OMBUDSMAN. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as much as it pops out of the mouth. Not a reassuring, warm and fuzzy kind of sound. It’s not even in my aging copy of the Oxford English dictionary. And then there’s that whole sexist implication with the “man” ending.
Perhaps the word’s peculiarity is one reason that a lot of newspapers empolying one call it something else: public editor, readers’ representative, readers’ advocate.
Whatever. The ideas underlying each title are the same.
Someone – someone outside the newsroom and outside the paper’s management – needs to keep an eye on the newspaper. Keep it honest.
Someone – someone with experience, someone with an insider’s knowledge and an outsider’s view – needs to act as a sort of quality control officer. When something’s being done poorly, it needs to be pointed out so someone can fix it. And when something’s done particularly well, it needs to be praised.
Readers need a place to take their complaints. Some people don’t believe a letter to the editor is enough.
Someone needs to explain newspapers to the people who read them. Newspapers are strange things, with cultures all their own. They have walls and customs every bit as revered among their members as the separation of church and state Mr. Jefferson and his friend James Madison used to promote.
Beginning today, I am the person charged with doing all that for The Cavalier Daily.
I’ve been a journalist in various venues and capacities since Al Groh was an assistant coach at North Carolina, so I have the requisite experience. I’m not involved in the daily preparation of The Cavalier Daily, so I have an outsider’s perspective. I have a reputation for looking at things critically and speaking and writing frankly. That’s what I plan to do here.
Newspapers have been published in what’s now the United States for a long time. Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick was the first, putting out its first edition in Boston in 1690. The government closed the paper down before the second edition could be composed.
Virginia got its first paper in 1736, when The Virginia Gazette – which still comes out twice a week – first appeared in Williamsburg. Only 231 years passed before a U.S. newspaper acted on the idea that it might be good to have someone broker the discussion between the paper and its readers. In 1967, a pair of papers in Louisville, Kentucky, appointed an ombudsman. That was about 45 years after the idea sprang up in Japan. Now the Organization of News Ombudsmen has members from Colombia to Estonia to Australia. As far as I can tell, The Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk, is the only Virginia daily – university papers excepted – with a public editor.
So this isn’t a common thing you’re getting from The Cavalier Daily. I hope you’ll take advantage of it. When you have a complaint about coverage, let me know. When you wonder why something was done a particular way, ask me. I hope I can help generate a conversation and consideration among the staff and readers of The Cavalier Daily not only about this newspaper but about newspapers and other media in general.
I agree with Mr. Jefferson’s declaration that, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” But I also understand the frustration that led him to say, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
I understand it, but I take it as a call to do what can to improve the media, not throw them out altogether. And one element of doing that is helping people understand how these things work and how closely they come to the ideal Mr. Jefferson had in mind when he said all those nice things about newspapers.
So write to me. Let’s get the conversation started.
Tim Thornton is The Cavalier Daily’s ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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