By Alfred JaCoby
The first question for the new ombudsman back in the early days (the 1960s and 1970s) seemed to be universal:
The dictionary wasn’t much help. The general definition in a number or dictionaries big and small referred to a public official “assigned to investigate complaints against government.” That concept had originated in Sweden, whose socialism was called, in a celebrated book by journalist Marquis Childs, “the middle way.”
The enlightened Swedes, knowing that government and its bureaucracy was no respecter of freedom, had established this concept of a “watchdog” for citizen rights. The Swedish ombudsman was a government official. But we were journalists. We weren’t public officials and didn’t want to be. If we investigated complaints against government, we wrote about them.
And in many ways, we offended our readers. We made errors and then made it hard to have the errors corrected. We were arrogant with our dealings with the public. We ignored some important stories and overplayed others. The public wasn’t amused or charmed or, in too many cases, satisfied with the media. As for correcting errors, too many newspapers had a long history of not making them.
The need for a better public perception of newspapers was graphically shown in a 1986 study of reader comments in San Diego, California. Some of the recurring themes in reader criticism were:
- The newspaper makes numerous errors, as reflected in the corrections that appear in the newspaper.
- Although the newspaper corrects its errors, the corrections are frequently hidden in the back pages of the paper.
- The newspaper makes corrections only because it must print a retraction to avoid law suits.
- The newspaper is politically biased
- The newspaper should print more good news.
- The newspaper is sensational, especially in is headlines.
And this was in a newspaper which had had an active ombudsman program for more than a decade and whose readers were quoted in the same study as generally favoring and being aided by the concept.
The old theory that nothing comes before its time came into play here. Two remarkable events — magazine articles — happened that directly affected the problem and a solution. The articles were by a pair of journalists who easily fit into the distinguished category. Ben Bagdikian was a long-time gadfly and critic of American press tactics, working, at the time, for the Washington (D.C.) Post. A.H. Raskin was known among professionals in journalism for his brilliant labor reporting and editorial writing for the New York Times. Both men suggested, independent of one another, that newspapers needed to set up a department or an editor who would act for the public, investigating errors, solving problems in the interface between press and public (though in those pre-computer days, neither would have used the term), and generally doing the job that needed done at a crucial time in press-public relations.
Bagdikian’s article in the March 1967 issue of Esquire magazine, set the tone:
Some brave owners someday will provide for a community ombudsman on his paper’s board, maybe a non-voting one, to be present, to speak, to provide a symbol and, with luck, exert public interest in the ultimate fate of the American newspaper.
Raskin, writing in The New York Times Magazine, June 11, 1967, said:
There is a need in every newspaper for a Department of Internal Criticism to put all its standards under re-examination and to serve as a public protector in its day-to-day operations.
Indeed, Raskin said, this department should “check on the fairness and adequacy of their coverage and content.”
At Louisville, Kentucky, a concerned editor named Norman Isaacs read and acted. Almost immediately the Courier-Journal and Times had America’s first newspaper ombudsman, in June of 1967.
His name was John Hershenroeder and he had 40 years in journalism in Louisville. He had been a reporter and city editor and could have been considered close to retirement. He went into the job with a verve and flair that guaranteed its success. The job was ill-defined from the start. Each new ombudsman virtually had to write his (or hers, although the post was mostly filled by males in its early years) job description. Every job was different at every paper.
At Louisville, Hershenroeder’s job description, if there was one, didn’t require a column for the Courier-Journal, but he did write a daily report to editors on what he was hearing from readers. His reports were tough and he was able to back them up based upon his 40-year career at Louisville. He seemed to know every nook and cranny of the city and everyone in it and woe betide the reporter or editor who might try to slough off an error with an excuse that slanted the facts.
Hershenroeder’s dealings with the public were charming, polite, and effective. I recall sitting in his office one afternoon and hearing him take calls. Someone would call and grumble about a story. “Where do you live,” he would ask. “Such and such streets? I know that area. Used to play baseball [He had been a well known local player in his youth] out at that field down the street.”
