PRESIDENT'S
MESSAGE
By Stephen Pritchard

POWERED BY


GANNETT MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES
INTERNATIONAL

You could almost taste the desire for change on the streets of Washington where the Organization of News Ombudsmen gathered for our annual conference in May. There's a new man in the White House and the city, bathed in sunshine, seemed re-energised, reluctant to shake off the hope of the election campaign. But the world's economic woes cast long shadows down those same sunny streets, with jobless figures rising sharply and industries in peril.

The US media are going through particular hell at the moment. Advertising is disappearing, newspapers are closing and thousands are losing their jobs. To hold an international media conference against this backdrop was going to be a challenge, but ONO was determined that its annual soul-search was to be a positive one, because, in spite of the heartache in the west, media in the rest of the world are quietly embracing this form of self-regulation.

Ombudsmen from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and the US met to share their experiences and hear that newspapers and broadcasters in Taiwan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Lebanon and the Pacific Islands want to employ ombudsmen in their newsrooms and want ONO to help.

I have spent the past year urging funding bodies to support ONO's aim to appoint an executive director who can co-ordinate these and other projects. I'm pleased to report that the Open Society Institute has given $56,100 towards these aims and that the conference voted to appoint Jeffrey Dvorkin as executive director. Jeffrey is a highly experienced journalist and former ombudsman who will bring much-needed evangelistic zeal to the post. The grant includes $10,000 to improve this website, both for members and for those seeking to learn more about ONO.

But we are not stopping there. The media are changing faster today than at any time since the invention of the printing press, and readers' editors, public editors, readers' advocates, call them what you will, have to adapt, too. We have to devise ways to make our ethical standards work within the blogosphere and we have to consider allowing online media critics into the fold.

That will be a tough one, as there is plenty of suspicion on both sides, but ONO can't sit on its hands it has a wealth of experience that should be shared as widely as possible.

We are grateful that we could hold our conference at the Washington Post, National Public Radio and the Washington bureau of the New York Times, institutions that believe in having an advocate for the audience within the newsroom, unlike the 14 US newspapers that have dissolved their ombudsmen's posts in the past year.

Even Rupert Murdoch, not noted for his warmth towards the idea of ombudsmanship, was talking recently about "a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers". He said: "It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception."

You'll find pictures, videos, podcasts and presentations from the conference elsewhere on this site.

ONO voted to accept an offer from Media24 in South Africa to host our conference in Capetown next year, enabling us to fly the flag for transparency and accountability and extend our reach into that amazing continent.

Stephen Pritchard
ONO President
Readers’ Editor, The Observer
London, England
reader@observer.co.uk

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