chat shows or MTV.

The other pair of events were really images from The Washington Post a few weeks ago. On the one hand were images of a young American man who lost his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan and, in the other picture, a mounted policeman who was trying to minimize the destruction of shops and homes along U.S. Highway 1 by University of Maryland students celebrating a basketball victory.

Taken together these images suggest to me that, despite the events of Sept. 11, we have yet to develop a connection between the nature of our freedoms and the obligation they place on each of us to recognize and protect the values they represent — especially with the emerging generation.

For all that the speed, techniques and character of the news delivery has changed, the primary purpose of journalism has not. The primary purpose of journalism remains to provide citizens with a credible and accurate account of events in society so that they can be free and self-governing.

This definition is so consistent through history, and so deeply ingrained in the thinking of those who produce news, we can safely say that it is difficult to separate the concept of news and journalism from the notion of creating community and democracy.

The world in which the well of accurate, reliable, factual information is not being constantly replenished is one that becomes more polluted with gossip, rumor, speculation and propaganda. This is a mixture that is toxic to civic health. This is a mixture that will produce a public less and less able to participate in civic life. This is a mixture that makes it more and more likely that a self-appointed elite will be free to exercise its will on society.

In order to help the public better understand the independent role of journalists in our society and its value to them as individuals and as members of a self-governing community, journalists must create a new relationship with the public, bringing them into the processes of newsgathering.

Market demand is clearly the most powerful force shaping society today, so it is in the interest of journalists to worry about creating a market demand for quality journalism based on citizen first.

And, clearly, the ombudsman is in a crucial position to do just that. The ombudsman can be the pathfinder in creating a demand for quality journalism because you help the public see how the sausage is made — to see how journalists work; what informs their decisions; why it is important to the public that journalism works as it does.

I would urge that you take on this role more directly. How? Well, the first step would be by clearing up some of the confusion in the public’s mind; by articulating our values more clearly.

Take objectivity for example: a subject Tom Rosensteil and I take on at some length in our book, The Elements of Journalism. Objectivity has come to be widely understood to mean the opposite of what was intended. Even by journalists. And the result is we have helped confuse our readers, and as Don Wycliff pointed out recently in one of his columns in The Chicago Tribune, they are prepared to see willful bias in any story with which they disagree.

But again, history tells us another story. And it’s one we have allowed ourselves and the public to forget at our own detriment — maybe at our peril.

When the concept originally evolved, it was not meant to imply that journalists were freed of bias, which is the way most of us have responded to the argument. But just the opposite is true. The term began to appear in the 1920s, out of a growing recognition that journalists were not free of bias.

Before that, journalists talked about something called realism — the idea that if reporters simply dug out the facts and piled them up, the truth would reveal itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, Freud was developing his theories of the unconscious, and painters like Picasso were experimenting with cubism; reporters and editors were developing a greater recognition of human subjectivity, becoming more aware of the rise of propaganda and the role of press agents.

Good intentions, or what some might call “honest effort” by journalists, were not enough. The solution was for journalists to acquire more of the scientific spirit…a common intellectual method.

In the original concept, in other words, the method the journalist pursues toward journalistic truth is objective, not the journalist.

The individual reporter may not be able to move much beyond a surface level of accuracy in a given story. But the first story builds to a second, which the sources of news have responded to mistakes and missing elements in the first, and the second to a third, and so on. Context is added in each successive layer. In most important and complex stories, there are subsequent contributions on the editorial pages, the talk shows, in the op-ed accounts and the letters to the editor or the callers to radio shows — the full range of public conversation and private.

This practical truth thus becomes a protean thing that grows as a stalagmite in a cave, drop by drop over time. And the process by which it grows is transparent to the audience. This is the process we should help the public understand. Help them by urging them to look at the documentation of the story. Urging them task the most important question they can ask of a story — how do they know that? — and if the answer is not in the story, then it’s not the kind of journalism on which they want to be making the decisions a citizen must make.

A better understanding of the public interest that is invested in journalistic independence — especially in perilous times — and a better understanding of objectivity and how to recognize true bias are crucial to the future health, maybe even the survival, or a journalism in the public interest.

And, as I said before, I believe you who talk directly to the readers — whose mandate is to represent the readers’ interest in your organization’s presentation of the news — are in a position to do the job most effectively.

For it is you who, in effect, make the statement every day: If journalists are truth seekers, it follows that they have to be honest and truthful with their audiences, too — that they be truth presenters.

If nothing else, this responsibility means journalists be as open and honest with audiences as they can about what they know, how they know it and what they don’t. The only way in practice to level with the people about what you know is to reveal as much as possible about sources and methods. How do you know what you know? Who are your sources? How direct is their knowledge? What biases might they have? Are there conflicting accounts? What don’t we know?

This transparency that the ombudsman represents signals the journalist’s respect for the audience. It allows the audience to judge the validity of the information, the process by which it was secured and the motives and biases of the sources providing it.

By these and other methods that bring journalists into a more open relationship to society and help educate the public to ask those questions, we can help create the demand for quality that makes the public the most important ally the newsroom has in the ongoing debate over whether or not quality journalism is worth the cost to produce.

An educated public that will be better able to understand and value the importance of a free and independent press the way the founders of our government did — as the indispensable tool whereby the public receives the information needed to effectively take part in community affairs.

A tool that becomes more, not less, valuable when a community is under stress, when the air is filled with rumor and disinformation; when decisions made on the basis of faulty or misleading information can have serious, even deadly consequences.

Western thought has produced one idea more powerful than any other, the notion that people can govern themselves. And the people themselves created a largely unarticulated theory of information called journalism to sustain that idea. The two — self-government and journalism — will rise or fall together.

Our continued freedom in a dangerous, anarchical world depends upon not forgetting the past — the institutions that made us the most successful and admired country on the face of the earth.

For, in the end, if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that freedom and democracy do not depend upon technology or the most efficient organization.

Freedom and democracy depend upon individuals who refuse to give up the belief that the free flow of information has made freedom and human dignity possible.

