By Chuck Stone
Walter Spearman Professor
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

When St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Cole Campbell offered me the position of ombudsman with specific responsibility to monitor an upcoming racially polarized mayor's race, two thoughts occurred to me: One, I had a high threshold of ignorance about the responsibilities of ombudsmen; and, two, I was amazed at the alacrity with which my even higher threshold of hubris impelled me to accept.

After my mercifully brief baptism of only five months on the Post-Dispatch assignment, I came away a devout believer in the imperative for ombudsmen to newspapers' credibility and accountability, especially if they expect to survive at the same level of influence in this multi-media, multi-cultural society.

What bewilders me is why there is such a paucity of newspaper ombudsmen -- only 2 percent, or about 35, on the 1,540 daily newspapers (in the U.S.). There are fewer ombudsmen than there would be Democrats at a Newt Gingrich fundraising dinner...

One of the problems ombudsmen have is the public's uninformed perception of our title. If Jay Leno were to do one of his on-the-street polls and ask people what does a newspaper ombudsman do, the blank stares and mumbled stutters would explain our problem.

The title does not have the same ring of specificity and clarity as, say, reporter, editor, columnist or photographer. Is it possible for this group to have a title or professional designation on which all of us could agree and would consensually use?

As long as we have different titles -- ombudsman, readers advocate, readers' representative, readers' editor and public editor -- the public will perceive us with the same differential degrees...

We are facilitators, intermediaries, brokers, educators, investigators, problem-solvers, mediators, reporters, Socratic gadflies -- and meddlers, the last category being the reason why so many editors are insecure about our role.

But even if publishers and editors do not regard our journalistic stewardship with an outpouring of enthusiasm, we still have a responsibility to help newspapers achieve five goals. If we can conclusively prove that our professional role makes a difference -- a significant difference -- more of our colleagues will be inclined to appoint an ombudsman.

The first goal is making newspapers necessary. People must need to buy our product, whether for advertisements, as the court of last resort when they need help and call an ombudsman, as the most dependable and comprehensive dispenser of information and even as that most comfortable morning cup of coffee companion. As long as they need us, they will buy our paper.

Television, one of our most salient competitors, is never as comprehensive as newspapers, and certainly not as dependable. In 1897, New York City's eight- year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, distressed by her schoolmates' disbelieving taunts, asked her father, is there a Santa Claus?

He told her to write the Sun because if it was in the Sun, it was true. What followed was Francis Church's historic and heart-tugging editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

One hundred years later, to whom would a parent ask his child to write to ascertain a historical fact -- the National Enquirer, the Globe, Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer, Sally Jesse Raphael, the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, the Internet or your newspaper -- or even one of you?

The second goal for newspapers is to always be exciting -- not excitement inspired by scatology, pornography or sex-obsessed reporting, but plain ol' fun-inducing, eyebrow-raising, mouth-gaping excitement.

In introductory newswriting (classes), we teach students how to write pungent leads and to craft stories, hoping they will develop a skill for turning out copy defined by the WIBD factor -- "Well, I'll Be Damned" -- instead of the WGAD factor, "Who Gives A Damn."

People watch television, go to the movies and check out dirty videos, not because they want to be educated or informed, but because they want to be entertained and have their impulses stimulated.

In this age of videocracy, when visual images overwhelm the senses and shape opinions, the E.Q -- excitement quotient -- on newspapers must rise if they are to compete with exciting media.

The third goal that ombudsmen can help newspapers achieve is superiority of information. We are not schools. We don't educate as much as inform. We must become the ultimate fountainhead of information, but governed by the highest credibility that is made possible by our reliance on the acronym, FEAT -- fair, evenhanded, accurate and thorough....

Fourth, ombudsmen must develop strategies that conclusively prove how ombudsmen can help newspapers become more accountable.

Accountability is a newspaper variation of interactivity.

Ombudsmen are the only professionals on the newspaper whose sole responsibility differentiates the new media -- the Internet, Online, etc. -- from the old media. In a sense, ombudsmen are custodians of accountability.

Publishers would disagree because they have their own index of accountability -- circulation. If people buy the newspaper, they reason, that means they believe in us....

