The purpose of this study-note is not to demonstrate an academic theory but to document the controversy over ombudsmanship. In particular, I would like to focus attention on the origins and functions of newspaper ombudsmen and also present my own view regarding this controversy. The first question discussed in the controversy is: Where did ombudsmanship originate in, North America or Japan? American ombudsmen have recognized recently that it originated, or at least invented, in Japan but I want to argue against it.

The second question derived from the first one is: Does the Japanese system of ombudsmanship deserve the name of ombudsman? For this matter, I cannot say yes without reservation. Nevertheless, we would be pleased to see in the process of this discussion that ombudsmen investigate the truths fairly, and frankly disclose all the facts they find to readers.

The beginning of the controversy: the revision of brochures

The controversy arose from some different contexts between two versions of the brochures (1) of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO). The one was released in July 1993 and the other in September 1999.

The chapter “Is this a new idea?” in the previous brochure states: Relatively speaking, yes. The first newspaper ombudsman was appointed in June 1967, in Louisville, Kentucky, to act for readers of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times. The Canadian appointment at The Toronto Star was in 1972.

On the other hand, the new brochure added some different items of information to the previous one: (But) the general concept stems from a “Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play” established in 1913 at The New York World. Nine years later The Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo established a committee to receive and investigate reader complaints.(2) It was modeled after the World’s bureau.

Another mass circulation Tokyo paper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, set up a staff committee in 1938 to monitor the paper’s quality. In 1951 this group became a 28-member ombudsmen committee which today hears reader complaints about the paper and which meets daily with editors.

We must pay attention to some items of information provided by Osami Okuya, a senior staff of the Ombudsmen Committee of the Yomiuri,(3) to Arthur Nauman, Executive Secretary of ONO. As a matter of fact, almost all of those items are contained in the new brochure edited by Nauman.

According to Okuya, in July 1999 he sent Nauman some documents including a report of his research on Japanese committees to “improve the quality of our newspaper,”(4) and a copy of an announcement that appeared in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper of 1922.(5) He says about his intention: I just wanted to let my colleagues (ONO members)(6) know that we have had various types of in-house contents-checking systems in many Japanese newspapers and that in a sense they might be equivalent to the contemporary ombudsmanship. But I was strongly surprised at seeing Nauman’s way of evaluating my information and revising the brochure.

The Courier Journal’s correction

Immediately after the 1999 brochure was mailed to ONO members, a swift response unexpectedly came from Linda Raymond, ombudsman for The Courier-Journal, Kentucky.

Her column titled “We were wrong” appeared in the Courier-Journal(7) and attracted her colleagues’ interest. In it, “she told her colleagues and readers about some newly discovered history of news ombudsmanship, and made a telling point about a basic rule of journalism.
“(8) Her column is as follows:

We were wrong:
The Courier-Journal thought it was creating the first news ombudsman in 1967. In fact, the Japanese invented the idea in 1922.

By Linda Raymond

For 32 years, The Courier-Journal has taken pride in the belief that it appointed the first newspaper ombudsman and launched the international newspaper ombudsman movement. We were wrong.

We didn’t know that the concept had already been operating for many years in Japan when, in 1967, C-J editor and publisher Barry Bingham Sr. established the post here and John Herchenroeder became the first to fill it.

Over the years since, Herch and his successors (I’m among them) have listened to and acted on thousands of calls from readers with concerns about the newspaper. We’ve also supported an international organization of people with similar jobs, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, aptly known as ONO.

Our error came to light when ONO’s executive secretary Art Nauman revised a brochure that included the movement’s history and circulated it among members of ONO’s board of directors.

Board member Osami Okuya of the Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo saw a problem: His newspaper had established an ombudsman committee in 1938.

As Okuya researched the issue, he discovered that another Tokyo paper, Asahi Shimbun, announced in 1922 that it was establishing a panel to receive reader comments about errors. When I asked Okuya to share what he’d found, he kindly sent a thick sheaf of documents, all in Japanese. Keiko Kuwabara, director of the Japan Center of Greater Louisville at Indiana University Southeast, graciously helped translate the beautiful script that was, she said, the Japanese equivalent of Shakespearean English. From Okuya, Kuwabara and Nauman, this is the story that emerged:

In 1922, Asahi published a story saying that it was forming a committee to deal with a growing problem. Newspapers, pressed for time on deadlines, were making mistakes. Usually the paper would later apologize for the errors, but a lot of people were concerned. The newspaper feared that the newspaper and ordinary people couldn’t cooperate.

The ombudsmen committee would try to prevent that kind of situation by investigating when necessary and apologizing or solving the trouble. It would try to be fair and make everything fair, the paper said.

”The writer really insists how important it is,” Kuwabara said. Asahi credited the idea of the committee to the old New York World, which, it said, set up a similar system called the Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, in New York City in July 1913. (I have read the New York World for that period on microfilm until my eyes crossed without finding the story Asahi cited. The World is no longer published, so tracking its committee may be a good project for a future journalism student or historian.)

By 1938, Yomiuri Shimbun had to deal with many lawsuits prompted by news stories. It established a committee to ”improve the quality of our newspaper.”

The staff began by comparing each day’s editions with competing Tokyo dailies. Then, in 1951, it invited readers to contact it with complaints or comments.

Today the Yomiuri Shimbun has a circulation of several million and a 28-member committee whose members specialize in various types of complaints. The committee meets daily with editors who, by all reports, take the ombudsmen very seriously.

Clearly, in the spirit of the movement’s beginnings, The Courier-Journal owes an apology to the Japanese newspapers and thanks to Okuya for his help in setting the record straight. We aren’t alone.

Nauman noted in his message to ONO members that journalists, scholars, master’s degree candidates and ombudsmen have all assumed over the years that the movement started here.

So we all violated a cardinal rule of journalism: Don’t assume anything.(9)

The actual structure of Japanese ombudsmanship

By publishing her column, Linda Raymond and The Courier-Journal afford readers strong evidence that an ombudsman is really, and should be, independent of his/her newspaper. However, in spite of her honest explanation, I would say that the question, “What is the origin of ombudsmanship?” has never been answered. Otherwise, we are faced another question difficult to answer, that is, “Can we recognize newspaper-contents checking systems in Japan as ombudsmanship equivalent to American’s?” My answer is that we essentially cannot. Then, I sent a report containing my view to Nauman and asked him to pass it along to ONO members, with my comment:

I hesitate to recognize that “newspaper-contents checking systems”(10) in Japan can be regarded as worthy of ombudsmanship. No scholar or media person in Japan ever denies that the Courier-Journal established the post first in 1967. I am convinced that nobody actually violated a cardinal rule of journalism.

Nauman swiftly wrote ONO members:(11)

The discussion about the exact time and location of the origins of news ombudsmanship continues apace. Takeshi Maezawa, an associate ONO member and former ombudsman for the Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo,(12) was moved to react to the column written by Linda Raymond on the subject. He sent along the following elaboration, based on a study he has made of the Japanese media system.

My report is as follows:

Is it fair and accurate to call Japanese watchdogs “ombudsmen”?