I begin with a word of thanks for enabling the Nieman Foundation to be the host of your meeting this week. I am impressed with the serious purpose you bring to your discussions. Listening to your sessions and meeting you has been a valuable learning experience for me.

In sharing some thoughts this morning on fairness, a good starting point is to acknowledge that newspapers that employ ombudsmen are making a clear statement of an intent to be fair. And fairness is one of the many elements that helps build public trust in the newspaper.

I had the privilege of meeting with you in your annual conference in Montreal in May 2000.

At that time I was working for the Freedom Forum on a project called Free Press/Fair Press. It was a moment in which newspapers were struggling to address fragile public support of their journalism.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Project for Excellence in Journalism were engaged in a growing national effort to improve public perceptions of press credibility.

The Freedom Forum’s particular focus on fairness, as part of the larger examination of credibility, was built on the idea that if the press is seen as fair it can also be seen as credible by its audiences.

Our experience in examining fairness recognized that this was a global concern, not just one for U.S. newspapers.

International media forums in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia during 1998, enabled journalists, media executives and government leaders to look at press performance in their regions of the world through the lens of fairness.

These discussions reinforced our understanding of differences in the concepts of a free press between the U.S. and many of the world’s democracies.

In countries where there is a partisan press or where media ownership strongly influences content, for example, fairness was seen in a different context.

The question seemed not to be whether individual news organizations are fair, but whether there is a range of voices and points of view that, taken together, add up to a fair press.

A few months after your Montreal meeting, I was invited to come to Harvard and I soon found myself examining fairness in a different way.

The Taylor Family that owned The Boston Globe over five generations had invited the Nieman Foundation to administer an annual award that would recognize exemplary examples of fairness in newspapers.

My predecessor, Bill Kovach, had begun conversations with representatives of the Taylor family and editors of the Globe about organizing the competition.

Bill passed the Taylor Award file on to me and I attended a series of planning meetings over the next several months, in which our little group found itself exploring the meaning of fairness and trying answer the question: Should we/could we define fairness as the basis of judging the entries in the award competition?

The more we talked the more it came clear that this is a question for which there were no easy answers.

The idea of fairness in journalism is complex and diverse; not easily defined for a journalism competition, or even in the everyday assessment of stories for tomorrow’s newspaper.

We began the competition in 2002 with no specific definition of fairness in mind. It was our expectation that the newspaper entries, and the nomination letters accompanying them, would provide definitions as they described how the project was framed, reported and presented to readers in the context of fairness.

After six years, the Taylor awards in fairness are well established. We have in hand a range of examples that help expand our understanding of fairness.

This year, as we honored three newspapers, we recognized, again, how the stories demonstrated the complexity of fairness in journalism.

The Lancaster New Era received the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers and the $10,000 honorarium for its coverage of the Amish schools shootings in that rural Pennsylvania community.

The newspaper confronted the deeply held spirit of Amish communal life that no individual should stand out from the group.

This posed a fundamental issue of fairness for the New Era newsroom: How could the paper balance the community’s expectation of immunity—that is, no one would be quoted by name—with its own need to put sources on the record as a matter of journalistic credibility?

The solution, editor Ernest Schreiber explained, was to gather “so much information from so many sources that we could write confidently and compellingly without revealing the identities of those who wished anonymity.”

The result was a three-day series called “Lost Angels: The untold stories of the Amish School shootings,” which shed light on worlds usually hidden from view in remarkably fair and just ways.

One of the finalists was The New York Times and reporter Tim Golden for his stories on Guantanamo.

In this case, Golden addressed difficult questions about the Bush administration’s terrorist-detention system, hidden under layers of government secrecy, and produced new answers by getting key players to speak on the record about how the system was created and how it has operated.

His stories demonstrated that the obstacles to fully informing the public constructed by military or government rationale, even during time of war, should be no substitute for either truth or fairness.

Transparency was the critical element of fairness in the third award this year: Reporter John Mangels’ series of stories in The Plain Dealer of Cleveland on a leading scientist in the field of plagues who could not explain the disappearance of 30 vials of plague bacteria from his laboratory and eventually spent two years in prison.

Mangels’ stories avoided the temptation to portray the scientist as a heroic figure and to characterize the government’s role, in the name of homeland security, as one that resulted in an injustice.

Mangels achieved transparency, in part, by assembling a long list of footnotes that identified documents and sources for the major points in the series, which he posted online.

A snapshot of the complexity of fairness can be seen in these three examples: respecting cultural and religious traditions to the extent of publishing anonymous quotes; unraveling a failed terrorist-detention program by getting participants to speak on the record, and extensively footnoting sources and documents to help readers understand the reporter’s trail.

Following the award ceremony, reporters and editors from the papers being honored talk with Nieman Fellows. Year after year, the Fellows find these conversations particularly enriching as they reveal qualities distinctive to fair stories grounded in the basic elements of journalism

One of the lessons these discussions yield over time is that ordinary citizens had experiences with fairness in many of the stories.

The manner in which newspapers reported on the conflicts and tragedies confronting people thrust unexpectedly into the news was often the quality that distinguished the stories as outstanding examples of fairness.

Looking back at six years of entries we find other elements of fairness that stand out.

Typically, the reporters gave extensive attention to accuracy and precise detail.

They reflected the entire community fully and fairly, and their stores were attuned to cultural differences and nuances.

Their reporting revealed an authoritative understanding of the complicated events they were explaining, which resulted in stories that portrayed an accurate context.

The reporters seemed to come at the assignment with no preconceived story line.

They drew on sources that were in a position to know something about the events being reported on.

They used their narrative skills to craft stories that achieved what can be considered an “objective truth.”

In considering fairness as a virtue, is it, in today’s world of journalism, more difficult to attain?

The answer, it seems, is not more difficult, but perhaps more complex.

Thinking back to the concern about credibility that was a consuming challenge in your meeting in Montreal, and fast-forwarding to today, through the damage of Jayson Blair, Rick Bragg, Jack Kelly, Dan Rather, the contagion of dismissals over plagiarism and other newsroom scandals, the problems are still with us.