If that reasoning holds up, why has the national circulation of daily newspapers declined from a high of 62 million in 1987 to 56 million in 1997?

Why has daily newspaper circulation stagnated when the nation's population has gone from 226 million in 1980 to 248 million in 1990 and is expected to top 270 million in the year 2000? And newspapers will still be struggling to maintain their current levels.

But the purchase of a newspaper cannot be equated with belief in accountability. Ironically, a reader's purchase may reflect a kind of need, a desire for excitement or entertainment.

Many readers will buy a newspaper because it's the only daily printed game in town. In the 30 largest cities in America, 16, or more than half of the 30 have only one daily newspaper of general circulation: Austin, Baltimore, Columbus, Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Portland, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Diego and San Jose...

Newspapers' fifth goal is credibility. Ombudsmen can be critical to maintaining and even enhancing a newspaper's credibility.

All of us are pained by the diminished respect readers have for us today. Two months ago, I took notice of my 40th anniversary as a journalist. In those 40 years, I cannot recall any period when readers held newspapers in such low esteem.

In the last five years particularly, there has been a steady drumbeat of antagonistic, acerbic, denunciatory criticisms of the media, especially newspapers. The reason we are the most vulnerable is because, despite our shortcomings, we are the most comprehensive, the most responsible and the most sensitive. Many readers regard newspapers as members of the family.

You rarely see a television program acknowledge an error or a factual mistake. But newspapers do it every day.

At the Newspaper Association of America's convention, Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser lamented during a panel discussion of the pros and cons of news councils, "We've got a real problem in American newspapers. A lot of people don't trust us."

A national poll reported in a Parade magazine cover story under the headline, "Do You Trust the News?" found that people don't. Readers and viewers believe that journalists are far too closely allied with special interests, that they go overboard to play up sensational aspects of a story and that they put far too much emphasis on the private lives of their subjects....

The public's current ubiquitous dislike and disdain for the media may be emblematic of the Dr. Fell syndrome. In the 17th century, an Oxford Christ Church student wrote:

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this alone I know full well:
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

Newspapers have become inexplicably the Doctor Fells of the 20th century.

I had to grapple with that mysterious syndrome when I became an interim ombudsman for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to monitor the paper's coverage of the mayor's race and to ascertain...whether the Post-Dispatch was guilty of systematic racism, as the entire infrastructure of the St. Louis black leadership had charged....

St. Louis blacks were hostile, mad and about as pissed off at the Post- Dispatch as any group of black citizens can be at a newspaper...

During my five-month ombudsmanship, I wrote 14 columns, but it took me 10 columns before I found the statistical data that explained why so few black readers were responding to my column.

Although I averaged between 125 to 150 telephone calls, e-mails and letters a week, only four or five would comment on the mayor's race which pitted a black former police chief against the black incumbent. Even more disconcerting, only one or two blacks would call me. I eventually discovered why.

Of the Post-Dispatch's circulation, only 15 percent -- let me repeat that: only 15 percent -- was in the city of St. Louis; 85 percent was in the suburbs.

Because the latest census reported that St. Louis was about 50 percent white and 50 percent black, this meant that at the maximum, the black readership of the Post-Dispatch was 7 percent and probably close to 5 percent, given the tendency of lower black readership of newspapers.

Another problem...was the paper's independent contracts with distributors. One of them, a white distributor, told me that it was either too dangerous to go into some black neighborhoods, or the honor boxes were always getting ripped off.

All of this eventually explained the reason for what I described in a column as the Rhett Butler attitude toward the mayor's race: "Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn."

Eventually, most of the white readers softened in their attitude, and I was carrying on a delightful telephone dialogue with many readers in the suburbs and a few in the city.

Occasionally, black readers would call me and cogently point out a specific story or headline which they contended reflected the Post-Dispatch's endemic racism. They were right. But I simply quoted Aristotle, "One swallow does not make a summer."

Still flying by the seat of my inexperienced pants and looking for ideas for columns, I adopted one of Geneva Overholser's columns -- and it promptly catapulted me into a hornet's nest, surrounded by dive-bombing wasps.

