For 32 years, The Courier-Journal has taken pride in the belief that it appointed the first newspaper ombudsman and launched the international newspaper ombudsman movement.

We were wrong.

We didn't know that the concept had already been operating for many years in Japan when, in 1967, C-J editor and publisher Barry Bingham Sr. established the post here and John Herchenroeder became the first to fill it.

Over the years since, Herch and his successors (I'm among them) have listened to and acted on thousands of calls from readers with concerns about the newspaper. We've also supported an international organization of people with similar jobs, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, aptly known as ONO.

Our error came to light when ONO's executive secretary Art Nauman revised a brochure that included the movement's history and circulated it among members of ONO's board of directors.

Board member Osami Okuya of the Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo saw a problem: His newspaper had established an ombudsman committee in 1938.

As Okuya researched the issue, he discovered that another Tokyo paper, Asahi Shimbun, announced in 1922 that it was establishing a panel to receive reader comments about errors.

When I asked Okuya to share what he'd found, he kindly sent a thick sheaf of documents, all in Japanese. Keiko Kuwabara, director of the Japan Center of Greater Louisville at Indiana University Southeast, graciously helped translate the beautiful script that was, she said, the Japanese equivalent of Shakespearean English. From Okuya, Kuwabara and Nauman, this is the story that emerged:

In 1922, Asahi published a story saying that it was forming a committee to deal with a growing problem. Newspapers, pressed for time on deadlines, were making mistakes. Usually the paper would later apologize for the errors, but a lot of people were concerned. The newspaper feared that the newspaper and ordinary people couldn't cooperate.

The ombudsmen committee would try to prevent that kind of situation by investigating when necessary and apologizing or solving the trouble. It would try to be fair and make everything fair, the paper said.

''The writer really insists how important it is,'' Kuwabara said.

Asahi credited the idea of the committee to the old New York World, which, it said, set up a similar system called the Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, in New York City in July 1913. (I have read the New York World for that period on microfilm until my eyes crossed without finding the story Asahi cited. The World is no longer published, so tracking its committee may be a good project for a future journalism student or historian.)

By 1938, Yomiuri Shimbun was having to deal with many lawsuits prompted by news stories. It established a committee to ''improve the quality of our newspaper.''

The staff began by comparing each day's editions with competing Tokyo dailies. Then, in 1951, it invited readers to contact it with complaints or comments.

Today the Yomiuri Shimbun has a circulation of several million and a 23-member committee whose members specialize in various types of complaints. The committee meets daily with editors who, by all reports, take the ombudsmen very seriously.

Clearly, in the spirit of the movement's beginnings, The Courier-Journal owes an apology to the Japanese newspapers and thanks to Okuya for his help in setting the record straight.

We aren't alone.

Nauman noted in a message to ONO members that journalists, scholars, master's degree candidates and ombudsmen have all assumed over the years that the movement started here.

So we all violated a cardinal rule of journalism: Don't assume anything.

This column appeared in The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier Journal in October 1999.