Dear Readers:

  The editors of the Justice have decided not to follow the lead of the Washington Post, and I think their decision is a good one. This Friday (Feb. 28) marks the one-year anniversary of Patrick Pexton's last column as the Post's ombudsman-and the end of a 43-year-old tradition at the paper. Although the Post has continued to field questions from its readers through one of its blogs, the practice of having a regular column devoted to readers' concerns and written by an independent critic has not been continued. 

In contrast, the editors of the Justice have decided to revive the tradition of an ombudsman at their newspaper, and they have asked for my help. 

An ombudsman is essentially a readers' advocate. Because the term is a little cumbersome, some papers (such as the New York Times) use the term "public editor" instead. An ombudsman receives complaints from her newspaper's readers about the accuracy, fairness or tastefulness of the paper's coverage. She investigates how and why the coverage came to be and reports back to the readers in a column, outlining the nature of the initial complaint and recommending appropriate remedies. 

Sometimes an ombudsman finds herself schooling her colleagues-that is, the reporters and editorial staff who are responsible for the coverage. Other times she finds herself schooling the readers, who aren't always familiar with the tactical factors that influence coverage and are responsible for the decisions that readers perceive as sloppy or partisan in nature.

The Washington Post's first ombudsman, Richard Harwood, convinced his colleagues to stop using the name "Cassius Clay" when writing about the boxer Muhammed Ali, who consciously rejected his given name, because he saw it as a relic of slavery. When Harwood was appointed in 1970, he exhorted reporters to recognize that the word "hippie" was pejorative and should not be used except when it was part of a quote. 

He suggested that the young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein be taken off the "Watergate" beat, because they were too inexperienced to handle the story (Harwood later wrote that he was glad that the Post's executive editor, Ben Bradlee, had not adopted that recommendation). He also got the Post to publish a front-page apology to President Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell, because Harwood's investigation concluded that the paper had misquoted Mitchell in an earlier story. 

Newspapers have ombudsmen primarily for two reasons: They want to monitor and improve their coverage, and they want to educate their readers about the factors that shape the craft of journalism. 

This raises the natural question of what the Washington Post's priorities are, now that it has softened its commitment to the ombudsman tradition. But it also points to a positive development in the priorities of the current editorial staff of the Justice. The students who create that paper each week recognize that they don't always get it right, and they want to improve. To do that, they have asked for my help - and I, in turn, am asking for yours.

I have agreed to write a semi-regular ombudsman column for the paper, provided that the Justice's readers ask me to investigate decisions that are made by the reporters and editorial staff. If you write to me about the paper's coverage, in other words, I will launch an investigation and write a column. If you don't, I won't. It's that simple.

I will not be serving as the paper's adviser; I will be serving as your advocate. The editors at the Justice will be free to take my advice or not. The paper has always been an independent publication, and I will not review any articles before they are printed. 

I will, however, continue to field informal questions from students about the stories they are working on, as I and my colleagues in the Journalism Program have always done, not just for reporters at the Justice, but for people who write for all of the University's publications. We are, after all, teachers first.

I look forward to this partnership between and among myself, the readers of the Justice, and the dedicated students who volunteer their time and their talent to produce this paper.

Yours,

Maura Jane Farrelly
Associate Professor of American Studies
farrelly@brandeis.edu
*