Overholser had written a column paying tribute to a retiring colleague. I decided to pay tribute to a Post-Dispatch woman reporter, Carolyn Tufts. Her brilliant, day-after-day investigative stories exposing the incumbent black mayor's mistakes, mishaps and poor judgments had so upset black community leaders that she was demonized as a "pit bull." For good measure, that ultimately infamous disparagement, "racist," was thrown in.

The day my column appeared, two African-American women reporters -- both of whom disliked Tufts -- angrily demanded a meeting with Cole Campbell, allegedly on behalf of African-American staff reporters.

At the meeting, the first question one of the black women reporters posed to Campbell was, "What is the purpose of Chuck Stone's column?" Other racial concerns were aired, but it was obvious (a fact that both black women reporters denied) that my column had kindled the flames of resentment toward Tufts.

I immediately offered to resign. Cole -- bless his stand-up-and-be-counted soul -- urged me to stay on, at least until after the mayor's election. The contretemps dissipated, collegiality took over, several black staffers rallied around me and I completed my ombudsmanship with no further epistolary bloodshed -- but not until I wrote a column about readers' deeper concerns. That prelude-to-a-farewell column included a four-question survey form for readers to assess the paper's Saturday tabloid.

If there had been one recurring, angry theme in telephone calls and letters during my ombudsmanship, it was a deep-seated hostility to the Saturday tabloid. Ironically, the tabloid had produced a 40,000 increase in sales. (I later learned that readers had to buy the Saturday edition in order to the get the popular Sunday paper.)

The column generated an amazing 1,619 letters!

The survey was admittedly unscientific, but it confirmed reader hostility toward the Saturday tabloid.

Whether my four-month ombudsmanship of trial-by-journalistic-fire succeeded, failed or was a little of both, will be a matter of historical judgment.

That Campbell still has not appointed an ombudsman indicates a certain degree of failure on my part. Jim Moseley, metro editor, concurred: "I don't think Chuck worked well...He didn't live here...He never developed a rhythm."

Neither has the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- yet. The reason St. Louis is declining economically and educationally faster than any major American city -- a statistical fact that my columns documented -- is because of a strange parochialism that a critic must live in a city to assess its quality of life.

Yet, Moseley's right. My ombudsmanship did not work well, despite the 1,619 letters and an average weekly response of 125 to 150 readers.

Moseley is part of the Post-Dispatch's historical problem -- an institutionalized, patronizing white mindset that is arrogantly convinced of the righteousness of its news judgments and blithely insensitive to what Alex Haley called the African-American community's core ethos.

I wish I could disseminate more widely the reasons why one of America's most prestigious and influential newspapers, the Washington Post, and other nationally respected papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Orange County Register, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star have ombudsmen.

But when a newspaper is able to sell only 15 percent of its daily papers to the people living in a one-newspaper city that bears its name, that paper not only is crippled by a credibility gap, it has a prima facie need for an ombudsman.

After 40 years in this business, I am more than ever convinced that the solution to newspaper woes is not more P.T. Barnum consultants, but more harnessing of the best newspaper minds to publish the best product that people will love, honor and, occasionally, even obey.

Ombudsmen represent those best minds.

Your organization, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, can do several things to persuade other newspapers and, in some instances, radio and television stations to consider the prestige-raising and circulation-increasing merits of employing an ombudsman.

I offer the following five suggestions to ONO.

One: Establish an annual award for the most outstanding ombudsman who made the biggest impact on his/her community by helping to effect changes.

The award would include a large sum of money. It is a documented fact that awards frequently achieve prestige in direct proportion to the amount of the award.

The only reason that the newly discovered concept, "civic journalism," is being given any serious attention is not because it is an idea whose time has come, but because millions of dollars are available to promote it.

Advocates of civic journalism have never acknowledged that minority and special interest newspapers historically practiced civic journalism long before the majority media discovered it.

The ombudsman's award would also be symbolized by an artistically designed representation whose unique beauty would stand out among competing awards.

In addition to the monetary award and the representation, the news organization would receive a plaque attesting to its support of ombudsmanship.

