Anger management

By Stephen James
Sacramento News & Review

Here today, gone tomorrow: “Some people thought it was on the mark,” said Tony Marcano of his ombudsman column, “and some people thought I was completely out in left field.”

It’s a job with a strange title and duties that inevitably invite animosity and conflict. Ombudsmen handle customer complaints and scrutinize the business that employs them. In the newspaper industry, that often translates into bluntly criticizing the work of reporters, editors and managers, all in plain view of several hundred thousand readers. “Journalists are remarkably defensive people,” explained Jeffrey Dvorkin, National Public Radio …

‘Public Editor’ Daniel Okrent, Recruited After Scandal, Draws Ire of Reporters

By James Bandler
2004 © The Wall Street Journal

When the New York Times decided to hire a “public editor,” it wanted to heal a damaged institution. The Jayson Blair scandal — which began with a reporter’s fabrications and ended with the firing of two top editors — had badly bruised the paper’s credibility. The public editor would scrutinize the Times’s future performance and act as an advocate for readers.

Daniel Okrent, a veteran magazine editor, has been the Times’s public editor for seven months. But instead of bringing calm, the experiment has created fresh tensions within the Times about …

Mike’ll get ya

By David A. Markiewicz
American Journalism Review

Michael Getler has proven to be the toughest ombudsman at the Washington Post in a long time. What’s the impact of a hard-hitting in-house critic on a newspaper?

For a year now, Fridays in the Washington Post newsroom have crackled with a little added anticipation, something apart from the expectation of the next big story and beyond the eagerness of reporters and editors looking forward to the weekend.

The end of the week has also brought the release of the latest “Omb Memo,” a pointed, one- or two-page assessment of the staff’s recent …

Increasingly, newspapers call on ombudsmen to cure what ails them

By Lucia Moses
Editor & Publisher © 2000

Their motto might be, “Journalist, heal thyself!” While their job description varies, and they go by different names – ombudsman, reader representative, or public editor are common ones – their function is essentially the same: to lend an ear to readers and serve as an internal critic. Sometimes, there’s a price to pay, however, for prescribing tough medicine.

Journalists love to probe, and criticize, but are famously thin-skinned themselves, and “ombuds” are in the awkward position of having to criticize their own newspapers – which can mean taking their employers, co-workers, or …

This is a job for… Ombudsman, writer of wrongs!

By Kim Campbell
The Christian Science Monitor © 2000

When The Los Angeles Times published a front-page photo on May 17 of a Colombian mother with a bomb around her neck, it drew fire from readers. How could the Times print such a shocking photo of a woman waiting to die from the device forced on her by guerrillas?

The answer came in a column written by readers’ representative Narda Zacchino, who has been fielding calls and demystifying newspaper practices – like the choosing of Page 1 photos – since her position was created last year.

At a time when …

Why don’t more newspapers hire ombudsmen?

By David Cox

One of the most important responsibilities ceded to a newspaper by its community is the editorial page role as independent and unwavering observer, adviser and, sometimes, critic.

Generally speaking, I think we do a pretty good job of it. We investigate issues, weigh the facts and urge conclusions or make judgments. And, if we do our jobs well, these daily pronouncements may frequently be unpopular.

We weather the criticism and make our observations in the name of societal health and the overall best interests of our community. Thanks to our efforts to shine the light of fact …

Editors offer advice to newsrooms: Favre, Overholser address the industry’s problems

By M.L. Stein
Editor & Publisher © 1996

There’s nothing wrong with newspapers that a greater identification with readers’ needs and concerns couldn’t cure, two editors told their peers.

And it also wouldn’t hurt to elevate reporters’ pay scales and recruit writers with solid knowledge of such issues as tax policies, health care, child care and social security, it was added.

Gregory Favre, executive editor of the Sacramento Bee, and Geneva Overholser, who left recently as editor of the Des Moines Register and will become ombudsman at the Washington Post this month, spoke at a joint meeting of the California …

News ombudsmen: An inside view

By Maggie B. Thomas
Associate professor of journalism
Texas Christian University

Presented May 8, 1995, at the 1995 International Convention of the Organization of News Ombudsmen at Fort Worth, Texas.

Please accept my thanks to all of you who responded to the questionnaire designed to gather additional information about the role of news ombudsmen. Questionnaires were mailed to 42 ombudsmen and responses were received from 32, which provided a return rate of 76 percent. Some respondents did not reply to all items.

News ombudsmen perform a variety of tasks and often find themselves explaining or defending the journalistic efforts of …

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 …

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 …