The Internet has contributed to making the challenge of being fair more complex, if not more difficult.

The myriad of online outlets has changed our relationship with the public and our relationship with one another across newsrooms and throughout the world of journalism.

Among other things, it has brought transparency to the work of ombudsmen. The periodic internal memos that once were circulated quietly to the newsroom family are now part of the public record of your newspapers’ performance. Sometimes they are posted on the newspaper’s Web site. Sometimes they are leaked.

Richard Chacon spoke yesterday of posting his notes to the Globe staff on his personal blog.

Some of these memos find a place on Romenesko. And if the offending reporter or editor wants to reply to the criticism these responses also are likely to get the public exposure the Web offers.

If nothing else, the larger public forum in which these discussions about journalistic performance takes place encourages more judicious language from all parties; which means, perhaps, that an element of fairness has found its way into the internal discourse over standards and values.

It was just a few years ago that there was hesitation in providing writers’ e-mail addresses as a shirt-tail to stories. These addresses are now a routine part of stories. They put reporters in direct contact with readers and create new links for readers to reach into the newsroom.

Some reporters claim to be overwhelmed by the volume of e-mails in response to stories with their bylines. Some are dedicated to answering them, some reporters refuse.

As reporters and editors introduce personal blogs to communicate directly with readers, it complicates the ombudsman’s task of overseeing all that goes to the public under the newspaper’s name.

The power of public exposure to journalistic behavior through the Web has forced news organizations to think anew about defining their ethics and their standards, and presenting them to the public through online postings.

Many of these statements make an effort to define fairness.

The Poynter Institute, for example, states that “We do our best to act justly, to respect people, to respect privacy, to minimize harm, and to keep our promises. We do our best to present different points of view in ways that adherents of various perspectives judge to be accurate.

“These guidelines serve as checks and balances on the perspectives and personal biases that each of us brings to decisions we make…

The Los Angeles Times Ethics Policy addresses the question of fairness this way: “A fair-minded reader of Times news coverage should not be able to discern the private opinions of those who contributed to that coverage, or to infer that the newspaper is promoting any agenda.

“A crucial goal of our news and feature reporting — apart from editorials, columns, criticism and other content that is expressly opinionated — is to be non-ideological. This is a tall order. It requires us to recognize our own biases and stand apart from them.

“It also requires us to examine the ideological environment in which we work, for the biases of our sources, our colleagues and our communities can distort our sense of objectivity.

“In covering controversial issues — strikes, abortion, gun control and the like — we seek out intelligent, articulate views from all perspectives. Reporters should try genuinely to understand all points of view, rather than simply grab quick quotations to create a semblance of balance.

“People who will be shown in an adverse light in an article must be given a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. This means making a good-faith effort to give the subject of allegations or criticism sufficient time and information to respond substantively.

“Whenever possible, the reporter should meet face-to-face with the subject in a sincere effort to understand his or her best arguments.

“Investigative reporting requires special diligence with respect to fairness. Those involved in such stories should bear in mind that they are more credible when they provide a rich, nuanced account of the topic. Our coverage should avoid simplistic portrayals.”

Looking ahead, the ability of newspapers to be fair will come under stress increasingly as a consequence of the downsizing of news staffs.

As Barney Calame wrote in his farewell column as the Times Public Editor, “Generating the revenue to pay for the news staff needed to maintain The Times’s high quality is the most serious challenge. “With advertising revenue from the print paper weakening in recent years, the hope was that growing revenue from advertising on the Web site would pick up the slack.

“Unfortunately, as The Times reported April 20, the paper has ‘decided to reduce its 2007 guidance for Internet revenue growth, suggesting that the transition from a print advertising model may be a long time coming.’”

What his warning suggests to me is that as news staffs shrink, the time and resources devoted to news coverage will diminish, and with it the ability of reporters and editors to reflect on and effectively work out the many elements of fairness in news coverage.

By Van Gordon Sauter
Former president of CBS News

A well-intentioned colleague suggested I discuss the changes that will occur in the communications business over the next 20 years — by 2018. An engaging concept, until I thought back to what I might have prophesied in 1978 about changes in the industry by 1998. That was sobering.

Who in 1978, for instance, would have predicted that a rambunctious, hokey, idiot savant from Georgia…who inherited a bunch of billboards in snake- infested underbrush, along with an obscure Atlanta television station…would create a consequential force in world journalism…through CNN in particular, and cable in general.

Who would have anticipated back in the ’70s that a Seattle twit, a college dropout, would create the first commercial nation-state, known as Microsoft, or that incredibly well-financed entrepreneurs and dreamers at the other end of this state would daily be planning technological innovations to further overturn the world of communications that has served so many of us so well.

Or that a relatively obscure Australian press lord, who owned some flamboyant tabloids in San Antonio and New York City, would create a brilliantly interlocked media empire that spans the globe while staying at the cultural and technological cusp, conveying words and pictures to villages in India, Beverly Hills 90210, Sloane Street and the Internet itself.

Given all that, making detailed predictions about 2018 would be preposterous. So let me veer off in another direction and begin with — of all things — Edna St. Vincent Millay. She wrote some decades ago that “upon this gifted age…in its dark hour…falls from the sky a meteoric shower of facts. They lie uncollected, uncombined, wisdom enough to leech us of our ills if daily spun — but there exists no loom to weave it into a fabric.”

I suggest to you that such a loom currently exists, in the form of an information delivery system that has evolved through the chaos and brilliance of our free enterprise system. It is seven-tiered:

First, radio, with its directness and immediacy; then television, with its cinematic revelation; then, daily newspapers, with detail and background; then the weekly magazines, rich in context and remarkably well-written; then the monthly magazines, with the perceptions afforded by widely spaced deadlines; then the books, with the documentation and perspectives that initiate the process of historical perspective; and finally, the wild card, the Internet, spewing out voluminous amounts of chaotic, sometimes dubious but frequently valuable information.

If information consumers used that loom efficiently, extracting the correct strength from each tier, we would constitute a remarkably well-informed society. But we don’t.

