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Closing doors

Of some 1,500 newspapers in the United States, only a few dozen have ombudsmen. And the number is decreasing. Over the past year, the ombudsmen positions have been eliminated at the Baltimore Sun, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Hartford Courant, the Louisville Courier Journal, and the Palm Beach Post.

Difficult times for the newspaper industry and a worsening economy – and the combination of the two – are the main reasons cited for cutting the ombudsmen positions.

At the Louisville Courier-Journal, outgoing public editor Pam Platt suggests that her column read like "an obituary for a position that has mattered to The Courier-Journal and its readers for 40 years, a position that has mattered to world news media for that long, too."

Karen Hunter, the outgoing reader representative at the Hartford Courant, regrets "that such an admirable attempt at accountability and transparency through an independent third party is being squeezed out of the news process."

Pam Platt in The Louisville Courier-Journal

Karen Hunter in The Hartford Courant

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2008 ONO Conference
Gunnar "Kulan" Kugelberg of TV4 in Stockholm has produced a video summarizing the 2008 conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen in May.
View it here

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The pairing of an unflattering photo and an insensitive headline in the online version of a radio report distracted from the focus of the story. Alicia Shepard on National Public Radio

The New York Times has an obligation to pursue stories and photographs that report the entire experience of war, including death. Clark Hoyt in The New York Times

Whether trivial or substantive, publishing corrections enhances credibility. It also helps when there are fewer mistakes to correct. Derek Donovan in The Kansas City Star