Ombudsmania!

(CBS/AP)

Today, Public Eye continues its semi-regular look at the issues at play in Print MediaLand -- at least the ones that seem worth passing along. (As sometimes these things get too insider-y even for us.) So keep your hands inside the car at all times, and we're off:

Heads or Tales:

Quick. Tell me what's going on in Iraq in six words. Or explain the Red Sox sweep in five. Go ahead and try.

Both Deborah Howell at the Washington Post and David House at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram used their columns to talk about how difficult it is to boil down journalism into short, pithy, attention-grabbing headlines. Here's Howell's take:

As a former copy editor, I know it's tough work, especially on a tight deadline and in a tight count. As Vince Rinehart, Editorial copy desk chief, said: "Perhaps the greatest challenge in copy editing is reading 1,000 sophisticated words on a complex topic and finding six words to tell the story and convey its nuance and tone, often with less than five minutes to do so."

Headline content often relies on connect-the-dots skills in which editors and readers assume shared knowledge and anticipate exchanges of information. As Lutz noted, "Often a headline writer is asked to convey one or more themes in a story in 3, 4, or 5 words."

That can be a mind-bending task, particularly when a copy editor is bearing in mind the Star-Telegram's mission ("Earning the people's trust daily") while dealing with supersensitive topics such as illegal immigration -- a complex, emotionally charged issue that permeates our nation's mind and pulls high readership, increasing the need for accuracy.

You may think that newspapers chase every story of woe, death and tragedy, but the Chicago Tribune's Timothy McNulty used his column this week to explain how the paper covers (or doesn't) the very private and delicate issue of suicides:

The newspaper generally considers suicide "a private matter," except when editors decide it isn't.

You probably have personal views on the ethical, religious and legal issues about taking one's own life, but what responsibility does the paper have when reporting on a suicide? The decisions are not always easy. Editors have sympathy for the families left in anguish and, sometimes, a legitimate worry that reporting details of a suicide, especially if it involves a young person, might prompt copycat acts.

I looked back at several suicides reported on in the Tribune during the last few months and saw that editors handled each one differently. You may or may not agree on the newsworthiness of each death. You may argue that privacy trumps public interest, or the other way around.

Out in Kansas City at the Star, Derek Donovan agrees mightily with this writer, about how the media overplayed General Sanchez's criticisms of the Bush administration while nearly ignoring his anti-media tirade during the same speech. Apparently his paper reran the New York Times summary, that omitted the media-bashing section – which amounted to nearly half his speech:

I'm with the readers who find it troubling — and highly ironic — that about a third of Sanchez's 3,400-word speech addressed shortcomings in the media directly, yet the story completely avoided any mention of those criticisms. The Star's editors would have been wise to review the original transcript instead of relying solely on The Times' version.

Sometimes it seems like inside baseball when you hear of all the layoffs within the newspaper industry, but Manning Pynn at the Orlando Sentinel writes that such cuts can make for bad information:

In the past three months, the newspaper has corrected more than a third more errors of its own making on average than it did during the relatively placid prior five months. August, September and October have accounted, thus far, for significantly more corrections of internally generated errors than the newspaper averaged in that three-month period during the prior five years…

When the Sentinel tightened its financial belt back in June, it lost a wealth of seasoned veterans, many of them editors. Those journalists not only wrote headlines and captions. They also scrutinized the work of reporters -- correcting spelling, straightening out syntax, double-checking facts -- before publication.

With fewer people to do that now, less of that important work gets done, and the result is more published errors.

Think Globally, Report Locally

Up in Baltimore, the Sun's ombudsman Paul Moore defended his paper against the criticism of some readers that the paper is too local in scope. He listed off some recent examples and before rebutting:

All of these reports had a local focus but none was parochial.

Such stories are no accident. Sun journalists understand that increasingly sophisticated readers expect more than the bare facts of local news. They want articles that connect the dots between events here and global trends. Reporters who do this well are rewarded with Page One play as editors aim to draw readers with unique value-added enterprise.

Ombudspeople often come off as curmudgeouns, absorbing and delivering criticism all the time. So it's nice to see them offer praise occasionally. The Sacramento Bee's Armando Acuna used his column to pat the backs of the Bee reporters who covered last week's wildfires:

wondered whether in these penny-pinching times of tight budgets and reduced space the paper would cover the breaking news disaster in its own state, and if so, how.

I was gratified to find the answer was "yes" to the first question and "splendidly" to the second.

The [coverage]: A balance of telling the big picture story with the small personal ones, while also occasionally highlighting the work of Sacramento-area fire crews who, much like their hometown reporters and photographers, suddenly found themselves dispatched to go face-to-face with the biggest wildfire story in years.

Well done.