I would like to speak to the newspaper tier of that loom, and the remarkable pressures it is experiencing…to the degree there are legitimate concerns as to whether contemporary managements, operation practices and editorial staffs can carry it into the technologically driven future. Let me speak to three pressing challenges: one, journalism’s rapidly escalating credibility gap; two, the onrushing competitive technology; and finally, the emotionally barren banality of American newspapers.

First, credibility.

At this stage, most American still believe journalists and writers are servicing this loom with accurate, fair and balanced information. But there is impending peril. Credibility is showing distinct erosion.

In my opinion, the blatantly liberal, politically correct orientation of the news media on social issues is leading many consumers to conclude that journalists have a private agenda. I am not speaking here to political issues, but to social issues, which are the true grammar of societal experience.

Furthermore, the vulgar proliferation of supercilious, argumentative print journalists on television has further undermined the image of objectivity, of journalism committed to fairness and balance. It doesn’t matter if these people are reporters or columnists.

These slick, facile, upwardly mobile media luminaries contribute to the growing perception that journalists are on the same team, joined at the hip, with the dreaded politicians, and thus the disdain appropriately directed at the Federal political caste splatters across journalism.

The severity of this credibility attrition is best measured by research revealing that even now…after years of wretched excess…local television news tends to have more credibility than national news, print or broadcast, and, in many cases, local print news.

Outrage at journalists is hardly new. Samuel Johnson described news writers as individuals totally devoid of talent or ambition. John Quincy Adams said they sit at street corners with loaded blunderbusses, prepared to fire them off for sport or hire at any selected individual. And Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur talked of journalists as individuals primarily occupied with peeping through keyholes, chasing after fire engines like crazed coach dogs or waking people in the middle of the night to ask what they thought of Mussolini.

And things have certainly changed since the era of Hecht and McArthur. Journalism has gone upscale. We have gone from beer and sausage to quiche and Chardonnay. Reporters are middle- and upper-middle-class. They are college-educated. They tend to have far different social and political perceptions that the public theoretically being served.

Beyond giving evidence of a true empathy for what closeted liberals now call a progressive agenda, a striking number of young journalists openly disavow, when they can pull it off, the traditional goals of fairness and balance in the editorial product. They are proselytizers for their own personal “take” on events. And editors so frequently seem collaborative, or — at best — disinclined or incapable of doing anything about it.

Personally, I think publishers and editors should demand adherence to the standard drawn from Cicero’s exhortation to the historians. The date was 80 BC, but its importance is undiminished by the intervening years. If you substitute the word “journalist” for “historian,” it reads like this:

“The first law is that the journalist shall never dare to set down that which is false. The second, that he shall never dare to conceal the truth. The third, that there shall be no suspicion in his work of either favoritism or malice.”

That is a fine aspiration for the journalist and an excellent test for consumers to use in judging the core integrity of their news product.

But to further complicate journalism, there are cascading new technologies. I am hardly a technology zealot. In regards to television technology, I know only that turning the knob to the right makes it louder. But I fear the print and broadcast companies have dramatically underestimated the impact of technological innovation. Over the next several years the Internet will begin to unravel some of the tiers in that traditional loom.

Doubters unfailingly evaluate future technology in the context of the current newspaper audience. But that current audience will be gone in the not too distant future. And the upcoming audience will be far, far more receptive to the upcoming innovation. They will have grown to maturity with it.

Evolving information, breaking news, even stored knowledge, are for a growing number of consumers mere commodities. Readily available, anywhere. It is remarkably easy for startup (companies) to obtain raw news and information and to hire people who can refashion and package it. The proliferation of ill- advised journalism schools punch-press our theoretically credentialed journalists in tragically redundant numbers. They generally tend to be mediocre in terms of skills and knowledge, but not much is actually required of them.

Newspapers frequently contend their destiny is assured because the product is comprehensive, accessible, cheap, portable and disposable. But I think they make a generational/institutional error in overlooking a computer monitor’s ability to integrate video and text, at the discretion of the screen owner. The personalization and immediacy will be breathtaking. And when that modem- driven monitor becomes portable, like a notebook, the newspaper as a physical, hand-held entity will not be able to compete with its range of content.

The decamping of Knight Ridder management from Miami to the Silicon Valley is highly symbolic. Even non-competitive newspapers are hard to manage. Managing the future is precarious, because we don’t know when and in what form it will arrive. But one thing is certain: The newspaper that puts all its chips on the printing press and distribution trucks is in grave jeopardy. The future of the newspaper — and video, for that matter — is daily evolving in the (Silicon) Valley.

But journalism has yet another problem that compounds the first two: content. For want of a better term, it is the problem of conspicuous obtuseness. And that is unforgivable, for it repudiates the heritage of this business.

Journalism has a history that refuses to surrender, to quietly retire from our memories. Each of us, raised on newspapers, has our museum of buildings and pictures and editors and colleagues and yellowed clippings and brazen woodcuts that conjure up in crystal-clear images the greatness of this business. They grip our imagination with unyielding tenacity.

Just a few generations ago, this industry’s savants and romanticist, saints and rotters, strode across the rambunctious stage of America, fashioning a passionate industry, if not a robust nation, while holding a fiery contempt for those who preferred or cowered in the protective offstage darkness.

But today, our stage seems tediously fastidious, brittle and abstemious, insufferably proper. Those who cowered offstage now seem to own center stage. They are running the damned things. Their products are exhaustingly safe. They rarely, if ever, risk offense. Or take risk. Or call a scalawag a scalawag.

It wasn’t long ago that communities were so conscious of newspapers that they seriously discussed the merits of tarring and feathering editors and riding them out of town on rails. Who would even notice today? Is there anything in papers today that would lead you to have a sense of the editor? If Oscar Wilde was correct when he said dullness is the coming of age of seriousness, then our anonymous editors have elevated seriousness to a suffocating dullness.