The Japanese media world has a long history and many huge systems for in-house newspaper-contents checking function, as my colleague Okuya mentioned. Most newspapers in Japan have been operating this kind of program for more than 30 years, while a few newspapers started it before World War II. However, they wouldn’t like to call their programs “ombudsman”. The major reasons or questions for them are lack of disclosure and independence.

According to a survey by NSK, The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association, as of April 1997, 56 of 94 daily newspapers responding had their own department for these programs. The total number of daily newspapers in NSK is 116 and about half have such a department.

It should be noted, however, that neither department nor position formally named ombudsman exists in Japanese media companies. A few months after the “coral defacing incident”(13) was uncovered in May, 1989, the Asahi released through NSK English language News Bulletin “Our newspaper established Advisory Press Council composed of five prominent people including a former chief justice of the Supreme Court and it is generally hoped that it will perform as an ombudsman for the newspaper.”

As far as this council is concerned, the idea is excellent but in the event, the aim and activities are too different from the ones of the press council or ombudsmanship invented in other countries.

Actually, the names of those departments for checking the contents of papers in Japanese media companies and the titles of staff members are extremely varied. The most popular one is “The Committee for Checking Papers” and others are “The Chamber for Inspection of News Stories”, “The News Content Evaluation Department”, “The Section for Checking Articles” and so on. Anyhow, you would say; each of Japanese people is not independent and always prefers to do things in a committee like a tour group. As for their supervisors, one forth of these groups is led by a managing editor and one third are led directly by a president. The latter system shows a complete independence from a newsroom and the number increased from nine, in 1989, to 15 companies, in 1993 and 1997.

The number of staff assigned to ‘ombudsman’ duties is 481 in all and averages 9 per newspaper. How many it is! However 80 per sent of them are holding additional posts. At the same time, the functions of the system are various, too, from checking a wrong word and omission of a word to educating writers about media ethics.

Most results of checking and evaluating contents are released in each newsroom through both of or one of oral and printed statements to writers and editors.

As for The Yomiuri Shimbun Ombudsmen Committee is concerned, the present system was formed in 1951. If I literally translate the Japanese name of the committee into English, it should be The Committee of Newspaper Contents Inspectors. But I didn’t like to use this name because “inspection” implies “censorship”, and that’s why I have been calling “ombudsmen committee” since I first attended the ONO meeting in Minneapolis in 1985.

The main objectives of the committee are to improve the accuracy and fairness, and other activities are:

• Daily conferences with editors to evaluate articles.
• Twice-weekly in-house reports.
• Columns and reports in the paper.
• Examining applications for awards and prizes.

The president supervises the committee and I as a member had been trying to keep its independence from other departments in the paper. I am sure Okuya has been doing do. A national meeting of the representatives sponsored by NSK is held every year in order to exchange their experiences and thoughts and in a sense to reduce a common conception of guidelines for the Japanese media.

I will be unfair if I failed to refer to the fact that they gradually became concerned with the credibility of all the press. However, it seems to me that most newspapers established their checking systems mainly for the purpose of promoting QC (quality control) in their own newspapers, as with manufacturing industries, but not for responding to the public’s right to know and to readers’ access to media.

In reality, while many media companies have the department or system equivalent to ombudsman, they are reluctant to disclose information about themselves and invite readers to participate in discussion to adhere to media ethics. It is said Media world is one of the most exclusive communities.

That’s why other newspapers than the Yomiuri might hesitate to name their department “ombudsman” and join in ONO.

Nauman added his observation on Japanese ombudsmanship to his notice to ONO members: My own personal feeling is that while the Japanese media may not have been calling the function “ombudsmanship”, they certainly were (and are) acting in the classic spirit of ombudsman by taking active steps to improve their quality and, thus, their credibility. The rather elaborate and widespread committee system of quality control exceeds anything that is (or was in the past) found among American newspapers. So, in short, I think the Japanese deserve credit for laying the solid basis for what later was to become the independent ombudsman in the U.S. and elsewhere, functioning alone and independently.

Comparison of the American type of ombudsmanship and the Swedish type

We observed that news ombudsmen in North America are working alone and, in contrast, their Japanese colleagues are usually working as a group. Nevertheless, we can’t ignore some common characteristics and functions they have as in-house jobs.

Equally important, I must refer here to the third type of ombudsman, “Press Ombudsman for The General Public” in Sweden, which was established two years later than in the U.S. In a sense, it is “popular” among Japanese researchers and citizens who are interested in media ethics. Moreover, some of them eagerly insist that this is the only one that deserves the title of “ombudsman.” When Takemoto Iinuma, then editor of The English Daily Yomiuri, asked me in May 1987 to become an ombudsman and I started to run a series of columns entitled “Ombudsman” for the newspaper, some persons showed strong opposition to using that title.

They say, “Ombudsman” is a Scandinavian word meaning a representative of the people and has a long history in Sweden. For all that, in my view, it doesn’t mean that the title of ombudsman as well as its job should be monopolized by Scandinavian people. Actually, Dr. Thorsten Cars, former Swedish Ombudsman, has occasionally visited the U.S. and Japan to communicate with local ombudsmen, and to attend ONO meetings, and, needless to say, he called them ” ombudsmen.”

The following is one of my series-columns that I wrote to the media as an ombudsman.(14) Though it was written more than ten years ago, I am convinced that it will provide us with the accurate concept and information about ombudsmanship that are still applicable at the present time.

Role of the ombudsman

A letter has arrived at The Yomiuri Shimbun that provides me with an opportunity to explain something of the Yomiuri Shimbun Ombudsmen Committee, of which I am a member,(15) and the general philosophy of ombudsmanship.

The letter is from Eizo Yamagiwa, a member of a group founded to support persons reportedly accused or convicted of crimes they did not commit, and addressed to Itsuo Moriwaki, Chairman of the Yomiuri Shimbun Ombudsmen Committee.

Yamagiwa’s interest was aroused by an article in the March 6 issue of The Daily Yomiuri on a discussion with Swedish Press Ombudsman Dr. Thorsten Cars, hosted by The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Yamagiwa claimed that The Yomiuri Shimbun erroneously termed its own committee “Ombudsmen,” though it is formally known as the committee of Newspaper Contents Inspectors. The Swedish Ombudsman is formally known as “Press Ombudsman for the General Public,” and only a person responsible to the general public deserves the name of ombudsman, Yamagiwa argues. He adds that an “in-house system ” or one supervised by the president” is inconsistent with a role of performing a duty “for the general public.”

My comment is as follows:

When a person is an “ombudsman for the general public”, it certainly means that he should protect the public interest, but not necessarily that he should be elected by the general public. In fact, even in Sweden, Dr. Cars and his predecessors have never been elected by the public, but were appointed by a board consisting of representatives from the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Bar Association and the Press Collaboration Board. In countries other than Sweden, press ombudsmen are all appointed by newspapers from among applicants from inside or outside the papers. If this were not the case the newspapers would be unable to maintain freedom of the press.

As for accountability, a system supervised directly by the president is the most reasonable way to preserve the independence of the press ombudsman from any other department within a paper.

When this column appears in print, I will be in North America, on a visit mainly for the purpose of attending the annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO), in Louisville, Kentucky. In support of the above argument, I would like to list some of the “Guidelines for Ombudsmen”, adopted by the ONO on May 12, 1982, at a meeting in Washington, D.C.

