Letters to the Editor
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First they came for the ombudsmen . . .
While an ombudsman sure seems like a luxury in the modern, cash-strapped newsroom, the loss of the "readers' editor" is indeed a tragedy. As Dvorkin points out, it's a sign of newspapers' rapidly deteriorating quality. But an even more alarming problem is the gradual disappearance of all the other gatekeepers of quality and accuracy.
Remember the "stone"? Thought not. That was the guy who'd wander out to the composing room to make one final check before the pages went to press. The stone's long gone. In the newspaper chain where I work, proofreaders have also been thrown over the side, along with the stone and the ombudsmen. Our corporate owners are now laying off copy editors. I've even heard suggestions that reporters file copy directly without any editing at all, which, given the quality of most raw copy, should lead to moments of great, if unintentional, hilarity.
The true tragedy is that our owners have given up on what is still the most comprehensive vehicle for gathering and distributing information. Where else can you find one easy-to-carry source for world news, recipes, sports scores, used car ads and news about your unique community, as often as not told with compelling photographs and lyrical writing?
Heck, newspapers even still make money, if not as much as they used to. But they won't if we keep losing the often anonymous people who dedicate themselves to making them reliable, accurate, responsible and, at times, beautifully written.
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Blame Talk Radio
OK, first of all, no one in the United States has any stake in what happens to the Israelis or Palestinians except religious zealots who are looking for the world to end THEIR way. Second of all, I disagree with your assertion that the blogosphere is the reason why ombudsmen are becoming less popular. I would say it's talk radio perpetuating the lie that there is a liberal bias. They've been doing it for over 20 years and papers are probably just sick of hearing the phony complaints of "bias" from people who never wanted it to be unbiased in the first place.
These people want everything to look like Fox News, I don't think they even believe the liberal bias lie themselves. You can't blame a paper for not wanting to deal with faux outrage.
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ESPN Surprises
ESPN does a lot of wrong things (most notably the relentless, grinding self-promotion); however, as one of the other letters pointed out, they stand out for not only hiring an ombudswoman, but making her visible and accessible. Last summer I wrote to her to complain about something I had seen on the network, and was pleasantly surprised to see my email cited in her next column. It's nice to know that someone was actually listening.
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This is a joke, right?
I gave up on ever getting a response -- beyond the canned "acknowledgement" -- to an email complaint to the NPR ombudsman during the period 2002-2006 described. Does this mean a response will now be forthcoming?
'Course my complaint concerning the local NPR affiliate wasn't about news bias per se -- it had been, but that got backburnered by complaint about management sitting on those complaints so they didn't reach those -- on-air personnel -- to whom directed -- so the biases (and worse) remained unchanged.
Ultimately, the manager of the particular NPR affiliate about which complained was essentially fired. I had hand in that -- by bringing to the attention of higher ups outside and above the affiliate and its enabling associates in the affiliate's corporation -- and outside NPR -- the sitting on complaints in order to pretend a fake "all our listeners love us as much as the members of our exclusive inner-circle backs-to-the-world clique" -- though the publicized (additional) reason was the manager's use of "company" assets for personal "business" (and the presumptive entitlement that immorality at listeners' expense is intended to enhance).
There's another complaint concerning the insularity and avoidance first of requests for information, then of complaints, by Terry Gross and her staff, with the assistance of that affiliate, but that's a separate record of contempt for the NPR listener. That complaint isn't being sat on by that affiliate's management; it is sitting unanswered in Mr. Dvorak's email inbox, on which he -- of course -- sits.
(That complaint began as a call to that affiliate -- which is in Philadelphia -- from Boston to obtain contact information of a Terry Gross guest for follow-up research. Gross' staff(identically with the local affiliate's staff) doesn't deign to respond appropriately even to such constructive follow-up research calls; first it hangs up; then if one makes the "error" of calling agin, it reconnects the listener to "security" in effort to intimidate the listener into going away.
It's to laugh, Mr. Dvorak: a cop-wannabe in Philadelphia is gonna intimidate a listener in Boston by threatening to "come get" the listener. That is not, however, professional, Mr. Dvorak -- which I expressly point out because NPR -- Gross' staff in particular -- doesn't appear to recognize that oh-so-simple fact about basic human interactions [as they occur among the "great unwashed" external to NPR]. But it is typical of corporate abuses of power based upon moral turpitude and bankruptcy. Based upon the arrogance of being "entitled".
So keep the phony self-promoting PR campaign to yourself, Mr. Dvorak: those of us of NPR's (now former) listeners know the actual role of management-appointed so-called ombudsman (and not only at NPR and its affiliates) is to derail complaints intended for management, or more often for on-air personnel who are under the illusion that all their listeners are upper-middle-class, and white, and refuse to accomodate the actual reality; or concern staff who abuse callers based upon "I'm an insider" ego-trips; and that the listeners share the same bigotries and self-aggrandizing entitlements, into the "SPAM" folder.
At this point, of course, Mr. Dvorak, I know you won't be answering the complaint/s about Gross' staff -- and affiliate -- and their threats in order to enforce its not wanting to be bothered with providing relevant follow-up information to a researcher.
JNagarya, Legal Professional and Ethicist