Resolutions for a Better Post

By Deborah Howell
Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Post is one of the best newspapers in the country -- so much better than the hollowed-out newspapers scattered across the landscape. As my term ends, I'd like to again point out ways that The Post can enhance its accessibility, credibility and appeal to readers in this time of economic stress.

The Post needs to value each loyal reader and pay more attention to those who are turned off or don't see themselves reflected in its pages. Can those readers be brought back? That's unclear, but it's worth the effort.

Transparency

· The Post should post its admirable ethics and standards guidelines on washingtonpost.com for all to see. You can find parts of them on the Web site of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The Post challenges the ethics of others; the paper's policies, which are reasonable and elegantly written, should be public and easy to find. I've fought for this internally, but it hasn't happened.

· The Post needs to be better about attributing information and identifying sources. Readers deserve to know where information comes from. Too often the attribution is to anonymous sources, to "sources close to" this official or to "intelligence sources say," or there is no attribution at all.

The Post stylebook says that the paper "is committed to disclosing to its readers the sources of the information in its stories to the maximum possible extent. We want to make our reporting as transparent to the readers as possible so they may know how and where we got our information."

That's a good policy, and it needs to be followed much more closely. The same for this one: "We must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence. Our obligation is to serve readers, not sources. This means avoiding attributions to 'sources' or 'informed sources.' Instead we should try to give the reader something more, such as 'sources familiar with the thinking of defense lawyers in the case'. . . . When sources refuse to be identified, it is often helpful to show readers that we tried to identify them, and explain why we could not."

· The Post should be easier to reach, with a full list of contact points on the Web site and frequent publication in the A section of phone numbers and e-mail addresses for desks and editors.

· The comments on washingtonpost.com should be monitored more closely. It harms The Post's reputation when racist and obscene comments stay up for hours or days.

· The Post needs to do a more thorough job on corrections. Too often, it's a battle to get one written, and many aren't done; you can often see the evidence of this on the Free for All page on Saturday.

· In a time of staff contraction, The Post must maintain an adequate contingent of copy editors. Maintaining reporting power is important, but if facts aren't checked and there are a rash of misspellings and errors of grammar and math, credibility suffers.

Accountability

· The Post needs to step up its coverage of the federal government -- especially now that so many Washington bureaus are being closed or cut back. Post reporter Bob Woodward once said, "It's more important to cover the exercise of power than the acquisition of power." Post coverage is skimpy beyond the White House and a few top agencies (State, Defense, Treasury, Justice) and the intelligence community. There could be a whopper of a scandal at the "lesser" agencies, and The Post and readers wouldn't know it.

· The congressional delegations of Maryland and Virginia get little coverage. Whatever they do falls in the crack between local and national politics. How well they serve their constituents is important.

· Devote more coverage to religion. When you see how many reporters cover sports and politics, it seems natural to add more coverage of a subject dear to many readers' hearts. This region has a wealth of religions with interesting stories. Recent Page 1 stories on the antiabortion movement by Jacqueline Salmon and new Catholic rules on fertility by Michelle Boorstein and science reporter Rob Stein were good to see, but two religion reporters aren't enough.

Diversity

· Make a serious effort to cover political and social conservatives and their issues; the paper tends to shy away from those stories, leaving conservatives feeling excluded and alienated from the paper. I'd like those who have canceled their subscriptions to be readers again. Too many Post staff members think alike; more diversity of opinion should be welcomed.

· The Post's circulation area is incredibly racially diverse, packed with immigrants and people of every conceivable ethnic group. Its news and editorial pages need to reflect that more.

· The Post should pay more attention to female readers, as I said last week. One excellent example this year are the stories by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan about the plight of women around the world, including Page 1 reports from Pakistan, Germany, Britain, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso, and, on Dec. 13, the heartbreaking story about girls sent to deadening work in India's salt pans while their brothers are educated.

· The op-ed page still needs a healthy dose of gender, racial and ethnic diversity. There are too many older white men and not enough women and people of color. That said, I still love David S. Broder and David Ignatius.

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