It is Thursday and I am working on my first column as The Spokesman-Review’s ombudsman. Since the job involves dealing with readers’ complaints, I open this morning’s paper and glance at “For the record,” an inconspicuous item near the bottom of page 2 where the S-R acknowledges mistakes.
There are none today — in either the Spokane or North Idaho edition. On Wednesday we corrected a misspelled name and on Tuesday an erroneous TV program listing. Last Saturday we had to clarify a man’s occupation, but that’s been it since Dec. 1, the effective date of the ombudsman assignment.
We’re not performing flawlessly, but pretty close. If that’s the case, this job will be a snap.
Alas, my phone messages, letters and e-mail tell a different story. Several callers asked why The Spokesman-Review didn’t cover the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s hearing on Nov. 14 in Coeur d’Alene. It was one of a string of hearings on EPA proposals for cleaning up mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene basin.
One caller said neglecting the hearing “was a terrible oversight.” Idaho Editor Steve Massey described it more as a calculated gamble.
The first EPA hearing, Nov. 13 in Wallace, was covered prominently. Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne denounced the EPA as “nonresponsive” and said he was about ready to invite the agency to leave his state. He was quoted along with others who support a state alternative to the EPA plan.
It was what Massey and his reporters anticipated — a strong expression of North Idaho’s prevailing sentiments on the cleanup issue. They expected a rehash the next night in Coeur d’Alene, but they knew a more EPA-friendly turnout was likely at a Nov. 19 hearing in Spokane.
Thus, says Massey, it was felt the most efficient use of his limited staff would be to cover only two hearings — Wallace and Spokane.
“I wish we had folks to staff everything, but we don’t,” he said. He believes events vindicated that decision, but he admitted, “We could have gotten burned.”
Had the strategy backfired, I believe Massey’s crew would have scrambled to catch up. They’d have reported the story, but a day late.
That’s not to second-guess his decision about resource allocation, but one thing newspapers do poorly is to tell readers how we operate.
It might have helped to insert a block of text explaining our decision to cover only the two hearings. That wouldn’t have prevented criticism but it might have softened the perceptions of bias.
Interestingly, while it was anti-EPA voices that challenged the non-coverage in Coeur d’Alene, it was an environmentalist who complained that The Spokesman-Review regularly bashes the Lands Council. It turns out the reader’s reaction was to the chidings that appear occasionally in D.F. Oliveria’s “Hot Potatoes” column.
Those of us who work for newspapers take it for granted that columnists such as Oliveria express their own opinions, not the paper’s. That’s something else we ought to clarify for readers from time to time.
Speaking of columnists, a Coeur d’Alene reader took sharp issue with Outdoors Editor Rich Landers’ Nov. 15 column about oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That’s not sports, that’s politics, and it has no business on the sports page, the caller said.
Landers was challenging a radio commentator’s claim that there is no wildlife to speak of in the proposed drilling area. Landers contends it’s part of his duty to help readers think about the long-term impact of energy decisions on fish and game.
“In my opinion,” he said, “an outdoors writer has a responsibility to be aware of a lot more than just how good the fishing was last week.”
I should point out that not all the comments readers have sent in are negative. Shirley Strom thanked us for including most women’s original last names in their obituaries, and John Cameron described Rob McDonald’s “Northwest Passage” column as a wonderful contrast to The Spokesman-Review’s “usually biased Republican reporting.”
I can’t close this column without sharing a couple of readers’ observations about the nature of my role.
Scott Maclay of Spokane is skeptical about my validity as a watchdog: “If Mr. Floyd is unwilling, or even unable, to bite the hand that feeds him, then he really isn’t an ombudsman but a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he wrote.
Bill McCrory of Coeur d’Alene put it more graphically: “How does it feel to be standing between the dog and the fire hydrant?”
I’d rather bite the hand that feeds me, thank you.