I used to declare in speeches that journalism has advanced dramatically since the days of the knight-errant publishers and editors. I no longer believe that. Those scoundrels gave us reasons to read. To buy papers. They engaged us, causing us to screech with fury at their latest excess or to cheer another bombastic crusade of critical importance. There was a zest to their endeavors.

I fear that in a majority of communities readers sense an almost total absence of outrage or energy or enthusiasm in behalf of their core concerns — the concerns of the community. One senses today that the journalists, particularly print journalists, represent the special pleaders, if they represent anyone at all. In too many cases pages are lifeless. Writing is banal. Columnists don’t kick butt. There is an apparent abhorrence of flair.

We need some reincarnations of Pulitzer or Bennett or Hearst. Or Citizen Kane, for that matter. Tits, tots, pets and vets is the editorial formula allegedly dictated once by The Chief. Why not some contemporary, more studied version of that? Why not editors and news directors and publishers who love aggressively pugnacious and passionate editorial crusades?

Why can’t we have editors:

• who manifest unrelenting outrage at our inexcusable political class;
• who rail against the administrators and educators of schools that obviously fail our children;
• who cry out in sympathy when they see willing workers unable to find jobs or educations that opens up new careers;
• who fire employees when they become self-aggrandizing television stars or best friends of politicians or obsequious golf partners of greedy executives;
• And what about term limits for beat reporters? What about diversity — social perception diversity — as another mandate for the newsrooms?
• And while they are at it, why not editors who fire all those toady employees who attend gridiron dinners or correspondent dinners? Does any reputable journalist ever want to attend another White House Correspondents dinner, where every table now must have a floral arrangement and a Hollywood starlet with a low-cut gown?

And while I am collapsing into a rant, how about editors who might cover religion as a force in American life. I only see religion in the news in the context of gay marriages, gay clergy, priestly pederasts, nuns who can’t become priests and religious people who have the audacity to carry their social concerns to Washington like every secular organization. It is truly impossible to discern from the newspaper, or television for that matter, the role of the spiritual experience in America.

Over the past few years, as I tumble and stumble toward codgerhood, my news consumption is decreasing rather than increasing. The Internet gives me the news service wires, columnists, local headlines, gossip pages, front pages, weather and sports. I check it three or four times a day. I unfailingly read my home-delivered New York Times and Wall Street Journal at the top of the day. Most days, I read a local paper. But it isn’t really, to me, a local paper — though I think Willes and his group will make the LA Times a much better newspaper. It covers a vast metropolitan area. In 25 years, it will add the equivalent of two Chicagos.

But the area I live and trade and move about in — the area that I call home — has a population of about 300,000 people. In the next several years, an Internet news service will begin to daily cover this community. But at this stage, the LA Times, out of necessity, covers Pasadena far more than my unrecognized community. But I go to New York or Chicago or Ketchum, Idaho — my God, I go to Paris — more often than I go to Pasadena. So missing a day or so of the so-called local paper is never perceived as a loss. It is rare to buy a newsmagazine for its news. Local or network news is watched only where they are bound to contain some video of compelling interest.

In terms of content, I no longer read stories about Near East peace talks, dissent in China, AIDS, Bosnia, Africa, feminism, the so-called balanced budget, gay political aspirations and many other inexplicable editorial fixations.

In so many of those categories, the daily stories represent only the most superficial, incremental changes. I again started reading Northern Ireland stories about six weeks ago, and discovered that I missed nothing in the years of stories I ignored. All this while, the newsroom dedicates incredible amounts of energy to social issues that are more reflective of newsroom agendas than the needs or curiosities of the society.

We are in a declining journalism that has fed and occupied many of us for the last several decades. It is limping off into inconsequence.

It is not yet clear what precisely will take its place. Or when. But I suspect technology will force improvement at both ends of the journalistic bell curve. Upscale information sources and tawdry information sources will grow in accessibility and effectiveness. And the pace of change will be more rapid that we ever imagined.

A little more than 50 years ago, one of the visionaries declared there would be a world market for no more than five computers a year. That came from Thomas Watson, a champion and guiding inspiration of IBM. And a few years later, Popular Mechanics, operating from a similar mind set, looked deep into the future and joyfully predicted that individual computers would ultimately weigh no more than one and a half tons.

In “A Farewell to Arms,” Hemingway speaks of a great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. Old men do not grow wise, Hemingway declared; they just grow careful. There is much in life about which we must be quite careful: our honor, our relationships, our commitment to truth. But we can’t give automatic defense to the crippling caution of old men. We must walk through new doors.

In one of his master fictions, Graham Greene wrote that “there is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” Personally, I am not convinced that the door opens in childhood. I think it comes later. Sometimes much later. And it opens a lot. But when the door to the future opens, there is a deceptive absence of fanfare, no assemblage of trumpets heralding a great epiphany, a startling revelation. Our vulnerability is that one can pass through the door to the future and not recognize it — not realize the transition, let alone the new vistas and opportunities.

To recognize the open doors in journalism will require a swifter management than we have seen to date.

And in the best of all worlds, the ombudsmen should play a far broader critical role — beyond addressing the curiosities or inherent frustrations of the readers.

The ombudsmen — the degree that it is feasible — should be blunt and forceful advocates for jounalism that is relevant and passionate and filled with elan.

Ombudsmen should demand not just accurate and fair coverage, good taste and impeccable motives — but damned better newspapers. Ombudsmen should be agents of change. Tricky? You bet. But as television becomes more silly and indulgent, as the new technology siphons off consumers, newspapers can best respond and compete by, of all things, getting better.

And you — removed from the day-to-day anguish of manufacturing newspapers — should be empowered to publicly evaluate the paper’s performance. Its commitments. Its passion. If the newspaper is not moving to make schools better, for instance, your column should inquire why not. And if the paper is indeed working to enhance the schools, you should be capable of celebrating that performance.

While always centered on the newspaper, the ombudsman should be a media critic — to also see the newspaper in the context of that loom, that far wider editorial mix to which all readers are subjected, whether they like it or not.

