Ever wonder what news ombudsmen talk about when they get together?
Ever wonder what a news ombudsman does?
Unless you’ve been reading one of the few newspapers that has one, ombudsman is likely to sound like a foreign word– which it is; Scandinavian in origin, meaning “intermediary” in English.
News ombudsmen receive comments and complaints, in the form of telephone calls and letters from readers, about issues of fairness, accuracy and balance in newspaper articles. We obtain explanations from editors and staff and respond to readers, generally in columns like this one, at 48 newspapers in the United States and around the world. The first of us was appointed in 1967 in Louisville, Ky., to act for readers of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times.
The Organization of News Ombudsmen’s recent annual meeting in Williamsburg, Va., provided the yearly opportunity for this small band of abused servants to compare notes, cry on each other’s shoulders and hear from speakers who might enable us to do a better job of helping make our newspapers more accurate, more accessible and more accountable to readers– and, thus, more credible.
Each newspaper defines the job differently. Some ombudsmen supervise the preparation of corrections. Others write internal newsletters about readers’ views and complaints. Most write weekly columns dealing with complaints of broad general interest or airing the grievance of a particular reader. In my column, which usually appears here each Thursday, the crucial elements are the reader’s concern and the staff’s response. I get to express my opinion, but I also want to provide the needed background to enable you to form your own. News ombudsmen function in an advisory, not a disciplinary or policy-setting, capacity. Columns may criticize or explain. Column subjects may range from questions of privacy to social stereotyping, from factual errors to bias. Any editorial material that causes readers to complain is within an ombudsman’s jurisdiction. Consequently, the ONO acronym expresses what some newsroom colleagues have been heard to utter when they see us coming (“Oh no!”).
Two ombudsmen, one each in the U.S. and Canada, are women. In addition to being one of the youngest, I am the only ONO member of African descent. While most are on their paper’s staff, some ombudsmen are on non-cancelable fixed- term or renewable contracts. Titles also vary: Some papers call their sacrificial lamb readers’ representative, readers’ advocate, public editor, public contact editor or even Listening Post editor. Others have an assistant managing editor or an assistant to a senior editor act as ombudsman.
I’ll report more on ONO’s conference and the issues for ombudsmen in future columns. For now, it’s back to what a colleague in Williamsburg remarked “can be the best job at the paper and the worst job at the paper — all in the same day.”
