All Blog Posts from Public Eye

The Los Angeles Times has decided that just merely having an in-house ombudsman – or two, in their case – isn’t enough.

Since they don’t have a weekly ombudsman column in the print edition, they’re going to skip that step and go online with a more involved “Readers’ Representative Journal” blog sort of thing:

Anchoring the changes is today's launch of the "Readers' Representative Journal," a new blog aimed at taking the public deeper into the process of how editorial decisions are made. Hosted by readers' representative Jamie Gold and assistant readers' representative Kent Zelas, the journal will feature a Q&A-oriented conversation to engage reporters and editors in addressing reader queries and observations. Among the rotating features will be "Ask a Staffer," a chance to get the story behind the story; "Whatever Happened to ... ," where readers can ask for updates on past stories; and grammar critiques.

So the Times will be enabling readers to take their concerns directly to the journalists, under the watchful eye of the ombudspeople, and have them respond. To this writer, it sounded nifty enough in theory. Transparency is no longer merely an option for media outlets. It’s not ‘whether or not’ to be transparent. But ‘how far should we go?’

Still, though, the Los Angeles Times announcement raised a few red flags to this writer:

Ombudsmen are already an endangered species. (Case in point: Minneapolis’ Kate Parry.) Is this liason-esque tactic another attempt to phase out their "middleman" role?

Reporters are hardworking and conscientious and, yes, occasionally thin-skinned about their work. How will they deal directly with dissatisfied readers? Is this one instance where transparency might not be preferable to diplomacy?

But I’m just one man here. So I decided to open it up to some professionals whose boots are in the sand daily in newsroom battles. (Neither Gold nor Kelas responded to my request for an interview.)

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Deborah Howell, the Washington Post’s ombudsman (ombudswoman?), came down from Mount Sinai with a new commandment last week:

Thou Shalt Not Tweak.

Howell was informed that a Post sports writer had made some adjustments to a Redskins player’s quote to make it grammatically correct. Her take?

My view: Quotes should not be changed. If coaches or athletes are routinely "cleaned up," that should stop. Simply put, quotes should be and sound authentic. And The Post needs to set this particular record straight... The rough draft of history is still history.

I’m journalistically agnostic about quote-cleansing. Who among us hasn’t ever parsed a verb incorrectly? Isn’t a journalist’s first duty to convey how the world is, rather than amend it? How many “like”s or “uhm”s or “yeah”s do we toss into a sentence that, when transcribed, make us sound like Jeff Spicoli? Isn’t this the equivalent of a photographer touching up a photo? I can see it both ways.(Don't envy me my cognitive dissonance.)

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One of the knee-jerk defenses offered for the media’s tabloid obsessions – like the hours of coverage given to Paris Hilton – is something like, "Well, hey … people are watching. Check out our ratings!"

That ends-justify-the-means attitude is something we’ve gotten used to in cable news, where the concept of “breaking news” has broken down.

But we like to think of print media as a different animal altogether. It’s more cerebral, it’s more serious, it’s more … rational.

But perhaps no longer.

Don’t take my word for it, however. Evidence of this comes from … the sober-minded ombudspeople at two of America’s leading papers: Deborah Howell at the Washington Post and Tim McNulty at the Chicago Tribune.

Take for example last week’s Howell column, where she explained/rationalized the media coverage given to Hillary Clinton’s … uhm … chest.

There's a bigger issue about her Clinton piece: Does this have anything to do with whether Clinton should be president? Not a thing. But do we want to read the column about her cleavage? Yes indeed. It was the most viewed story on the Web site all day.

So Deborah Howell is basically pointing the finger at the readers, even though there’s no way to track the precise motivation of why somebody clicks on a story. They could have easily received a link via e-mail with someone asking, “Can you see what passes for commentary at the Washington Post these days?” Sure, clicks are clicks, but c’mon, Deborah.

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