The guidelines state: The ombudsman must be independent, and that independence must be real. He should be answerable only to the person with the highest authority over the news department.

Also, Clair Balfour, then president of the ONO and ombudsman at the Montreal Gazette, in Canada, said in a letter to the editor of Editor & Publisher issued August 9, 1986, responding to criticism of news ombudsmen:

“Ombudsmen, as A.H. Raskin wrote in The New York Times magazine, June 11, 1967, are to ‘check on the fairness and adequacy of their newspapers’ coverage and comment’ and ‘to get something done about valid complaints and to propose methods for more effective performance of all the paper’s services to the community, particularly the patrol it keeps on the frontiers of thought and action.’”

Today, ombudsmen or reader advocates in Louisville, Detroit, Boston, Milwaukee, Washington, Sacramento, and Toronto and about three-dozen other cities in the United States and Canada are doing just that. Others hold similar positions in Israel, Spain, Britain, Sweden and Japan. ABC News and CBS News have people in similar roles, said Balfour. At the same time, the ONO guidelines say:

The objectives of a newspaper ombudsman shall be:

1. To improve the fairness, accuracy and accountability of the newspaper.
2. To enhance its credibility.
3. To make the newspaper aware of the concerns of and the issues in, the communities served by it.

Frankly speaking, I hesitate to conclude that our committee has completely and effectively represented readers who have complaints, suggestions or questions. However, when I wrote to Arthur Nauman, then president of ONO and ombudsman at the Sacramento Bee, California, in 1984, suggesting that we stay in touch, he answered: “Obviously, you and we have common goals, and this association will help us to reach them.” Soon afterward, the ONO permitted me to join as an associate member.

I would like to say that since then we have been striving even harder to fulfill our duty at a level beyond the potential limitations suggested by Yamagiwa. In the earnest hope that we will be able to further develop ombudsmanship in Japan, we reiterate our invitation to any member of the community to submit comment, advice and criticism.(16)

Conclusion

Precisely speaking, I have to recognize that I failed to find a clear conclusion on each of the subjectscthe origins and functions of ombudsmanshipcbrought forward by the controversy. Nevertheless, I would like to present here some important findings below:

Finding 1: As far as “a newspaper ombudsman for an individual newspaper” is concerned, we will be able to find its origin in the Courier-Journal in Kentucky, U.S. In fact, ombudsmanship is expected to exercise an accountability function that is a complete disclosure of the facts found in the process of news coverage.

Finding 2: If we talk about “an in-house newspaper contents checking department”, some newspaper companies in Japan have a long history that had already started before World War II. While these departments have been functioning as QC sections for products (printing newspapers), they have hardly been disclosing full information necessary for credibility in default of perfect independency from the newsroom.

Finding 3: In my view, Press Ombudsman for the General Public in Sweden is completely independent of outside persons and organizations and free of influence from any social and political power. So, it may be ideal for protecting the public rights and enhancing media ethics. In other words, we would be very delighted if we could import it, along with a press council as well, into Japan. However, I cannot help reserving a single problem for actualizing the idea. Namely, the difficulty in finding and selecting a prominent and admirable person deserving to be an ombudsman in this country surrounded by a great deal of enthusiastic media critics.

I would like to refer, in particular, to a declaration adopted at the 42nd Annual Conference for Human Rights, which was sponsored by The Japan Federation of Bar Associations, in Maebashi, October 15 1999. It requests printing media, or newspapers and magazines, to establish a press council and also to improve in-house ombudsman systems for newspapers as soon as possible.

The conclusion of this study is that Japanese journalists and media companies should start urgent programs for improving the conditions of disclosure and independence so that they can establish much better ombudsmanship.

Notes

1. Editors for the public — What are News Ombudsmen and Why Should the Media Have Them, September 1999.
2. The Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, October 21, 1922.
3. He is also a member of ONO’s board of directors.
4. News From ONO, July 20, 1999.
5. The Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, October 21, 1922.
6. As of September 1999, the number of ONO members is 57 in 14 countries.
7. Forum, The Courier-Journal, September 5, 1999.
8. News From ONO, October 5, 1999.
9. These sections entitled “ombudsmanship” in Japanese newspapers have a variety of names.
See my report, “Is It Fair And Accurate to Call Japanese Watchdogs ‘Ombudsmen’?” 10. His letter, including a file of my report, was sent by e-mail on October 5, 1999.
11. A member of ONO, 1985-1991, before an associate member, 1991. A senior staff of “Ombudsmen Committee ” for the Yomiuri, 1981-1991.
12. The Asahi Shimbun April 20, 1989, evening edition carried a photograph of a coral on which the letter “K.Y” had been scratched. A caption with the photograph questioned, “Who is K.Y who damaged a coral?” In fact, the photographer had destroyed the coral.
13. “Ombudsman” from 1987 to 1991 and “Watchdog” from 1991 to 1992 for The Daily Yomiuri. “The Press Watching” since 1996 for a media study magazine supported by Kyodo.
14. Ombudsman for The Daily Yomiuri, 1987-1993.
15. ” Ombudsman”, The Daily Yomiuri, May 18, 1987.

For 32 years, The Courier-Journal has taken pride in the belief that it appointed the first newspaper ombudsman and launched the international newspaper ombudsman movement.

We were wrong.

We didn’t know that the concept had already been operating for many years in Japan when, in 1967, C-J editor and publisher Barry Bingham Sr. established the post here and John Herchenroeder became the first to fill it.

Over the years since, Herch and his successors (I’m among them) have listened to and acted on thousands of calls from readers with concerns about the newspaper. We’ve also supported an international organization of people with similar jobs, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, aptly known as ONO.

Our error came to light when ONO’s executive secretary Art Nauman revised a brochure that included the movement’s history and circulated it among members of ONO’s board of directors.

Board member Osami Okuya of the Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo saw a problem: His newspaper had established an ombudsman committee in 1938.

As Okuya researched the issue, he discovered that another Tokyo paper, Asahi Shimbun, announced in 1922 that it was establishing a panel to receive reader comments about errors.

When I asked Okuya to share what he’d found, he kindly sent a thick sheaf of documents, all in Japanese. Keiko Kuwabara, director of the Japan Center of Greater Louisville at Indiana University Southeast, graciously helped translate the beautiful script that was, she said, the Japanese equivalent of Shakespearean English. From Okuya, Kuwabara and Nauman, this is the story that emerged:

In 1922, Asahi published a story saying that it was forming a committee to deal with a growing problem. Newspapers, pressed for time on deadlines, were making mistakes. Usually the paper would later apologize for the errors, but a lot of people were concerned. The newspaper feared that the newspaper and ordinary people couldn’t cooperate.

The ombudsmen committee would try to prevent that kind of situation by investigating when necessary and apologizing or solving the trouble. It would try to be fair and make everything fair, the paper said.

”The writer really insists how important it is,” Kuwabara said.

Asahi credited the idea of the committee to the old New York World, which, it said, set up a similar system called the Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, in New York City in July 1913. (I have read the New York World for that period on microfilm until my eyes crossed without finding the story Asahi cited. The World is no longer published, so tracking its committee may be a good project for a future journalism student or historian.)

