Results matching “ombudsman not a cos”

The St. Petersburg Times, owned by the Poynter Institute, is going through a major revamp on May 19, in an effort to emphasize content valued by readers and cut down costs.

The daily features section, Floridian, will be published on Sundays only. The business section will merge with the B section metro news.

TV listings, comics and games, and some other syndicated elements from the features section, will be moved to a new section called Baylink.

As mentioned though, the move is (primarily) aimed at cutting costs, and a few elements will disappear from the paper, including items such as stock listings (many papers have eliminated them), the Parenting column and the Working section.

Staffers have worked to create "a more streamlined paper during the week, eliminating material readers may not value so much, and, in the midst of a serious recession, cutting costs," wrote Times media critic Eric Deggans in a blog post.

As Deggans is honest enough to admit, "It's a tough spot for a media critic to negotiate; I'm not an ombudsman with a contract guaranteeing employment no matter what I write, so I've tried to respect the organization's need to plan while pulling together this blog post."

In the end, it seems that even newspapers with a nonprofit model (the Times is in fact for profit, but has a peculiar ownership structure) are getting hit by the struggles of the US newspaper industry.

"We're not insulated from the pressure, and these changes are evidence of that fact," said Deggans.

A good share of comments to his blog post came from unhappy readers.

Source: TampaBay.com The Feed

Last week, Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age wrote that the ombudsman's time may be up, but Guardian journalist Siobhain Butterworth challenges his view. She argues that Dumenco "misses the fact that the ombudsman's role is about self-regulation," thus the issue should be "whether self-regulation is worthwhile" instead of whether the newspaper ombudsman's role is redundant in the digital age.

In the UK, newspaper ombudsmen were "thin on the ground" in March, with several front-page apologies, such as Express to the McCanns and Daily Mail to Sheldon Adelson.

"Because newspapers are also web publishers," writes Butterworth, "discussions about the possibility of regulating the press have to take into account the impracticability of regulating the internet."

Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, told the European parliament in 2006, "We believe that [a] combination of self-regulation and media literacy is the most effective way to regulate content in the new media environment."

Self-regulation is in the interests of the press, Butterworth concludes, even without the threat of statutory regulation hanging over editors' heads. The newspaper should be open about mistakes, be prepared to correct them, and assess itself to see if it is meeting its standards. This necessary internal self-regulation is why a newspaper ombudsman is needed.

Source: The Guardian

Simon Dumenco, journalist for Advertising Age, believes the newspaper ombudsman is now an obsolete position.

He gives five reasons:
- Readers can now effectively do the job for themselves, especially with the popularity of blogs. Many bloggers can influence how controversial newspaper reports are "received and spun."
- Jim Romenesko's Poynter Institute media blog has probably already covered the news with in-depth commentary and links to other sources. According to Dumenco, Romenesko "effectively makes any newspaper's public-editor column seem both parochial and anemic."
- More people now directly engage in conversation with journalists and editors through email and website comments.
- Ombudsmen are "boring as hell", a personality that opposes how newspapers should be engaging with their readers
- Money can be saved or spent on something else.

Nowadays, readers are willing to second-guess news coverage and to contribute. Instead of paying for an ombudsman, papers should focus on expanding space online and in print for readers' thoughts. However, the Internet is a separate domain that can be argued to need an ombudsman.

Source: Advertising Age through Media Bistro

In light of the ombudsman's gradual disappearance from the world of journalism, Jeffrey Dvorkin has moved to defend the necessity of the position, in an article published yesterday entitled "Journalism's Last Line of Defense." Dvorkin was the ombudsman at NPR from 2000 to 2006.

Dvorkin discusses in detail his experience as ombudsman during the Second Intifada in the Middle East, a time during which NPR was heavily criticized by listeners for pro-Palestinian reporting. Although he acknowledges the rigors of the job, he suggests that having the position of ombudsman gave the NPR much more credibility.

We have discussed previously the necessity of having an ombudsman for both print and online publications, particularily to uphold a publication’s credibility.  