The conversation would go on and it was obvious that he knew people and places and that he cared about errors in the paper. He had been known as a tough city editor with his staff but he was a charmer as ombudsman with the public.
At Sacramento, where the Bee dominated California’s state capital city, Thor Severson wrote a daily memo to editors about errors plus a weekly column. The Bee’s editors didn’t have to run a correction based on Severson’s recommendation but if the correction wasn’t used and Severson thought it should, he could comment at length and critically in his column. Recalcitrant editors soon learned that a Severson column pained more than a correction.
After Severson’s retirement, the post was filled by Arthur Nauman, who operated under the same rules. Nauman’s independence was further strengthened when his job became a function of the Bee’s corporate ownership rather than the local newspaper. (The Bee and its corporate owner, the McClatchy Newspapers, are headquartered in the same building in Sacramento but operate separately.)
The ability to require a correction may have been a lodestone in the ombudsman landscape. At The San Diego [California] Union, Editor Gerald L. Warren, who established the ombudsman concept with his appointment of a “reader’s representative,” gave his appointee the absolute power as to corrections and what could be said in a column. When I wrote a correction, it had to run. This didn’t always please reporters or editors, but it quickly established the paper’s commitment to making facts right, no matter whose feelings were hurt. When I developed a weekly column, it, too, went into the Monday morning paper without change. The reader’s representative could go anywhere in the newsroom and question any member of the staff in quest of information. (This put a special pressure upon my own obligation to be free of errors.
Opponents of the concept were always eager to gleefully point out the ombudsman’s errors — and they always had to be corrected) Most newspapers chose their ombudsmen from the staff, often assigning older, more experienced (and, some charged, put out to pasture) members of the staff to the job. At the Washington (D.C.) Post, as Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee explained many times, he felt that the ombudsman could only have full independence by coming from outside the staff. The policy has continued. The Post ombudsman generally has a 2- to 5-year contract with wide guarantees of independence.
Sometimes, too, the ombudsman’s independence was established by location. At Sacramento, at the St Louis Post-Dispatch and at Louisville, among others, the office of the ombudsman was distant from the newsroom, often on another floor. The independence also was usually clearly defined by establishing the ombudsman as a position reporting only to the senior editorial executive in the newsroom, usually the editor. The early ombudsmen soon learned that having a job reporting only to the senior editorial executive, meant both great power and the loss of newsroom friendships. Sub editors and reporters frequently viewed the ombudsman as a sort of, as one reporter-friend once called me, avenging angel of darkness. No one really cared to be identified as the writer or editor of an error. And, at first, no one wanted to be identified as providing information for a correction (Names of miscreants were seldom used in corrections at The San Diego Union and when they were, usually in the weekly ombudsman column, they were given the opportunity for defense.) Though, in most cases, the ombudsman’s rules of operation clearly established the right to question a staff member about a possible error, some refused to talk. The standard answer to such a refusal was to point out that it might be explained in a column that the reporter, who always expected others to answer questions, had refused to answer questions about accuracy or fairness.
In other newspapers, having the ombudsman on the newsroom floor was considered an asset. Charles Bailey, editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, an early and strong supporter, put his ombudsman, Richard Cunningham, in the middle of the newsroom, “so everyone could see and know he was there.”
One loss for the budding ombudsman was the collegial atmosphere common to workers in a newsroom. It became difficult to wander through the newsroom, speaking to friends. Few staff members would casually come by the ombudsman’s office to gossip or chat. As a result, the long distance telephone line became the ombudsman’s link. New appointees would call, asking, “How did you handle…” and veterans became the data banks of the system. (In later years, with improvements in communications, phone conferencing became a regular habit.) In the early years, too, a series of yearly conferences on media ethics at the Washington Journalism Center virtually became the annual gathering for ombudsmen.
The definition of the job varied from paper to paper. At some papers, the ombudsman was expected to handle “outside” activities such as newsroom budgeting or travel planning. Because many ombudsmen were senior members of the staff, they often were involved in hiring and some regularly spoke or recruited at minority job conferences. Most ombudsmen found themselves explaining the concept in speech. Another became a regular before journalism classes.