By 1938, Yomiuri Shimbun was having to deal with many lawsuits prompted by news stories. It established a committee to ”improve the quality of our newspaper.”

The staff began by comparing each day’s editions with competing Tokyo dailies. Then, in 1951, it invited readers to contact it with complaints or comments.

Today the Yomiuri Shimbun has a circulation of several million and a 23-member committee whose members specialize in various types of complaints. The committee meets daily with editors who, by all reports, take the ombudsmen very seriously.

Clearly, in the spirit of the movement’s beginnings, The Courier-Journal owes an apology to the Japanese newspapers and thanks to Okuya for his help in setting the record straight.

We aren’t alone.

Nauman noted in a message to ONO members that journalists, scholars, master’s degree candidates and ombudsmen have all assumed over the years that the movement started here.

So we all violated a cardinal rule of journalism: Don’t assume anything.

The first question for the new ombudsman back in the early days (the 1960s and 1970s) seemed to be universal:

Just what did the word mean and what was the job about?

The dictionary wasn’t much help. The general definition in a number or dictionaries big and small referred to a public official “assigned to investigate complaints against government.” That concept had originated in Sweden, whose socialism was called, in a celebrated book by journalist Marquis Childs, “the middle way.”

The enlightened Swedes, knowing that government and its bureaucracy was no respecter of freedom, had established this concept of a “watchdog” for citizen rights. The Swedish ombudsman was a government official. But we were journalists. We weren’t public officials and didn’t want to be. If we investigated complaints against government, we wrote about them.

And in many ways, we offended our readers. We made errors and then made it hard to have the errors corrected. We were arrogant with our dealings with the public. We ignored some important stories and overplayed others. The public wasn’t amused or charmed or, in too many cases, satisfied with the media. As for correcting errors, too many newspapers had a long history of not making them.

The need for a better public perception of newspapers was graphically shown in a 1986 study of reader comments in San Diego, California. Some of the recurring themes in reader criticism were:

• The newspaper makes numerous errors, as reflected in the corrections that appear in the newspaper.
• Although the newspaper corrects its errors, the corrections are frequently hidden in the back pages of the paper.
• The newspaper makes corrections only because it must print a retraction to avoid law suits.
• The newspaper is politically biased
• The newspaper should print more good news.
• The newspaper is sensational, especially in is headlines.

And this was in a newspaper which had had an active ombudsman program for more than a decade and whose readers were quoted in the same study as generally favoring and being aided by the concept.

The old theory that nothing comes before its time came into play here. Two remarkable events — magazine articles — happened that directly affected the problem and a solution. The articles were by a pair of journalists who easily fit into the distinguished category. Ben Bagdikian was a long-time gadfly and critic of American press tactics, working, at the time, for the Washington (D.C.) Post. A.H. Raskin was known among professionals in journalism for his brilliant labor reporting and editorial writing for the New York Times. Both men suggested, independent of one another, that newspapers needed to set up a department or an editor who would act for the public, investigating errors, solving problems in the interface between press and public (though in those pre-computer days, neither would have used the term), and generally doing the job that needed done at a crucial time in press-public relations.

Bagdikian’s article in the March 1967 issue of Esquire magazine, set the tone:

Some brave owners someday will provide for a community ombudsman on his paper’s board, maybe a non-voting one, to be present, to speak, to provide a symbol and, with luck, exert public interest in the ultimate fate of the American newspaper.

Raskin, writing in The New York Times Magazine, June 11, 1967, said:

There is a need in every newspaper for a Department of Internal Criticism to put all its standards under re-examination and to serve as a public protector in its day-to-day operations.

Indeed, Raskin said, this department should “check on the fairness and adequacy of their coverage and content.”

At Louisville, Kentucky, a concerned editor named Norman Isaacs read and acted. Almost immediately the Courier-Journal and Times had America’s first newspaper ombudsman, in June of 1967.

His name was John Hershenroeder and he had 40 years in journalism in Louisville. He had been a reporter and city editor and could have been considered close to retirement. He went into the job with a verve and flair that guaranteed its success. The job was ill-defined from the start. Each new ombudsman virtually had to write his (or hers, although the post was mostly filled by males in its early years) job description. Every job was different at every paper.

At Louisville, Hershenroeder’s job description, if there was one, didn’t require a column for the Courier-Journal, but he did write a daily report to editors on what he was hearing from readers. His reports were tough and he was able to back them up based upon his 40-year career at Louisville. He seemed to know every nook and cranny of the city and everyone in it and woe betide the reporter or editor who might try to slough off an error with an excuse that slanted the facts.

Hershenroeder’s dealings with the public were charming, polite, and effective. I recall sitting in his office one afternoon and hearing him take calls. Someone would call and grumble about a story. “Where do you live,” he would ask. “Such and such streets? I know that area. Used to play baseball [He had been a well known local player in his youth] out at that field down the street.”

The conversation would go on and it was obvious that he knew people and places and that he cared about errors in the paper. He had been known as a tough city editor with his staff but he was a charmer as ombudsman with the public.

At Sacramento, where the Bee dominated California’s state capital city, Thor Severson wrote a daily memo to editors about errors plus a weekly column. The Bee’s editors didn’t have to run a correction based on Severson’s recommendation but if the correction wasn’t used and Severson thought it should, he could comment at length and critically in his column. Recalcitrant editors soon learned that a Severson column pained more than a correction.

After Severson’s retirement, the post was filled by Arthur Nauman, who operated under the same rules. Nauman’s independence was further strengthened when his job became a function of the Bee’s corporate ownership rather than the local newspaper. (The Bee and its corporate owner, the McClatchy Newspapers, are headquartered in the same building in Sacramento but operate separately.)

The ability to require a correction may have been a lodestone in the ombudsman landscape. At The San Diego [California] Union, Editor Gerald L. Warren, who established the ombudsman concept with his appointment of a “reader’s representative,” gave his appointee the absolute power as to corrections and what could be said in a column. When I wrote a correction, it had to run. This didn’t always please reporters or editors, but it quickly established the paper’s commitment to making facts right, no matter whose feelings were hurt. When I developed a weekly column, it, too, went into the Monday morning paper without change. The reader’s representative could go anywhere in the newsroom and question any member of the staff in quest of information. (This put a special pressure upon my own obligation to be free of errors.

Opponents of the concept were always eager to gleefully point out the ombudsman’s errors — and they always had to be corrected) Most newspapers chose their ombudsmen from the staff, often assigning older, more experienced (and, some charged, put out to pasture) members of the staff to the job. At the Washington (D.C.) Post, as Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee explained many times, he felt that the ombudsman could only have full independence by coming from outside the staff. The policy has continued. The Post ombudsman generally has a 2- to 5-year contract with wide guarantees of independence.