In the consumption of news and information, people don’t compartmentalize the sources. In reality, everything gets jumbled together. It is probably a disservice to totally isolate the newspaper from the broad media mix. There are occasions when you should look beyond the paper alone to evaluate how all the news sources are performing.

Readers need more from you. Your writ must be expanded. Your venue more far- reaching. Your voice spread across a wider range of issues. We need editors bold enough to push envelopes, and also bold enough to empower the ombudsmen in their public role. We need editors who make ombudsmen make him or her sweat for a living — to get pushed out on limbs to give him or her full employment. I wish you Godspeed.

A native of Ohio, Van Gordon Sauter graduated from Ohio University in 1957. He entered the advertising world but resigned as an assistant producer of television commericals to pursue a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

After working for a daily paper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he joined the Detroit Free Press and covered civil rights and urban affairs. Later he joined the Chicago Daily News, covering a wide range of stories, including the urban riots in Newark, Detroit and Chicago.

In 1968 Sauter joined CBS and over 18 years held a variety of jobs including on-air commentator and news director for WBBM News Radio in Chicago, and executive producer, CBS News Radio in New York. He was Paris bureau chief for CBS News, and vice president for program practices for CBS Television. Later he became president of CBS Sports and president of CBS News. He resigned from CBS in 1986.

Until recently Sauter spent two years as president and general manager of KVIE, the public television station in Sacramento, Calif. He resides in Los Angeles and Ketchum, Idaho, and is married to Kathleen Brown, an executive vice president of Bank of America and former state treasurer of California.

A native of Ohio, Van Gordon Sauter graduated from Ohio University in 1957. He entered the advertising world but resigned as an assistant producer of television commericals to pursue a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

“In these post-O.J. Simpson days, as we chronicle the developments of one ‘gate’ after another, the readers’ representative is that vital link between us and our constituents. You provide the proper measure of constructive criticism and consciousness-raising, but also diligently defend our First Amendment rights.”

After my mercifully brief baptism of only five months on the Post-Dispatch assignment, I came away a devout believer in the imperative for ombudsmen to newspapers’ credibility and accountability, especially if they expect to survive at the same level of influence in this multi-media, multi-cultural society.

What bewilders me is why there is such a paucity of newspaper ombudsmen — only 2 percent, or about 35, on the 1,540 daily newspapers (in the U.S.). There are fewer ombudsmen than there would be Democrats at a Newt Gingrich fundraising dinner…

One of the problems ombudsmen have is the public’s uninformed perception of our title. If Jay Leno were to do one of his on-the-street polls and ask people what does a newspaper ombudsman do, the blank stares and mumbled stutters would explain our problem.

The title does not have the same ring of specificity and clarity as, say, reporter, editor, columnist or photographer. Is it possible for this group to have a title or professional designation on which all of us could agree and would consensually use?

As long as we have different titles — ombudsman, readers advocate, readers’ representative, readers’ editor and public editor — the public will perceive us with the same differential degrees…

We are facilitators, intermediaries, brokers, educators, investigators, problem-solvers, mediators, reporters, Socratic gadflies — and meddlers, the last category being the reason why so many editors are insecure about our role.

But even if publishers and editors do not regard our journalistic stewardship with an outpouring of enthusiasm, we still have a responsibility to help newspapers achieve five goals. If we can conclusively prove that our professional role makes a difference — a significant difference — more of our colleagues will be inclined to appoint an ombudsman.

The first goal is making newspapers necessary. People must need to buy our product, whether for advertisements, as the court of last resort when they need help and call an ombudsman, as the most dependable and comprehensive dispenser of information and even as that most comfortable morning cup of coffee companion. As long as they need us, they will buy our paper.

Television, one of our most salient competitors, is never as comprehensive as newspapers, and certainly not as dependable. In 1897, New York City’s eight- year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, distressed by her schoolmates’ disbelieving taunts, asked her father, is there a Santa Claus?

He told her to write the Sun because if it was in the Sun, it was true. What followed was Francis Church’s historic and heart-tugging editorial, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

One hundred years later, to whom would a parent ask his child to write to ascertain a historical fact — the National Enquirer, the Globe, Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer, Sally Jesse Raphael, the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, the Internet or your newspaper — or even one of you?

The second goal for newspapers is to always be exciting — not excitement inspired by scatology, pornography or sex-obsessed reporting, but plain ol’ fun-inducing, eyebrow-raising, mouth-gaping excitement.

In introductory newswriting (classes), we teach students how to write pungent leads and to craft stories, hoping they will develop a skill for turning out copy defined by the WIBD factor — “Well, I’ll Be Damned” — instead of the WGAD factor, “Who Gives A Damn.”

People watch television, go to the movies and check out dirty videos, not because they want to be educated or informed, but because they want to be entertained and have their impulses stimulated.

In this age of videocracy, when visual images overwhelm the senses and shape opinions, the E.Q — excitement quotient — on newspapers must rise if they are to compete with exciting media.

The third goal that ombudsmen can help newspapers achieve is superiority of information. We are not schools. We don’t educate as much as inform. We must become the ultimate fountainhead of information, but governed by the highest credibility that is made possible by our reliance on the acronym, FEAT — fair, evenhanded, accurate and thorough….

Fourth, ombudsmen must develop strategies that conclusively prove how ombudsmen can help newspapers become more accountable.

Accountability is a newspaper variation of interactivity.

Ombudsmen are the only professionals on the newspaper whose sole responsibility differentiates the new media — the Internet, Online, etc. — from the old media. In a sense, ombudsmen are custodians of accountability.

Publishers would disagree because they have their own index of accountability — circulation. If people buy the newspaper, they reason, that means they believe in us….

If that reasoning holds up, why has the national circulation of daily newspapers declined from a high of 62 million in 1987 to 56 million in 1997?

Why has daily newspaper circulation stagnated when the nation’s population has gone from 226 million in 1980 to 248 million in 1990 and is expected to top 270 million in the year 2000? And newspapers will still be struggling to maintain their current levels.

But the purchase of a newspaper cannot be equated with belief in accountability. Ironically, a reader’s purchase may reflect a kind of need, a desire for excitement or entertainment.

