I hate long goodbyes, so I will get right to the point: I, dear readers, am no longer your ombudsman.
My three years are up, and today I return to regular garden-variety editing. The paper has been interviewing candidates to replace me.
I leave the job a wiser journalist, thanks to you. By seeing the paper through your eyes I have a keener sense of fairness and an ear more attuned to what’s important. I am grateful for the times you saw — well before I did — the Globe’s missteps, and took the time to tell me. I leave with a fuller appreciation of the power imbalance between the paper and its readers (it has more) and the need to talk across that gap if the Globe is to stay connected to its community.
Listening to readers has been the kind of civic privilege that I’ve experienced only once before — many years ago during a presidential campaign, covering small town candidate forums in Iowa. Both provided a rare, front-row seat on a process of public engagement, and the wisdom it generates. I feel fortunate, even if most comments to this office were fueled by criticism.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the paper. An April 9 editor’s note acknowledged as incorrect the gist of a story on blocked fire exits in the Big Dig. An April 15 note revealed that the Canadian seal hunt described in a story two days earlier had not happened, and that a freelancer fabricated details from the scene. The Globe deserves credit for openly acknowledging the errors. That is how it should be, but not always is. Journalists, I’ve found, can be surprisingly criticism-averse.
The Globe, with its mostly liberal opinion pages, is an easy target for the right, but I’ve felt heat from both sides. It’s been a challenge to tune out the din of ideologues’ web-orchestrated campaigns while tuning in the voices of legitimate criticism — people who may make the same complaint about the Globe, but who arrive at it with honest independence. They should be heard.
There is much chatter these days about the media’s failings. Twenty years ago, most people surveyed thought news organizations usually got their facts right; by 2003 that had changed, according to the Pew Research Center’s ”Trends 2005″ report. What’s worse — and emphatically reflected in complaints to this office — a majority surveyed thinks the media lack compassion for those it covers, and is politically biased. Nearly a third called it ”immoral.”
My own judgment differs. But journalists do tend to write to their own demographic, not always the readers’. I see the resulting disconnect as more a matter of class or culture than politics. Most newsrooms don’t naturally look to, say, the lives of the working poor for story inspiration. Nor to the junction of religion and daily life. That a recent Globe story on an evangelical family seemed such a departure from the paper’s usual fare says something.
Integrating readers into the paper can only help. One of my predecessors in this office, Mark Jurkowitz, left ombudsmanship in 1997 with this recommendation: Expand opportunities for reader-written columns, including an occasional critique of the Globe. I hereby renew that call.
The Globe does far more right than wrong. But readers — mindful of the paper’s power — expect a professionalism that papers sometimes don’t demand of themselves. (What?! There’s no fact-checker for op-eds?!) I admire their high ideals.
As for readers’ more mundane complaints, well, I have come to hear them as expressions of bigger concerns. Readers really do want to believe what they read in the Globe — from Big Dig stories to reports from Iraq — but they need to be confident of the Globe’s accuracy and thoroughness at the most basic level. Thus, the micro is really the macro, and must be taken seriously.
I have tried, in the ombudsman column, to balance criticism and explanation. Looking back, I regret that I was, on occasion, not more forceful in saying that the Globe fell short. Regrets, too, if I failed to adequately explain how this newspaper works. (And maybe I got distracted by the little things; I shudder to think how many missing inserts I personally mailed out, or delivery complaints I routed.)
Among the triumphs: Conversations with readers that began in anger almost always ended in civility, and sometimes even humor or warmth. Sure, there was the occasional abusive crank, but I’ve felt compelled to hang up on only two readers in three years. As a percentage that’s not bad.
So thanks, readers — especially my regular correspondents; you know who you are — for your patience, your time, your insights. You have made me smarter, and I am grateful.