The ombudsman concept may have been praised in the early years, but it wasn’t always popular with editors or owners. Six years later, in 1973, the Journalism Quarterly reported that only eight newspapers had appointed ombudsmen. Even in prosperous times and even though the programs appeared to be working, the costs of assigning a staff member to the job and then providing staff support wasn’t always a welcomed addition to newsroom budgets.
The concept did grow. By 1974, there were a dozen or so ombudsmen and by 1982, there were 22 programs, including several in Canada. (In Sweden, where the concept started, the country’s newspaper organization financed a national journalistic ombudsman program. Thorsten Cars, a lawyer and judge, was named to the post.)
By the late-1970s, the newspaper ombudsman concept had solidified to the point that talk began about forming an organization. John Brown, ombudsman at the Edmonton Journal, circulated a series of round-robin letters in the spring of 1979 proposing that the annual conference at the Washington Journalism Center be used as a meeting to establish an organization of newspaper ombudsmen. Brown had believed the concept would be welcomed as had several others. To our surprise, opposition came in the argument that there weren’t enough ombudsmen to form an organization or that membership would sacrifice an ombudsman’s independence.
The motion to organize the Organization of Newspaper Ombudsmen (many thought we had chosen the name because its initials could be pronounced “Oh, no!” the traditional comment when errors were discovered) passed by a bare majority. The formal name was changed to the Organization of News Ombudsmen when ombudsmen from other media were admitted. Brown, as the person who had developed the idea, was offered but declined the initial presidency because the group had a large majority of members from the United States and he was a Canadian. (Brown became the second president two years later.) The post was then offered to Thor Severson, of Sacramento, who also declined, for what he called personal reasons. (Severson’s reasons became clear in a few months when he announced his retirement.)
The presidency finally came to me. It thus fell to San Diego to organize the group and, though no one was sure it would happen, to set up an annual convention.
The first ONO convention was held in San Diego in May of 1981.
About 20 ombudsmen, primarily from the United States and Canada, attended. The only overseas delegate was Cars, from Stockholm.
Ombudsmanship is now in its second generation on most newspapers. No original ombudsman is still working and several newspapers have had several persons in the post over the years. Some papers have dropped the job. Many others have established it to a total of about 45 newspapers in the United States, Canada, Britain, Spain, Brazil, France, Japan and Italy.
And, finally, did it all work? Most practitioners at this new journalistic function report over the years their feeling that most newsrooms are more conscious of accuracy and fairness. I have observed time and again that my professional colleagues in the newsroom are as anxious as I that errors be made right and fairness be a watchword. Other ombudsmen give the same report.
But has it worked? For the most part there has been no way to measure the ephemeral question of improvement in journalistic quality. One study, reported in the Journalism Quarterly, provides some indication. In that study, those persons who had contacted The San Diego Union reader representative during a one-year period were surveyed. Another group, selected at random as a control group, was also contacted.
Those in the first group generally reported a more positive feeling toward the newspaper as a result of their contact.
Those in the second group, who had not contacted the reader’s representative and were not aware of the program, generally had no changed feelings.
The author, Alfred JaCoby, spent nearly 50 years in American journalism, primarily at The San Diego Union in a variety of positions ranging from reporter to Sunday Editor to City Editor to Assistant Managing Editor. I n 1976, the became the newspaper’s reader’s representative and served in that position for seven years.
He retired from the newspaper in 1992, when The San Diego Union and its evening counterpart, the Evening Tribune, were merged to become The San Diego Union-Tribune, owned by the Copley Newspapers group of La Jolla, California. JaCoby is currently writing a history of The San Diego Union.
http://newsombudsmen.org/articles/origins/the-newspaper-ombudsman-a-personal-memoir-of-the-early-days
http://newsombudsmen.org/articles/origins/the-newspaper-ombudsman-a-personal-memoir-of-the-early-days
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