Sometimes, too, the ombudsman’s independence was established by location. At Sacramento, at the St Louis Post-Dispatch and at Louisville, among others, the office of the ombudsman was distant from the newsroom, often on another floor. The independence also was usually clearly defined by establishing the ombudsman as a position reporting only to the senior editorial executive in the newsroom, usually the editor. The early ombudsmen soon learned that having a job reporting only to the senior editorial executive, meant both great power and the loss of newsroom friendships. Sub editors and reporters frequently viewed the ombudsman as a sort of, as one reporter-friend once called me, avenging angel of darkness. No one really cared to be identified as the writer or editor of an error. And, at first, no one wanted to be identified as providing information for a correction (Names of miscreants were seldom used in corrections at The San Diego Union and when they were, usually in the weekly ombudsman column, they were given the opportunity for defense.) Though, in most cases, the ombudsman’s rules of operation clearly established the right to question a staff member about a possible error, some refused to talk. The standard answer to such a refusal was to point out that it might be explained in a column that the reporter, who always expected others to answer questions, had refused to answer questions about accuracy or fairness.

In other newspapers, having the ombudsman on the newsroom floor was considered an asset. Charles Bailey, editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, an early and strong supporter, put his ombudsman, Richard Cunningham, in the middle of the newsroom, “so everyone could see and know he was there.”

One loss for the budding ombudsman was the collegial atmosphere common to workers in a newsroom. It became difficult to wander through the newsroom, speaking to friends. Few staff members would casually come by the ombudsman’s office to gossip or chat. As a result, the long distance telephone line became the ombudsman’s link. New appointees would call, asking, “How did you handle…” and veterans became the data banks of the system. (In later years, with improvements in communications, phone conferencing became a regular habit.) In the early years, too, a series of yearly conferences on media ethics at the Washington Journalism Center virtually became the annual gathering for ombudsmen.

The definition of the job varied from paper to paper. At some papers, the ombudsman was expected to handle “outside” activities such as newsroom budgeting or travel planning. Because many ombudsmen were senior members of the staff, they often were involved in hiring and some regularly spoke or recruited at minority job conferences. Most ombudsmen found themselves explaining the concept in speech. Another became a regular before journalism classes.

The ombudsman concept may have been praised in the early years, but it wasn’t always popular with editors or owners. Six years later, in 1973, the Journalism Quarterly reported that only eight newspapers had appointed ombudsmen. Even in prosperous times and even though the programs appeared to be working, the costs of assigning a staff member to the job and then providing staff support wasn’t always a welcomed addition to newsroom budgets.

The concept did grow. By 1974, there were a dozen or so ombudsmen and by 1982, there were 22 programs, including several in Canada. (In Sweden, where the concept started, the country’s newspaper organization financed a national journalistic ombudsman program. Thorsten Cars, a lawyer and judge, was named to the post.)

By the late-1970s, the newspaper ombudsman concept had solidified to the point that talk began about forming an organization. John Brown, ombudsman at the Edmonton Journal, circulated a series of round-robin letters in the spring of 1979 proposing that the annual conference at the Washington Journalism Center be used as a meeting to establish an organization of newspaper ombudsmen. Brown had believed the concept would be welcomed as had several others. To our surprise, opposition came in the argument that there weren’t enough ombudsmen to form an organization or that membership would sacrifice an ombudsman’s independence.

The motion to organize the Organization of Newspaper Ombudsmen (many thought we had chosen the name because its initials could be pronounced “Oh, no!” the traditional comment when errors were discovered) passed by a bare majority. The formal name was changed to the Organization of News Ombudsmen when ombudsmen from other media were admitted. Brown, as the person who had developed the idea, was offered but declined the initial presidency because the group had a large majority of members from the United States and he was a Canadian. (Brown became the second president two years later.) The post was then offered to Thor Severson, of Sacramento, who also declined, for what he called personal reasons. (Severson’s reasons became clear in a few months when he announced his retirement.)

The presidency finally came to me. It thus fell to San Diego to organize the group and, though no one was sure it would happen, to set up an annual convention.

The first ONO convention was held in San Diego in May of 1981.

About 20 ombudsmen, primarily from the United States and Canada, attended. The only overseas delegate was Cars, from Stockholm.

Ombudsmanship is now in its second generation on most newspapers. No original ombudsman is still working and several newspapers have had several persons in the post over the years. Some papers have dropped the job. Many others have established it to a total of about 45 newspapers in the United States, Canada, Britain, Spain, Brazil, France, Japan and Italy.

And, finally, did it all work? Most practitioners at this new journalistic function report over the years their feeling that most newsrooms are more conscious of accuracy and fairness. I have observed time and again that my professional colleagues in the newsroom are as anxious as I that errors be made right and fairness be a watchword. Other ombudsmen give the same report.

But has it worked? For the most part there has been no way to measure the ephemeral question of improvement in journalistic quality. One study, reported in the Journalism Quarterly, provides some indication. In that study, those persons who had contacted The San Diego Union reader representative during a one-year period were surveyed. Another group, selected at random as a control group, was also contacted.

Those in the first group generally reported a more positive feeling toward the newspaper as a result of their contact.

Those in the second group, who had not contacted the reader’s representative and were not aware of the program, generally had no changed feelings.

The author, Alfred JaCoby, spent nearly 50 years in American journalism, primarily at The San Diego Union in a variety of positions ranging from reporter to Sunday Editor to City Editor to Assistant Managing Editor. I n 1976, the became the newspaper’s reader’s representative and served in that position for seven years.

He retired from the newspaper in 1992, when The San Diego Union and its evening counterpart, the Evening Tribune, were merged to become The San Diego Union-Tribune, owned by the Copley Newspapers group of La Jolla, California. JaCoby is currently writing a history of The San Diego Union.

November 10, 1969

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

I suggest that the Post select, or cause to be selected, by some method credible to our readers, a panel representing a cross-section of our circulation area, whose primary task would be to select a non-employe of the Post to serve our readers as an ombudsman.

The Post would set aside a sum of money as a fund which would be formally administered by the panel. Members of the panel would not be reimbursed for their services, which would be minimal. The pay and expenses of the ombudsman would be met from this fund.

The ombudsman would be under contract to serve for a set period of time — perhaps a year or a little longer — and his pay would be guaranteed for the entire period. His contract would be non-renewable. At the end of that time, the panel, or a panel similarly selected, would employ another ombudsman under the same conditions.

The Post could have a veto on the ombudsman named but no person could be selected for that role without the agreement of every member of the panel.

The ombudsman would:

• Report to the readers of the Post about the performance of the Post itself. That is, he or she would give Post readers news and analysis of the only major institution in the Washington area not now covered by the Post.
• Report to our readers about the performance of the newspaper industry — and perhaps news magazines as well — thus closing a big gap in our critical coverage.
• Receive and weigh all major substantive grievances from our reading public that come to him directly, or are passed onto him by the Post editors. He would decide, after checking, whether the complaint should be answered by a letter to the complainer or by a correction or explanation (in defense or condemnation of the Post) that would appear in print in the Post.

The Post would reserve the right to refuse to publish any communication from the ombudsman. But it would undertake to agree to publish a statement from the ombudsman saying that something he had submitted (generally described) would not be published in the Post, and where it would be published. Together with this statement would be the Post’s explanation for its decision, if it chose to offer one.

The ombudsman would be given a certain amount of space in the Post each week. We would reserve the right to publish any response to the ombudsman in that space or in adjacent space.

I realize the risk in this. There could be embarrassment. We would not be stuck with an impossible ombudsman, because we would retain the right to veto the panel’s selection. We should explain to the panel that we must have an ombudsman who was mature, tolerant, understood the limitations and the problems of the newspaper industry. but there would be a risk, even with such a man.

