The Busy Complaints Department

By Deborah Howell
Sunday, June 3, 2007

So what does an ombudsman do every day? Tackle issues such as these:

· Arthur Kingdom of Great Falls and two other readers were concerned about a story last Tuesday on Allison Stokke, a California high school pole vaulter whose picture was spread across the Internet, often with lewd comments. He wrote: "I'm sure I'm not the only one to see the irony in The Post running a front-page story" on an athlete who "is now plagued with unwanted attention because her photo was posted without her permission . . . Her name and the city where she lives [are] in the story along with the Web site where her picture was first posted . . . Did anybody discuss whether running this story was proper, given the circumstances and the potential for harm?"

The harm was done before Post reporter Eli Saslow began working on the story. The pictures used were wholesome and the story respectful, but it was a cautionary -- and newsworthy -- tale about what can happen on the Internet. As for the picture that caused the furor, I didn't find it at all risqué, and The Post did not use it.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, assistant managing editor for sports, said, "We were very concerned about framing the story around the issue of unwanted privacy intrusions caused by the Internet. And this one hit close to home for us because we cover high school sports so seriously. This easily could have been a Post photo of one of our area kids."

If I had been one of Stokke's parents, I would have been reluctant to talk to The Post, and Garcia-Ruiz said the parents were. "I think the only reason they agreed to talk to us was that they wanted to help other parents and kids who might one day be in the same situation."

· Local readers usually get my attention first, but I wanted to know the answer to this query from Paul Turner of Spokane: "Why, in print editions, [does] Spokane require the state designation while cities such as Boise and Syracuse do not?" Ashley Halsey, associate Metro editor and weather map guru. said, "Because there's a Spokane in Missouri."

· Craig Fraser of Rehoboth Beach helped The Post to be accurate. He wrote that there was a recurring error in the Sunday Business section "for the Federal Employees' Thrift Saving Plan . . . the columns of monthly and annual performance data are not properly aligned with the fund titles."

Mike Shepard, Sunday business and markets editor, said the data flow directly from the Thrift Saving Plan's Web page. But the Web page changed recently; that altered the way the data came in, causing the numbers to align incorrectly. The template was fixed and the tables should be correct today.

· A reader wrote to say she wondered whether The Post had changed its ink recently, because she thought she had developed an allergy to the ink. Kevin Conner, printing quality assurance manager, checked with suppliers and said that he could find no change in the ink.

· Another reader complained that the paper wasn't being delivered, only to find that his wife had forgotten to pay the bill.

· William Friar of Burke reached into a Post vending box at the Virginia Railway Express station on Rolling Road. "I felt a sharp stab on my wrist. I bent down to look up at the ceiling of the box and was surprised to find myself staring at a small hornets' nest with some annoyed-looking residents. I had been stung . . . "

He called The Post, but found the nest still there the next day and wrote to me: "While the nest is small, and there are only a few hornets around it, if someone who has a high reaction to a hornet's sting is stung, it could be dangerous." The Post circulation team got on it, and Friar wrote the next day: "I am delighted to report that the hornets have been successfully evicted."

· Several readers complained that former vice president Al Gore's new book, " The Assault on Reason," was reviewed by someone who had stacked the deck against Gore. Reader Jim Madden wrote: "Maybe . . . you could address [the reason for] your 'books' section asking for a review of Al Gore's new book by a man who . . . announces his pre-existing hostility to Al Gore."

Reviewer Alan Ehrenhalt wrote that Gore "has a consistent ability to express fundamentally reasonable sentiments -- often important ones -- in ways that annoy the maximum possible number of people." His best line may have been that the book "is a serious work by an intelligent man with an incurable habit of calling more attention to himself than to the ideas he wishes to communicate."

I agreed with Book World Editor Marie Arana's assessment. "Alan Ehrenhalt is a respected and trusted name in political, and especially, government, commentary. He is the executive editor of the magazine Governing, a monthly publication that serves state and local government workers. He is also the author of a number of books, among them 'The United States of Ambition,' about how the U.S. Congress works, and doesn't."

"He was chosen to review Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason,' because we know Alan's work and we felt that, as a non-politically aligned intellectual, he could judge Gore's book on its own terms. Had he at any point avowed personal animus against Gore, we would not have assigned him the book. Once he had been given the assignment in good faith, however, our duty was to publish his judgments. Book World is a journal of opinion, after all."

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