ONO Conference opening remarks made by Pam Platt, president of ONO and public editor at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.:

By Pam Platt
ONO president

I don’t know how many of you have gone kayaking in Florida with wild alligators all around you. I did that about two months ago. And I have to tell you … out on this beautiful river … away from most people … no e-mail arriving and no cell-phone signals … well, I thought about our jobs. And, no, it wasn’t because I saw some buzzards circling overhead … although I did … and let me tell you, that’s not a confidence builder.

Despite some of the things I’ve read (and you’ve read, too), despite some thinning in our ranks – especially in the U.S. – despite some economic decisions in our industry that I’d characterize as both understandable and shortsighted ….the fact that we are here, we are here in Stockholm, we ombuds, public editors and reader advocates from around this great, wide world, are meeting here, and now, well, I’d tell the buzzards that they’re a bit early.

But I digress. Let’s get back to that river.

So there I was on the Myakka River, on vacation, and all I could think about was work.

Maybe it was because – as we say in the South, where I come from, and I’ll hope you’ll forgive the mild profanity – I was up to my ass in alligators.

Sound familiar? It should.

You don’t have to be in a kayak in the wilds of Florida to feel that way. Most ombuds have been there, done that, in their own work environs.

You know what I’m talking about – phone ringing off the hook, e-mails piling up, upset readers, stressed editors and/or reporters, ethical questions, sticky technological wickets, complete strangers saying we’re the equivalent of a body’s appendix, and always, always, standards that demand better and best practices, no matter the platform or the portal, and those are multiplying as we meet …..

And there we are, we ombuds, in our one-person kayaks, up the creek with a paddle, and a good thing, that …. because there we are, negotiating changes in currents, encountering banks and boundaries that are either too close or too far away, eyeing tall grass that obscures hazards or shrouds wonders, curves that hide what’s ahead and cause confusion on the trip back and …. yes … those ever-present creatures with the tough hides, the huge mouths and all those sharp teeth – readers, reporters, editors, bloggers, eventually each and all fill that bill.

Two truths I learned about our jobs on that river with all those alligators, two truths that weirdly fit with the theme of this year’s conference, “The Ombudsman Today … and Tomorrow”:

1. If we stop paddling, we don’t sit still. Depending on the strength of the current, we are either carried backward or we turn sideways and end up getting stuck or working harder to get where we were before.

2. If we don’t know where we’ve been, we won’t know where we’re going. Each time I came to a real curve in the river, I turned around to try to freeze a mental image so I would know it when I came back, and use that as a guide.

Well, here’s where we are.

We know that the work we do is important, not only for individual readers and individual news organizations, but also for values such as credibility and ideals such as democracy.

Recently, I asked members of ONO to share some thoughts about what ombuds do, what difference they make. Ever bent on being fair, several said they didn’t want to appear self-serving, and noted that they understood why some news organizations were phasing out the position when so many other positions were also being phased out.

But the conviction of their belief in the job is unwavering, and unmistakable, in the present and for the future:

Ted Vaden: “Maybe people don’t understand that the purpose of the public editor isn’t just providing accountability to the readers on a regular basis, as important as that is. There’s also holding the paper accountable to itself that I think is an important mission.”

Siobhain Butterworth: “The ombudsman system is a form of self-regulation. It builds trust with readers because they understand that someone is assessing whether the newspaper is meeting the standards it has set for itself.” Journalism blogs, she continued, are good in their own way but “no substitute for newspapers putting their hands up to their own mistakes, which is key to the relationship of trust between readers and journalists.”

Connie Coyne: “While a newsroom may seem easy to understand to the people who work within it, it is a confusing and frustrating place to try to navigate for the public. The reader advocate/public editor/ombudsperson serves a valid purpose at a newspaper by bridging the gap between the public and the staff so both groups understand each other.”

Angela Tuck: “In these times of drastic change in our industry, it’s important to have a central clearinghouse for reader feedback and a key person who has the responsibility for responding to readers. … I think public editors /ombuds raise questions that people who are doing the work day in and day out don’t have the time or inclination to raise. “

David House: “A person who would put an end to ombudsmen does not understand the role’s value at a time when the news industry’s credibility is in the tank and staff reductions/loaded plates leave even less time for work with depth, much less time for staff to talk with readers. Thoughtful dialogue with local readers has never been more important to salvaging credibility …. “

Glenn Drosendahl: “ When I look back over the years I have been the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s reader representative, I see no big accomplishments, but a daily difference in how our paper treats readers and listens to their concerns. It’s institutionalized . . . Mostly, though, I make a difference by answering my phone. Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t express shock at that. And gratitude. I help readers, and by doing that, I help our paper.”

I’m very pleased that this year’s conference is built around the idea of us talking with each other and listening to each other’s voices. We don’t do enough of that, and we should. We are, after all, in the same boat. And I would also say – at the risk of annoying you with another allusion to my river trip -- we’re all up to our sweet patooties in alligators with shifting landscapes and shrinking budgets, and what those and other challenges mean not only to ourselves, but to our readers, our news organizations and the values we try to uphold.

We have the wonderful opportunity of these few days together to think about our work, how we might approach it differently, how we might make ONO more relevant to its members and beyond, and how we all might assert this relevance at a time that I think more than needs it, but demands it.

I’d like to end with the rules of the river again:

We can’t afford to stop paddling as we forge ahead. And to know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been.

Let’s send those buzzards scattering.