There should also be an enormous gain. I believe that credibility is one of our most serious problems. When it is translated into the loss of circulation in the inner city, it is a serious short-term problem. When it is translated into the difficult-to-measure erosion of confidence among many levels of our readership in this age of dissent — an age when the blandest of impartiality is equated with opposition — then the problem is longer range but probably much more serious.

We could go the Louisville route, of course, and whatever we do, we should at least do this. Phone calls should be answered attentively and politely. But the Louisville “ombudsman” — and I know the man and his method — is really little more than a promotional effort. It does not have the cutting edge to penetrate to the core of our credibility problem (or theirs, I presume).

The entire name of the game is credibility. That is why I believe:

• The ombudsman, in the larger sense, must be a credible outsider. He should not even have an office in the Post (although he would probably spend part of each day in our newsroom) and his calls should not pass through our switchboard.
• The panel members, each of whom should be credible to the segment of our circulation area that they represent, must not be reimbursed, and the ombudsman must have a short and predetermined tenure. There must be no reasonable doubt that anyone involved in this effort could benefit by ingratiating himself with the Post management.
• The panel must represent extreme positions. There would have to be a black militant, no Panther but a touch cookie; some former official in government like Rusk (not Rusk, of course, for obvious reasons) who has a history of regarding the press, or the Post, as an enemy; and so forth.
• All of this should be reported in the Post, as a news story, or by the ombudsman in his introductory column, to our readers, and the whole effort should be widely “advertised.” I would be surprised and disappointed if this were not dwelled on in the media columns of the news magazines, let alone E&P, and did not become something of the talk of the industry.

I feel we should be careful not to treat this concept as a way to slough off harassing complaints or to dump irrational gripes; not to think of it as a substitute for the letters-to-the-editor column. The people who complain to us now, as the Polish press attach‚ complains to Harry Rosenfeld, would continue to do so. This would be an independent operation. But I would suspect that any good ombudsman, looking for clues, would begin each day reading our Letters to the Editor column, and would then devour the rest of the paper.

I suspect that we would learn a lot about our failings, and our readers, from the ombudsman, and — more important — that the readers would learn a lot about the Post. My hope is that, given a fair-minded and realistic ombudsman (and we do have the power of veto), the Post would come out of this well, and more credible.

I also expect that, if done right, this would be done of the best read and most interesting features of the paper.

We can, and should, start slowly, and do it step by step. We could at least select a candidate-panel and discuss the idea. We could call a halt at any time until it came to publishing that first news story about the idea itself.

We could adopt part of the idea and drop the rest. You might wish to decree that the ombudsman would not write about the Post itself; or would write about the Post but not our competitors; or would write about the Post but undertake not to get into personalities on the Post. Any number of variations.

It is not enough to say that our paper, as it appears each morning, is its own credo, that ultimately we are our own ombudsman. It has not proven to be, possibly cannot be. Even if it were, it would not be viewed as such. It is too much to ask the reader to believe that we are capable of being honest and objective about ourselves.

I would appreciate an opportunity to explain this idea in person should it come up for discussion.

* * *

November 21, 1969

TO: Mrs. Graham, Ben Bradlee, Philip Geyelin, Eugene Patterson, Howard Simons
FROM: Philip Foisie
RE: Further thoughts on the ombudsman in the wake of the luncheon discussion.

1. Let’s drop the panel idea for now, as an essential part of the plan. We should pick our own man, at least the first time around.

2. I still feel that the first ombudsman must be an outsider, not Chal, who will not be ready for that task in any event in time to inaugurate the role. Chal could be the second man chosen, if all goes well.

3. I thought of a man — Phillips Talbot. He has been a working newsman; writes with precision if not distinction; is quiet, thoughtful and fair-minded; would be especially credible to several areas of alienation as a former government man (assistant secretary of state and ambassador, with a track record of disputing Post coverage in at least one area — Greece); with academia; with business, I think. And I believe he is a bit loose now and might be able to take a year off.

4. I suggest that the following step-by-step approach to the following problems posed by the idea:

a. Staff reaction: Bradlee and Patterson could gather together in some informal and relaxed venue a group of reporters to discuss our session on tilt at Puerto Rico, and then speculate about the ombudsman idea and test the reaction. I feel, incidentally, that the idea would be less onerous to the staff if the ombudsman on the first go-around was not one of them, but an outsider. Perhaps we should wait until after the current negotiations.
b. Tentatively offer the job to your choice and get his agreement.

c. Go to the full staff and determine that the idea will fly without too much trouble.

d. Go back to the ombudsman-select, work out the details, and announce it.

5. I suggest this step-by-step approach on the details of the ombudsman’s role:

a. Restrict him first to reader- or source-initiated complaints. He would not have an independent investigatory role at first, but could be given this enlarged role after a few months if all goes well.
b. Restrict him to complaints about stories or the pattern of coverage on the news pages, excluding the editorials and columnists. Again, the role could be enlarged later.

c. Restrict him to complaints about stories or coverage that appeared after his role had been announced. No ex-post facto re-hashing.

d. Keep him just on the Post. Add comment on the entire industry later — though I think this is very necessary to us, because even when we err, we look good in terms of the industry as a whole.

e. Refuse him the right to write about personalities on the Post, except as it is necessary to identify the reporter involved in a story he is investigating.

f. Keep the rules outlined in the first memo, as follows: “The Post would reserve the right to refuse to publish any communication from the ombudsman. but it would undertake to agree to publish a statement from the ombudsman saying that something he had submitted (generally described) would not be published in the Post, and where it would be published. Together with this statement would be the Post’s explanation for its decision, if it chose to offer one.

“The ombudsman would be given a certain amount of space in the Post each week. We would reserve the right to publish any response to the ombudsman in that space or in adjacent space.”

But I would add this procedure: The ombudsman must inform Bradlee or Patterson or someone they designate in their absence, before approaching a member of the staff to discuss a story the staffer had written. He would otherwise have the run of the newsroom, and, to save money, I guess it is not necessary that he had an office outside the Post, but at least it should not be on the 5th floor. I still feel he should have an outside phone number.

6. I still think we ought to select and meet with a representative group of outsiders to discuss this idea (but without giving them a role in it at first). For one thing, we should test their reaction — see if this device would enhance our credibility in their areas.

We might do this after meeting with the staff, before announcing the ombudsmanship, or we might do it after the plan has been established.

If we got such a group, we might meet with them a second time, after the ombudsman had gone to work, to test the results. After a time, if and as things went well, we could:

a. arrange to meet the panel periodically.
b. invite them to submit their own thoughts to the ombudsman.

c. arrange for the ombudsman to meet regularly with them.

d. after a year or so, if it then seemed wise, we might bring them into the business of helping select future ombudsmen.

But if the panel idea proves unworkable, it can be stopped after the first meeting, or its role can remain restricted.

7. If and as the plan is enlarged, the reader would be informed. We would cover it as a continuing and “hard” news story — or he would.

8. A further thought on the step-by-step approach: We might wish to restrict the ombudsman at first to local coverage, or to national-foreign coverage; or we might wish to have two half-time ombudsmen — one on local grievances, one on national.