Many readers will buy a newspaper because it’s the only daily printed game in town. In the 30 largest cities in America, 16, or more than half of the 30 have only one daily newspaper of general circulation: Austin, Baltimore, Columbus, Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Portland, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Diego and San Jose…

Newspapers’ fifth goal is credibility. Ombudsmen can be critical to maintaining and even enhancing a newspaper’s credibility.

All of us are pained by the diminished respect readers have for us today. Two months ago, I took notice of my 40th anniversary as a journalist. In those 40 years, I cannot recall any period when readers held newspapers in such low esteem.

In the last five years particularly, there has been a steady drumbeat of antagonistic, acerbic, denunciatory criticisms of the media, especially newspapers. The reason we are the most vulnerable is because, despite our shortcomings, we are the most comprehensive, the most responsible and the most sensitive. Many readers regard newspapers as members of the family.

You rarely see a television program acknowledge an error or a factual mistake. But newspapers do it every day.

At the Newspaper Association of America’s convention, Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser lamented during a panel discussion of the pros and cons of news councils, “We’ve got a real problem in American newspapers. A lot of people don’t trust us.”

A national poll reported in a Parade magazine cover story under the headline, “Do You Trust the News?” found that people don’t. Readers and viewers believe that journalists are far too closely allied with special interests, that they go overboard to play up sensational aspects of a story and that they put far too much emphasis on the private lives of their subjects….

The public’s current ubiquitous dislike and disdain for the media may be emblematic of the Dr. Fell syndrome. In the 17th century, an Oxford Christ Church student wrote:

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this alone I know full well:
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

Newspapers have become inexplicably the Doctor Fells of the 20th century.

I had to grapple with that mysterious syndrome when I became an interim ombudsman for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to monitor the paper’s coverage of the mayor’s race and to ascertain…whether the Post-Dispatch was guilty of systematic racism, as the entire infrastructure of the St. Louis black leadership had charged….

St. Louis blacks were hostile, mad and about as pissed off at the Post- Dispatch as any group of black citizens can be at a newspaper…

During my five-month ombudsmanship, I wrote 14 columns, but it took me 10 columns before I found the statistical data that explained why so few black readers were responding to my column.

Although I averaged between 125 to 150 telephone calls, e-mails and letters a week, only four or five would comment on the mayor’s race which pitted a black former police chief against the black incumbent. Even more disconcerting, only one or two blacks would call me. I eventually discovered why.

Of the Post-Dispatch’s circulation, only 15 percent — let me repeat that: only 15 percent — was in the city of St. Louis; 85 percent was in the suburbs.

Because the latest census reported that St. Louis was about 50 percent white and 50 percent black, this meant that at the maximum, the black readership of the Post-Dispatch was 7 percent and probably close to 5 percent, given the tendency of lower black readership of newspapers.

Another problem…was the paper’s independent contracts with distributors. One of them, a white distributor, told me that it was either too dangerous to go into some black neighborhoods, or the honor boxes were always getting ripped off.

All of this eventually explained the reason for what I described in a column as the Rhett Butler attitude toward the mayor’s race: “Frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn.”

Eventually, most of the white readers softened in their attitude, and I was carrying on a delightful telephone dialogue with many readers in the suburbs and a few in the city.

Occasionally, black readers would call me and cogently point out a specific story or headline which they contended reflected the Post-Dispatch’s endemic racism. They were right. But I simply quoted Aristotle, “One swallow does not make a summer.”

Still flying by the seat of my inexperienced pants and looking for ideas for columns, I adopted one of Geneva Overholser’s columns — and it promptly catapulted me into a hornet’s nest, surrounded by dive-bombing wasps.

Overholser had written a column paying tribute to a retiring colleague. I decided to pay tribute to a Post-Dispatch woman reporter, Carolyn Tufts. Her brilliant, day-after-day investigative stories exposing the incumbent black mayor’s mistakes, mishaps and poor judgments had so upset black community leaders that she was demonized as a “pit bull.” For good measure, that ultimately infamous disparagement, “racist,” was thrown in.

The day my column appeared, two African-American women reporters — both of whom disliked Tufts — angrily demanded a meeting with Cole Campbell, allegedly on behalf of African-American staff reporters.

At the meeting, the first question one of the black women reporters posed to Campbell was, “What is the purpose of Chuck Stone’s column?” Other racial concerns were aired, but it was obvious (a fact that both black women reporters denied) that my column had kindled the flames of resentment toward Tufts.

I immediately offered to resign. Cole — bless his stand-up-and-be-counted soul — urged me to stay on, at least until after the mayor’s election. The contretemps dissipated, collegiality took over, several black staffers rallied around me and I completed my ombudsmanship with no further epistolary bloodshed — but not until I wrote a column about readers’ deeper concerns. That prelude-to-a-farewell column included a four-question survey form for readers to assess the paper’s Saturday tabloid.

If there had been one recurring, angry theme in telephone calls and letters during my ombudsmanship, it was a deep-seated hostility to the Saturday tabloid. Ironically, the tabloid had produced a 40,000 increase in sales. (I later learned that readers had to buy the Saturday edition in order to the get the popular Sunday paper.)

The column generated an amazing 1,619 letters!

The survey was admittedly unscientific, but it confirmed reader hostility toward the Saturday tabloid.

Whether my four-month ombudsmanship of trial-by-journalistic-fire succeeded, failed or was a little of both, will be a matter of historical judgment.

That Campbell still has not appointed an ombudsman indicates a certain degree of failure on my part. Jim Moseley, metro editor, concurred: “I don’t think Chuck worked well…He didn’t live here…He never developed a rhythm.”

Neither has the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — yet. The reason St. Louis is declining economically and educationally faster than any major American city — a statistical fact that my columns documented — is because of a strange parochialism that a critic must live in a city to assess its quality of life.

Yet, Moseley’s right. My ombudsmanship did not work well, despite the 1,619 letters and an average weekly response of 125 to 150 readers.