Two: Publish a textbook of the best ombudsmen columns, the criteria being their eloquent craftsmanship, their impact on the community and their ability to produce results....

Three: Publish an annual "Ombudsmen's Handbook" that would:

(a) List all of the current ombudsmen, their newspapers, telephone numbers, e-mail and fax numbers;

(b) Include the top 10 ombudsmen's columns that drew the heaviest responses during the past year. Ideally, these columns would be highly diversified, reflecting different topics, different concerns and differnt writing styles.

(c) Include a kind of catechism for editors and prospective ombudsmen on the appointment of an ombudsman -- topics, suggestions and offers to be available for advice when a difficult problem arises for the ombudsman, or even for the editor.

Four: Explore the possibility of ombudsmen columns being added as a category in the Pulitzer prizes and other national writing awards (SPJ, ASNE, etc.). This is a remote possibility, but 20 years ago, so was explanatory journalism, which is now included in the Pulitzers.

In addition to the honored columns' eloquent writing style, public service and solutions to problems, they should also be courageous, outspoken, irreverent and above all, witty. The worst sins you can commit as an ombudsman is to be boring, turgid and intolerant.

Your irreverence and wit should be universal. In teaching a class on censorship, I try to establish an open, no-sacred-cows, academic climate guided by the freedom of expression philosophies of John Milton and John Stuart Mill.

As an example, I ask my students on the first day of class, why is Sunday morning the best time to drive on Los Angeles freeways?

Because -- the Catholics are in mass, the Protestants are still asleep, the Jews are in Palm Springs, the gays are in the public baths, the feminists are making protest signs, the lawyers are on the golf course, the hillbillies are watching the televangelical hour, the Irish are hung over from the night before, the Italians are in the fish markets, the Koreans are opening their convenience stores, the Greeks are taking bets over the phone, the Japanese are making flower arrangements, the Chinese are stuffing fortune cookies, the blacks are in jail and the Mexicans can't get their cars started.

My fifth suggestion, and probably the most important, is to make your voices heard nationally in various professional publications (Editor & Publisher, Quill, American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, in letters to the editor in national newspapers, etc.) on various issues and national debates involving the First Amendment, libel, censorship, poor taste, and the constitutional limits of these issues...

It is more important for ombudsmen to speak up and speak out as often as possible in national forums. As you make your voices heard in your columns and in other newspapers, also make those voices heard in a relentless drumbeat to your readers.

Remind them as often as possible, by engaging them in a dialogue, that this is their newspaper. We may own it. But if they don't buy it, it is an empty shell...

Remind readers of the reciprocity of responsibility inherent in the First Amendment. This mutual obligation was discussed in a 1992 Duke University Ewing Lecture series by one of America's journalistic giants, Eugene Patterson, a Pulitzer prize-winning editor, former chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times and former Congressional Quarterly editor.

In his remarks, Patterson, who also is past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said he counted "two companion obligations.

"First, the press is obligated to defend the First Amendment against any attempt to limit it. The right of a free press belongs to the people. They depend on the press to be watchman over that right.

"Second, I think the public's grant of freedom obligates the press to do its job. If the press forfeits, the public can always take back that right."

Most editors consider that last sentence heresy in the delusion that they are the supreme custodians of the First Amendment (and that it) belongs only to them. But the people have equal custodial rights.

Sen. J. William Fulbright once wrote that in the formulation of difficult public policy decisions, "we must think unthinkable thoughts."

Ombudsmen must occasionally think unthinkable thoughts and defend the right of others to do the same. And as they criticize, let them also cheer and praise.

Let them remind readers what a joy as well as a privilege it is to be an ombudsman. My students often ask me how I have felt during my 40-year career, being a columnist, editor, White House correspondent, "Today Show" commentator and radio and television show host.

"It's like being paid to make love," I assure them.

Ombudsmen are paid to make love to the community, to the First Amendment and to freedom of expression. If ONO can make as its first priority the doubling of the number of ombudsmen over the next year, they will also double the number of journalism professionals paid to make love to democracy's noblest sentiment -- freedom of expression.