Interaction with readers helps the news organization understand how their reporting is being perceived by a wider public. According to Dvorkin, talking to a real person within the organization also helped to placate some enraged listeners following inevitably polarizing coverage of the Middle East.

"Overall, I think that -- for NPR -- having an ombudsman to catch the flak was better than a defensive silence, which is how many other news organizations dealt with criticism of their coverage," Dvorkin said.

Dvorkin contends that most newspapers view the position as a luxury that is not cost-effective. However, a study conducted by the Guardian in London showed that the cost of litigation actually drops whenever there is an ombudsman on staff, by as much as 30% a year.  

The Web has entirely changed the journalist-reader relationship. Two-way reader interaction is gaining ground through email, comments, SMS, online chats and blog posts, 24/7. This would imply that news outlets increasingly need ombudsmen. Yet there are reportedly fewer than 40 ombudsmen in the US, and few papers are willing to hire one, at a time of general cost-cutting. Maybe they should think about the potential costs of not having an ombudsman, and figure that the readers’ editor is not (only) a guardrail against angry readers. He or she is a bridge into Web 2.0 journalism.

A recent study of 25 of the world’s top news outlets revealed that most lack the necessary transparency to develop readers’ trust and a sense of credibility.

The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) recently published a study called “Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets.” The results of the study indicate that The Guardian and the New York Times are the most transparent and accountable while Sky News and Time are the worst. 

According to the New York Observer, The New York Times is considering the suppression of its public editor position by the end of May 2007. Can a recipient for potential controversy such as a major newspaper really rid itself of an ombudsman though?

Guardian ombudsman Ian Mayes will leave the paper after nine years on the job.  In addition to being the first ombudsman at a British national paper, Mayes is president of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen.  Mayes will now devote his time to writing the recent history of the Guardian.  The paper will soon appoint a successor, but the question remains how essential an ombudsman is to the modern newspaper.

Source: Guardian 

Recurring mistakes may be one of the most embarrassing aspects of newspaper journalism. But it is an aspect that can be easily cured. All journalists need to do is start reading the corrections column.

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum have protested to the Irish government against proposed privacy legislation that conflicts with press freedom in Ireland and would "inhibit the way newspapers carry out their legitimate and important function in society."

The Guardian’s errata motto is “err today, correct tomorrow,” reports ombudsman Ian Mayes in a recent Guardian article on newspaper accuracy.  Slate’s Jack Shafer would be happy if more American papers took the Guardian’s lead.  Shafer wonders why it is so difficult for major US papers to admit their errors when they have “climbed out onto a limb that cracks.”

One of the biggest debates in American journalism is over the strict division between fact and opinion. Although some would contend that all writing inherently leans one way or another, the fear of bias in American media has caused a suppression of journalists' views in order to maintain objectivity. But on the other side of the Atlantic, opinion is regularly mixed in to newspaper articles. Could this eventually change?

Last week, Assistant Managing Editor for Continuous News at the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, spoke with readers about the concept of the Continuous News desk in as online chat. Below are some highlights and commentary:

If you know an outstanding journalist in a developing country or newly emerging democracy who has made remarkable contributions to the media, speak up!

The Guardian's readers' editor Ian Mayes reports on the appointment of a readers' editor at Indian English language newspaper The Hindu (9th largest circulation). This is a first for an Indian newspaper.

The Washington Post was forced to shut down comments on one of its blogs yesterday as readers responded angrily to a statement made by ombudsman Deborah Howell that Jack Abramoff, who is at the centre of a Washington scandal for having bribed a significant number of politicans in order to 'buy influence', payed off Democrats as well as Republicans.

Morningstar reports that Jim Brady, Executive Editor at wasingtonpost.com, confirmed that "there were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not 'keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff,' and so the Post shut down comments on the blog."

Accompanying the increased integration of what NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen dubs "the people formerly known as audience" into the news process, are demands for more transparency from mainstream news organizations. Two developments this week in the National Security Agency leak issue broke by the New York Times in December put these demands in perspective, raising interesting questions of how transparent a news organization can be before its journalism starts to be negatively affected and showing the troubles the MSM is having in adapting to new pressures for transparency brought on by the blogosphere.