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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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If Washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady was looking to heat up his ongoing feud with the blogosphere, his Sunday Outlook column was a pretty effective way to do so. In his missive, Brady reflects on what he learned from the Deborah Howell episode (see here if you need the background details). Here’s a bit of what Brady wrote:

Out in the Web woodshed, a handful of bloggers called me gutless or a puppet; some of them compared me to assorted body parts and characterized me as the worst person to come along since, well, Deborah Howell. And any nasty posts I didn't see myself, my friends gleefully provided to me via e-mail. A few friends said they came close to jumping online to defend me, but chose not to for fear they'd be next in line for a public flogging.

This all raises a question: Why are people so angry? It was a mistake, it was corrected. Part of the explanation may be the extremely partisan times we live in. For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it's not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.

Another culprit in Web rage: the Internet's anonymity. It seems to flick off the inhibition switch that stops people from saying certain things in person. During the Howell flap, many of the e-mails I received that called me gutless, a coward or both were unsigned.

Maybe this level of anger has been out there for a long time, waiting to be enabled by technology. Forget about writing a letter, getting a stamp and mailing it in. Anger now has an easy and immediate outlet.

The reaction from those easy and immediate outlets was fairly predictable.

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Just in case you haven’t been checking us out on a regular basis over the past couple weeks, PE has covered some pretty interesting and controversial subjects. We've taken a look at how the press covers the White House and whether those daily gaggles and briefings have much value. We looked at how top skier Bode Miller took a controversy and turned it into PR gold.



We’ve looked inside CBS after the network acknowledged withholding some details about the FBI’s success at discovering who’s been making those IEDs being used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq – at the FBI’s request. We revisited the network’s morning editorial meeting, the 10:30. And we got a top-level intelligence reading from CBS correspondent David Martin on how the hunt for Osama bin Laden may be going.



And, of course, we’ve immersed ourselves in the Deborah Howell and Washingtonpost.com v. the outraged critics story.



And that’s just some of our more recent work. For those relatively new to PE, we encourage you to check out the Editor’s Picks on the right side of this page. We’ll be updating those real soon, so take a look at some of our past coverage. And, as always, feel free to comment below or drop us a line. We read each and every e-mail.

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The back-and-forth, between Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell and her very vocal critics over the past week brings to mind something I heard a woman blogger once say when asked why blogging seemed to be dominated by men. Her response, I’m paraphrasing here, was basically that the atmosphere is not conducive to attracting women. She felt that women were targeted for more cruel and personal attacks (from both genders) than men, something that has kept them from jumping into the fray.



It’s a generalization, of course, to say that the Web or the blogosphere is dominated by men and their voices, and there are certainly examples of women weighing in on the most contentious issues of the day, on both the left and the right. But in light of the remarks aimed at Howell which caused the Washingtonpost.com to close down its comments section, we can at least ask these questions. Is there a gender gap on the Web? Are women subjected to different kinds of personal attacks and criticism than men? Would the Post’s Web site have felt the need to close its comments if a male were under attack? Or is this entire premise just a false attempt at describing some kind of non-existent glass ceiling on the Web? Just asking.

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As expected, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell addressed her critics in her Sunday column in which she acknowledged her “mistake” of writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff personally gave money to Democrats. And she vowed to press on:

“Going forward, here's my plan. I'll watch every word. I'll read every e-mail and answer as many legitimate complaints as I can. The vast majority of my work takes place outside this column. But I will reject abuse and all that it stands for.


To all of those who wanted me fired, I'm afraid you're out of luck. I have a contract. For the next two years, I will continue to speak my mind.


Keep smiling. I will.”

Her much-anticipated words may not do all that much to quiet the furor of last week which led the Washingtonpost.com to close the comments section on its post.blog. The site’s executive editor, Jim Brady, tells PressThink’s Jay Rosen he’s still committed to a dialogue with the public but adds:’

“It’s pretty simple, actually: As a site, we’ve decided there have to be limits on the language people can use. I’m getting a lot of e-mail saying, essentially, that I need to accept the fact that profanity and name-calling are part of the web DNA. That may be true for the Web as a whole—though I hope not—but I don’t run the Web as a whole, I run washingtonpost.com, and on our site, we get to make the rules. Readers can reject those rules, and post elsewhere. That’s their right. There are plenty of blogs that will allow commenters to say whatever they want; we’re just not going to be one of those.”

See Romenesko for a rundown of the chatter on this from the past several days, but take note of David Carr’s piece in The New York Times where he has this take:

“It was not that long ago when readers enraged by something they had seen in the newspaper would have to find a pen, a piece of paper, an envelope and a stamp to make their feelings heard. Now, mainstream media outlets find themselves under attack for not providing bandwidth and visibility to people who wish them dead.


Personally, I'm all for a robust interaction with the reading public. My address is David Carr, New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. And don't forget that the price of stamps just went up.”

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During a Washingtonpost.com chat today, the site’s executive editor, Jim Brady, answered readers questions about the chain of events that led him to close and remove all comments to a posting regarding ombudsman Deborah Howell. See here for the history. A couple highlights from today’s chat:



Asked why all comments were removed, even those which were well-argued, Brady said:

“There were lots of good posts, and over the next few days, we'll go back through them and restore the ones that did not violate our rules, though we're still going to leave comments off on that blog for the time being.”

Brady addressed charges that the paper was attempting to “silence” its critics:

“How has The Post ‘silenced its critics’? We're having a discussion right now in which -- believe me -- I can assure you there are more critics than supporters. We shut down comments on one blog on a site than has 30. You can e-mail or snail mail letters to the editor. Deborah's e-mail is available on the site. There are plenty of avenues to critique what happens at the newspaper or web site. We don't have an obligation to keep every one of those avenues open if we run into problems like we did yesterday.”

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Temperatures reached the boiling point today in the battle between The Washington Post and news consumers outraged by last Sunday’s column by the paper’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell. PE readers will remember that the flap, which we’ve addressed previously, stems from Howell’s statement that members of both political parties “have gotten” campaign money from Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The indicted Abramoff personally donated money only to Republicans, but the real scandal lies in who his clients gave to – members of both parties – and what they may have gotten in return. Democrats and their supporters have fiercely argued that only Republicans are involved in this mess.



Following the fury unleashed on the post.blog, many comments were deleted by the paper – something that made those outraged by her column, well, even more outraged. After a couple days of quiet (Howell did have a small dust-up with Media Matters about it, after which she reportedly vowed, “from now on, I don’t reply”), the ombudsman popped back up on post.blog to offer a clarification of her wording:



Update: Comments on post.blog did appear to cross the line; executive editor says many were removed, pondering what's next.

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