9. Finally, I feel three principles should guide us:

a.We should go it alone, whatever we do. A Washington area “press council,” or an industry-wide “grievance committee” would taint us with the more numerous sins of other publications, and thus muddy our image. And if there is to be any merit, we should be the sole beneficiary.
b. We must be first. The entire industry is now moving in the direction (and so is the law, medicine, business and other endeavors as well). It would be a shame if we had to follow instead of to lead.

c. We must not be defensive, either with the public or the staff. We should not publicly reflect a concern over outside pressure….Our primary motive is to impose upon ourselves a formal accountability that custom and the Constitution has denied us. And it should be made plain, in reporting this development to the reader, that our thoughts and plans preceded recent criticism.

With the staff, I would note that professionally, if it is a just world, much honor and prestige will go to those who have the courage to pioneer in this and to work under the added discipline that an ombudsmanship implies. But there must be no added inhibition — only the restraint that any newsman should feel as he seeks to be accurate and fair.

d. We should be optimistic. We will get hurt, and we will be embarrassed, but we should assume, publicly and privately, that this cannot help [but] to work to our advantage in the long-run, because we are good and the weight of our readers are fair-minded.

The Washington Post gave Geoffrey Foisie permission to release the preceding memos in a letter signed by Leonard Downie Jr. and dated Nov. 9, 1995.

By Arthur C. Nauman
All rights reserved

We are here today to discuss a most peculiar kind of employment in journalism — the position of news ombudsman. Here we have a man or woman who is paid a decent salary to criticize his or her own peers, his own associates, often her own friends. As we say in the U.S., the ombudsman “hangs out the dirty laundry.”

And many of these ombudsmen do that out there in public for all the world to see!

One of my fellow staffers at my newspaper, The Sacramento Bee, once asked me: Why would a grown man wish to make his living doing that — doing a job in which he deliberately makes enemies of friends?

The question is a good one, of course. It is said — and I think with justification — that an ombudsman isn’t doing the job effectively if he or she isn’t irritating or ruffling feathers. The good ombudsman soon becomes a pariah, a lonely figure in the newsroom.

But that misses the much larger point.

What the ombudsman does is in the finest tradition of journalism. The ombudsman does what good journalists always have done: aggressively examines powerful public institutions, letting in light for the purpose of improving that institution and its service to the people.

We know the media is a great dichotomy. On the one hand it has an obligation — and a right — to provide its owners with a fair return on their investment. It must be operated as a successful business.

But on the other hand, it is a public trust, a kind of public utility. It is an institution invested with enormous power in the community, the power to affect thoughts and actions by the way it covers the news — the power to hurt or help the common good.

The founders of the United States in the 18th century drafted the basic document that established our country s form of government — the Constitution. That constitution gave the American press unique protections. No other profit-making entity was singled out for mention in the Constitution, and given those protections. Only the press. Those protections — embedded in our First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech — are a privilege.

That privilege carries with it a great obligation, the obligation to be accountable — accountable to the people the press serves.

It seems to me that this kind of accountability is owed to all societies that are served by a free press, even those without the kind of protections the American press enjoys.

I can think of no reason why the press — with all its influence and power over the lives and minds of the people — should not be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as is focused on other powerful segments of the community: the government, military, business, arts, religion, finance and all the rest.

Surely it is in the press’ own self-interest that such scrutiny — honestly and fearlessly done — come from within the press itself. If we don’t do it, somebody else — with perhaps nefarious motives — might do it for us.

In the ancient Scandinavian language the word ombudsman meant “the man who sees to it that the snow and ice and rubbish are removed from the streets and that the chimneys are swept.”

An American college student discovered that old definition a few years ago while researching her master’s degree thesis.

She remarked, “It is delightful the Swedes chose to christen their citizens’ representative with the down-to-earth word. And it is also appropriate. The ombudsman’s job is indeed to sweep — to sweep away barriers between readers and the press.”

Today, of course, the word means something quite different. An ombudsman is somebody who receives and investigates complaints from the public and attempts to achieve fair settlements to disputes.

The Swedes have had ombudsmen dealing with government agencies and the parliament since 1809.

It was 1916 when Sweden established the Swedish Press Council, or what was called the “Court of Honor.” It was a means for the press to exercise what it called “self-discipline.”

In 1969 this press council appointed its own ombudsman. It was a response to the public outcry against unethical press behavior, especially against how the press was reporting crime, behavior that was reaching ominous proportions. For its part, the Swedish press feared legislation would be enacted to curtail the media if the existing system or self-discipline wasn’t made more responsive.

In America, as far back as 1947, there were calls for the press to clean up its house. That year Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life magazines, was instrumental in convening a group of notable non-journalists to examine the press with some care. It was the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press, named after its chairman, Robert Maynard Hutchins, at that time president of the University of Chicago.

After lengthy study, the commission, which was supported by private philanthropy, issued a warning: the press either must monitor itself or risk being monitored by the government.

“One of the most effective ways in improving the press is blocked by the press itself,” said one of the commission’s conclusions. “By a kind of unwritten law, the press ignores the errors and misrepresentations, the lies and the scandals, of which its members are guilty.”

And this, of course, was long before the age of lurid tabloid scandal sheets and the prurient television shows that masquerade as news programs.

The commission’s findings were largely ignored. They received the silent treatment from the American media establishment.

Into the 1960s the anti-press mood in the U.S. continued to grow, perhaps as part of the broader lack of confidence in all major institutions, in addition to a reaction against the quickening power and ownership concentration of the mass media.

Jean Otto, today the ombudsman for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, and formerly an editor for the Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin, told an interviewer: “The press suffers from arrogance. Sometimes people in the press act as if they are doing their jobs for each other and maybe God, and nobody else ought to get in the way.”

A Michigan State University study in the late 1900s found that “many reporters are cynical about the public’s intelligence, arrogant about the journalist’s role in deciding what is published, and inclined to reject public criticism.”

Many of us journalists told our readers, in effect: “Sit back. Trust us. We’re professionals. We know what news is; we know how to find and write it. We’ll give it to you in a timely fashion and you’ll all be better citizens. But don’t call us. We don’t have the time to talk to you.”

Readers, though, weren’t as dumb as many journalists thought they were. They knew we journalists are mere mortals, and that like all humans we make mistakes. They resented it when we didn’t correct ourselves. On top of that, and probably more important, readers were beginning to find many other sources for getting the news besides their morning newspaper. We newspaper people were becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Gradually, newspapers — at least some of them — began to understand that a frank admission of errors can be good for credibility, and credibility, after all, is a newspaper’s prime asset.

It was an editor of The Washington Post who sounded the first call for a newspaper ombudsman in North America. In March 1967, Ben Bagdikian wrote in Esquire magazine that the press was experiencing a crisis in public confidence, and too often for valid reasons.

He felt an ombudsman might be one way to avoid deepening the public’s disenchantment. He wrote: “Some brave owner someday will provide for a community ombudsman on his paper’s board…to present, to speak, to provide a symbol and, with luck, exert public interest in the ultimate fate of the American newspaper.”

Just a few months later, A.H. Raskin, the esteemed labor reporter for The New York Times, explored the ombudsman concept even further in an article he wrote for his paper’s Sunday magazine. He contended that the press was overly complacent and did not sufficiently criticize itself.

