A Few New Year's Resolutions

By Deborah Howell
Sunday, January 1, 2006

A new year always inspires me to improve my corner of the world. For Post readers, my corner is this newspaper and column.

Being ombudsman means I don't hear many compliments about journalism or this newspaper. This has been a bad few years for newspapers, beleaguered both financially and journalistically.

Yet I remain hopeful about my trade. The importance of serving readers through independent journalism is still paramount.

Only a newspaper that is financially and journalistically strong runs stories as vital as the revelations about the CIA black site prisons in Eastern Europe, the District's wasteful contract bidding practices, the shenanigans of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his friends in Congress, and the problems with the Metro transit system.

Some stories scare readers. Why should The Post reveal the secret workings of government when President Bush says the secrecy is meant to protect our country from terrorism? Because it's important that readers and taxpayers know what their government is doing and where their money is going, whether it's for a baseball stadium or the Iraq war or the intercounty connector.

I can't imagine living in a country where I knew the government controlled the media; there are still far too many places where that is so. We will always owe a debt of gratitude to the Founders for the First Amendment.

With this independence comes the heavy responsibility that good editors and reporters feel deeply. We cringe when our own or any newspaper has a problem that affects the credibility of all journalists.

It's downright daunting to be a journalist these days. There was a time when most reporters didn't get bylines and toiled in anonymity. Now reporters, particularly political and national security reporters, are in the spotlight as never before and are watched for any nuance that will end up on the Internet as proof of bias.

Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news, said: "If what we write supports their beliefs, they devour it and e-mail it to their friends. If it doesn't fit their agenda, these readers go on the attack, often with us as the target."

I get the most mail by far -- voice, snail and electronic -- from readers who are furiously partisan. I'm amazed that The Post is viewed by many as either the unthinking stenographers of the Bush administration (that would be the liberals) or constantly chipping away at everything the president is trying to do (that would be the conservatives).

The conservatives don't seem to remember how tough this newspaper was in reporting on the Clinton administration. Remember the newspaper that first reported the Monica Lewinsky story? It is in the nature of journalists to report skeptically on those in power.

The liberals seem to expect The Post to be the house organ of Moveon.org. An old newsroom adage says that if both parties are angry with you, you must be doing something right.

How do we move ahead in this fraught-with-fraught world? I have a few new year's resolutions:

For our critics: Be civil. Ink-stained wretches though we be, don't always impute partisan or bad motives to this paper or to journalism. Deadlines, space, secrecy and deliberate efforts to mislead us are daily obstacles to our reporting -- as is reporting from the world's most dangerous places.

If journalists are to get any benefit of the doubt, we need to deserve it.

For the Post:

In this era of declining newspaper circulation, The Post needs to be printed well, delivered on time, and everything in it from advertising to box scores to Page One must be as professional as we can make it.

The Post shouldn't give critics ammunition. We must renew efforts to be fanatical about accuracy and fairness, doing away with any hint of bias. Leave the opinions to the columnists, editorial pages and bloggers. When doing analyses, don't lean heavily on anonymous sources, especially pejorative ones. Correct mistakes quickly and fully.

The Post should be as transparent as possible. Have we checked as many sources as we might? Does it show to readers? Do they understand where our facts come from? While it's all about reporting, reporting, reporting, we need to tell and show.

When Post journalists are interviewed on chat lines, on television or radio, they should observe the same professional standards they do in the paper. Sometimes it's not what they write but what they say in another setting that causes trouble.

For the ombudsman: Rise above the insults and online furor and have a reasonable dialogue with readers and Post journalists. If you find error or bias, I will investigate. If readers know how to make The Post better, I will convey those comments to the right people and push for change.

News is the first rough draft of history (that phrase was coined by Philip Graham, Post Chairman Don Graham's father and former Post publisher), but that doesn't mean that it can't be as good a draft every day as we can make it.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or at ombudsman@washpost.com.