Moseley is part of the Post-Dispatch’s historical problem — an institutionalized, patronizing white mindset that is arrogantly convinced of the righteousness of its news judgments and blithely insensitive to what Alex Haley called the African-American community’s core ethos.

I wish I could disseminate more widely the reasons why one of America’s most prestigious and influential newspapers, the Washington Post, and other nationally respected papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Orange County Register, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star have ombudsmen.

But when a newspaper is able to sell only 15 percent of its daily papers to the people living in a one-newspaper city that bears its name, that paper not only is crippled by a credibility gap, it has a prima facie need for an ombudsman.

After 40 years in this business, I am more than ever convinced that the solution to newspaper woes is not more P.T. Barnum consultants, but more harnessing of the best newspaper minds to publish the best product that people will love, honor and, occasionally, even obey.

Ombudsmen represent those best minds.

Your organization, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, can do several things to persuade other newspapers and, in some instances, radio and television stations to consider the prestige-raising and circulation-increasing merits of employing an ombudsman.

I offer the following five suggestions to ONO.

One: Establish an annual award for the most outstanding ombudsman who made the biggest impact on his/her community by helping to effect changes.

The award would include a large sum of money. It is a documented fact that awards frequently achieve prestige in direct proportion to the amount of the award.

The only reason that the newly discovered concept, “civic journalism,” is being given any serious attention is not because it is an idea whose time has come, but because millions of dollars are available to promote it.

Advocates of civic journalism have never acknowledged that minority and special interest newspapers historically practiced civic journalism long before the majority media discovered it.

The ombudsman’s award would also be symbolized by an artistically designed representation whose unique beauty would stand out among competing awards.

In addition to the monetary award and the representation, the news organization would receive a plaque attesting to its support of ombudsmanship.

Two: Publish a textbook of the best ombudsmen columns, the criteria being their eloquent craftsmanship, their impact on the community and their ability to produce results….

Three: Publish an annual “Ombudsmen’s Handbook” that would:

(a) List all of the current ombudsmen, their newspapers, telephone numbers, e-mail and fax numbers;

(b) Include the top 10 ombudsmen’s columns that drew the heaviest responses during the past year. Ideally, these columns would be highly diversified, reflecting different topics, different concerns and differnt writing styles.

(c) Include a kind of catechism for editors and prospective ombudsmen on the appointment of an ombudsman — topics, suggestions and offers to be available for advice when a difficult problem arises for the ombudsman, or even for the editor.

Four: Explore the possibility of ombudsmen columns being added as a category in the Pulitzer prizes and other national writing awards (SPJ, ASNE, etc.). This is a remote possibility, but 20 years ago, so was explanatory journalism, which is now included in the Pulitzers.

In addition to the honored columns’ eloquent writing style, public service and solutions to problems, they should also be courageous, outspoken, irreverent and above all, witty. The worst sins you can commit as an ombudsman is to be boring, turgid and intolerant.

Your irreverence and wit should be universal. In teaching a class on censorship, I try to establish an open, no-sacred-cows, academic climate guided by the freedom of expression philosophies of John Milton and John Stuart Mill.

As an example, I ask my students on the first day of class, why is Sunday morning the best time to drive on Los Angeles freeways?

Because — the Catholics are in mass, the Protestants are still asleep, the Jews are in Palm Springs, the gays are in the public baths, the feminists are making protest signs, the lawyers are on the golf course, the hillbillies are watching the televangelical hour, the Irish are hung over from the night before, the Italians are in the fish markets, the Koreans are opening their convenience stores, the Greeks are taking bets over the phone, the Japanese are making flower arrangements, the Chinese are stuffing fortune cookies, the blacks are in jail and the Mexicans can’t get their cars started.

My fifth suggestion, and probably the most important, is to make your voices heard nationally in various professional publications (Editor & Publisher, Quill, American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, in letters to the editor in national newspapers, etc.) on various issues and national debates involving the First Amendment, libel, censorship, poor taste, and the constitutional limits of these issues…

It is more important for ombudsmen to speak up and speak out as often as possible in national forums. As you make your voices heard in your columns and in other newspapers, also make those voices heard in a relentless drumbeat to your readers.

Remind them as often as possible, by engaging them in a dialogue, that this is their newspaper. We may own it. But if they don’t buy it, it is an empty shell…

Remind readers of the reciprocity of responsibility inherent in the First Amendment. This mutual obligation was discussed in a 1992 Duke University Ewing Lecture series by one of America’s journalistic giants, Eugene Patterson, a Pulitzer prize-winning editor, former chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times and former Congressional Quarterly editor.

In his remarks, Patterson, who also is past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said he counted “two companion obligations.

“First, the press is obligated to defend the First Amendment against any attempt to limit it. The right of a free press belongs to the people. They depend on the press to be watchman over that right.

“Second, I think the public’s grant of freedom obligates the press to do its job. If the press forfeits, the public can always take back that right.”

Most editors consider that last sentence heresy in the delusion that they are the supreme custodians of the First Amendment (and that it) belongs only to them. But the people have equal custodial rights.

Sen. J. William Fulbright once wrote that in the formulation of difficult public policy decisions, “we must think unthinkable thoughts.”

Ombudsmen must occasionally think unthinkable thoughts and defend the right of others to do the same. And as they criticize, let them also cheer and praise.

Let them remind readers what a joy as well as a privilege it is to be an ombudsman. My students often ask me how I have felt during my 40-year career, being a columnist, editor, White House correspondent, “Today Show” commentator and radio and television show host.

“It’s like being paid to make love,” I assure them.

Ombudsmen are paid to make love to the community, to the First Amendment and to freedom of expression. If ONO can make as its first priority the doubling of the number of ombudsmen over the next year, they will also double the number of journalism professionals paid to make love to democracy’s noblest sentiment — freedom of expression.

Chuck Stone has been editor of three major African-American newspapers: New York Age, Washington Afro-American and Chicago Daily Defender. He was a senior editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, a syndicated columnist, a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, host of a PBS television program, “Another Voice.” In 1997 he was ad hoc ombudsman for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.