“That is the point of my proposal that newspapers establish their own Department of Internal Criticism to check on the fairness and adequacy of their coverage and comment,” he wrote. “The department head ought to be given enough independence in the paper to serve as ombudsman for the readers, armed with authority for more effective performance of all the paper’s services to the community, particularly the patrol it keeps on the frontiers of thought and action.”

Ironically enough, The New York Times never did rise to Raskin’s proposal and appoint an ombudsman.

But eight days after his article appeared, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, did. It appointed the first news ombudsman in North America.

Not long after that, The Washington Post became the first newspaper to install an ombudsman who not only answered reader complaints but also commented publicly and critically on the paper’s performance.

Today, there are 37 full-time ombudsmen in the United States, seven in Canada, and at least another dozen in Brazil, Japan, Spain, Israel, England, Venezuela, Paraguay, South Africa and France.

These men and women, of course, do not all work alike. Some have more independence than others. Some call themselves by other titles — public editor, reader representative, reader advocate. Some write columns regularly, some only occasionally or not at all. Some, like Ms. Byrd of The Washington Post, are retained on a contract basis. Most are on the newspaper’s regular payroll.

None has authority to hire or fire other journalists. Some have authority to order corrections to be published. Some participate as observers in the daily news planning meetings. All provide their editors with internal critiques in one form or another.

But whatever their differences, I think it is fair to say that all are committed to fairness, accuracy and balance in the news columns.

Please note again that last sentence: fairness, accuracy and balance in the news columns. No ombudsman I know about attempts to deal with arguments over editor page opinion. I like to tell readers that every editorial opinion is unfair, inaccurate and unbalanced — by somebody’s point of view. But those opinions are properly the province of the ownership of the paper. It is in the news columns where accuracy and balance are expected — and absolutely essential.

The ombudsman isn’t there to stifle expression of pinion. Nor is the ombudsman there to stifle aggressive reporting of legitimate news.

I have seen evidence that the presence of a news ombudsman does indeed prod reporters and editors to more careful, more thoughtful work. Yes, they know that if their work is slipshod, they might very well find themselves being scolded in print by the ombudsman. That is a strong motivation for good work.

It is, we all acknowledge, hard to measure exactly how effective an ombudsman really is. But I like to think that if any presence (as yet another set of eyes trained on the newsroom) causes a reporter to make one additional telephone call to double- or triple-check a fact, or causes an editor to linger even one additional minute over how a story or a headline is written, then I will have done my job well.

What makes a good ombudsman? In my opinion he or she needs these principal traits:

First, a deep understanding of the journalistic process. He or she should be a veteran reporter or editor. He or she should have “been there,” as we say, and should understand exactly how journalists go about their business.

Second, a deep understanding of the community the paper serves; its demographics, its history, its geography.

Third, a genuine interest in people — the ability to listen to them without instantly raising defensive walls. Tact and friendliness obviously count for a great deal.

Finally, the successful ombudsman needs a tough outer skin, and s strength of character and resolve to withstand the psychological rigors of that “aloneness” that comes to every ombudsman.

Now, you are entitled to ask this pertinent question: There are about 1,700 daily newspapers in the United States. Yet there are only 37 ombudsmen. Why are there so few?

First, it can be expensive. The best ombudsman is somebody who typically is already on the staff in a fairly high position — perhaps a senior writer or a middle-level editor. he or she already is earning a good salary. To remove that person from active newsroom production can leave a large hole in a staff. The hole will have to be filled. That costs additional money. Not many smaller newspapers can afford to do that. Some large papers — located in areas of America where the recession has hit hard — can’t either.

Second, many editors have a deep conviction that an ombudsman actually is an impediment to their relationship with readers — that ombudsmen stand between themselves and readers. Several editors I have heard say, “Every editor should be an ombudsman.”

To this, we ombudsmen respond, yes, if it were a perfect world, if every journalist had sufficient time in his or day, if every journalist had a commitment to tact and understanding, then definitely, a paper would not need an ombudsman.

But we all know the world is otherwise. The world and all its people are indeed imperfect. Journalists are no different. They often are harried. Their interests aren’t always the same as that of readers. The pressure of deadlines and other professional obligations often leaves them little time and inclination to spend with readers. These journalists are therefore too often disconnected from their readers, which only makes worse the perception that they are aloof and arrogant.

We must also face squarely the fact that many journalists are simply defensive by nature. Nobody likes to be criticized, but I think least of all journalists. Their skins are thin; their egos are large. They can and do criticize other institutions with great ease and facility. But when the spotlight is turned back on them, they squirm.

We have found that only self-assured, secure and open-minded editors and publishers are comfortable enough to install an ombudsman and then permit him or her to function untrammeled. Alas, there seem to be precious few of these around.

Two ombudsmen have been sacked in North America by editors who strongly disagreed with columns they had written — columns that forthrightly criticized their paper’s performance on a given story. One was in 1980 in St. Petersburg, Florida; the second was two years ago in Winnipeg, Canada. In each case, as far as we know, the editors there simply could not abide that hot spotlight.

In three or four other cases, ombudsman programs have been quietly dropped and the ombudsman either retired or reassigned to other duties.

As nearly as I can determine, in nearly all of these cases the ombudsman program was dropped for economic reasons.

But since the founding of the Organization of News Ombudsmen in 1980, there has been a steady but slow growth in our numbers.

Another pertinent question you and readers are entitled to ask is this: “All right, you are on the newspaper’s payroll. You are one of its employees! [How can you be independent?]”

And I respond this way: “True, I get my paycheck every two weeks, just as all the others do. But all I ask is, please read my column. Not just one column. Not two or three. Read my columns over a month or two. And then see if you don’t agree that I am truly independent.”

It is said — and I think accurately — that the great untold story in journalism is journalism itself. Here stands the ombudsman, then, hovering near the newsroom; helping to tell that story; letting in the needed light; providing readers with another window into our process, ready and able to lend them a helpful, impartial ear.

It is work that brings mental stress, but also a great measure of personal satisfaction.

Dick Cunningham, who is also on our program today, described for an interviewer some years ago something every news ombudsman has felt:

“The most striking thing to every ombudsman after he or she has been in office for about a year is that people are delighted and surprised to find that their complaints have been given a thoughtful airing and discussion. Even when a complaint is not decided in the reader’s favor, the common reaction is still, “I’m pleased to know I have a voice.”

I can attest to that. Frequently, when I investigate a complaint and make a decision that favors the newspaper the reader will respond by saying, “That’s okay; just to know that somebody listened to me is great.”

Somebody listened. It is an important lesson for any journalist.

Credibility, as I said, is our most precious asset. It is gained by the inch. It is lost by the foot. And the ombudsman can be a prime ingredient in building and keeping credibility, that precious commodity.

I’d like to conclude with a comment by Charles W. Bailey, a former editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, who appointed the paper’s first ombudsman — who, in fact, was Mr. Cunningham.

“The ombudsman’s job is not to make himself or his editor or even his newspaper either popular or beloved,” said Mr. Bailey. “His job is to regain or retain the respect of readers. It’s not a wholly disinterested goal. In the long run, respect is the only sentiment that will keep the public reading, believing, supporting — and buying — a newspaper.”