We’re all in agreement. My main responsibility is to listen to readers who want to voice their concerns, their criticism, their puzzlement, their hopes, even their compliments.
In a “You Be the Editor” exercise I presented to you recently, I asked you how you would rank six of my primary responsibilities as ombudsman of the Star-Telegram.
I posed the same question to a number of the newspaper’s staff members.
This is how the 137 readers who responded ranked the six responsibilities in the unscientific survey:
- 712 points — Listening to readers
- 599 points — Making known to staff members the feelings of readers
- 572 points — Seeing to it that errors are corrected
- 333 points — Explaining why this newspaper does some of the things it does and how decisions are made
- 302 points — Adding a small layer to the decision-making process
- 255 points — Criticizing colleagues and/or the newspaper when they fall short
This is how 89 staff members ranked these responsibilities:
- 481 points — Listening to readers
- 380 points — Seeing to it that errors are corrected
- 377 points — Making known to staff members the feelings of readers
- 314 points — Explaining how the newspaper works
- 189 points — Criticizing colleagues and/or the newspaper
- 146 points — Adding a layer to the decision-making process
Permit me to digress for a moment to explain how we arrived at the points. Each time a responsibility was ranked first we put down 6 points. A second-place ranking earned 5 points, a third-place ranking 4 points, etc. Some readers and staffers did not rank all of the responsibilities.
The “listening to readers” responsibility was far ahead in first-place votes with both readers (87 first-place votes) and staffers (55 first-place votes). No other responsibility came close to getting so many first-place votes.
I had expected the readers to place in second the task of explaining how the newspaper works. I had this expectation because so many readers have told me how helpful this is to them.
What impact does the presence of an ombudsman have on the credibility of the Star-Telegram?
This is the way the readers saw it:
- 99 (72 percent) said the position raises the credibility significantly
- 31 (23 percent) said the position raises the credibility somewhat
- 6 (4.3 percent) said the position has little impact on the credibility
- 1 (0.7 percent) said the position lowers the credibility of the paper (This reader didn’t think I had done enough to resolve his complaint several months ago.)
And this is the way the staff members saw it:
- 51 (57 percent) said the position raises the credibility significantly
- 35 (40 percent) said the position raises the credibility somewhat
- 3 (3 percent) said the position has little impact on the credibility
- None thought the position lowers the credibility of the paper
I think it is understandable that the office of ombudsmen would rate so high in the eyes of readers. I would guess that most of those who read this column on a regular basis are very supportive of the position and would naturally feel that it adds significantly to the credibility of the newspaper.
I was encouraged that slightly more than half of the staff members who responded to the survey also thought the position added significantly to the credibility of the newspaper.
Most of the readers who responded to the survey have been newspaper readers for more than 20 years. Research indicates that older readers spend more time reading newspapers and are more apt to read the opinion pages.
Some of the readers vented some of their complaints about the Star-Telegram when returning their “You Be the Editor” forms.
The three areas drawing the most complaints:
- Displeasure with some of our op-ed page columnists. “Why is Molly Ivins in the Star-Telegram?” asked one reader. “I hate no one, but I hate articles by Bill Thompson and Mark Davis,” another said.
- Publishing articles and photos about sporting events on the front page. “Keep that junk in the Sports section where it belongs,” said one reader.
- Errors in spelling and grammar. Such errors irritate many.
Then there are very thoughtful comments, such as this one from a newspaper reader of 45 years: “Often I enjoy the paper. Sometimes is just frustrates me, but the only unforgivable thing is when it bores me and the S-T does that occasionally.”
So what is it about the ombudsman’s office that readers like? Let me quote from some of the comments on the survey forms:
“Yours is a very educational column, helping the reader to see what goes into putting out a paper and the attendant problems . . .” “Your column helps to clear up confusion in many instances — not an easy task . . .” “Thanks for encouraging reader participation. . .” “Your explanations when there happens to be a `goof’ are appreciated . . .” “I always enjoy your viewpoints and it helps to `vent’ my feelings with you on the phone . . .” “You personally put a `face’ on the newspaper . . .” “Ombudsman serves as damage control and can be a teacher to a hasty journalist who opinionates rather than informs by printing the facts . . .” “I wish we had a similar pipeline to individual TV stations and the TV industry in toto.”
Finally, this from a “Republican-conservative” that would warm the heart of any ombudsman: “Love you, man! Being a longtime reader, I can honestly say the Telegram has come a long way since the ’40s and ’50s. It and its politics have mellowed with age.”
