The Guardian and the Observer are unique in the British press in having readers’ editors – journalists who listen to the complaints and concerns of the audience and act on their behalf, correcting errors and writing columns on the papers’ journalism.
The Guardian was the first to set up the post in 1997 followed four years later by the Observer, although the role on the Sunday paper is combined with other duties. The terms of reference for the Guardian post include “to collect, consider, investigate, respond to, and where appropriate come to a conclusion about readers’ comments, concerns, and complaints in a prompt and timely manner, from a position of independence within the paper.”
The Guardian readers’ editor dealt with 14,435 communications in the seven months ending May 2010 and published 664 corrections in the paper during that period, although this represents only a fraction of the correcting and clarifying of our online content.