Pink slips for newspaper ombudsmen – Can other jobs be far behind?

Reporters hate questions about their work.
Editors do too. They just scapegoat better.
So official question-askers inside the newsroom fill an important position.
Call the position an ombudsman or a reader-representative or a public editor. Call it what you will. The role is not a newsroom popularity contest.
The job is all about journalism credibility:

Make sure the reader can believe the news.
Protect against undue victimization.
Guard against institutional neglect.
Correct the correctable.
Explain the rest.

Forty years ago the first newspaper ombudsman in the country went to work at The Courier-Journal. Now the Louisville newspaper joins a trend to eliminate the “inspector general” position for cost-cutting.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Orlando Sentinel, The Hartford Courant and The Palm Beach Post are other papers dispensing with their public editors, according to C-J Public Editor Pam Platt. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080803/COLUMNISTS10/808030383/1016/OPINION
She riled editors and reporters at The Courier-Journal for the last time and will move to editorial page writing.
Lo, how the machinery for ethics has rusted shut in the information industry. Never did run at optimum.
Norman Isaacs – Stormin’ Norman to his admirers and detractors alike – failed at creating a British-style National News Council in the 1960s and 70s. Isaacs was executive editor of The C-J, an industry leader in responsible journalism and an officer in the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
The New York Times editors especially pooh-poohed the social responsibility idea behind the council. Every paper is its own best policeman, claimed The Times.
Turned out the paper couldn’t even police its own Jayson Blair, the reporter who famously made up news and published the falsehood with a straight face. Ironically The Times created a public editor as part of the clean-up that also cost the news division its two top editors.
Ombudsmen at newspapers were Norman Isaacs’s fall-back position when the Council idea floundered. That’s why The C-J was the first in the country to have one.
Who else speaks for the news consumer?
Everyone in the production of information has a conflict of interest to cultivate, a reputation to protect or a touchy, defensive attitude to nurture.
But not the public’s representative who is removed from the process.
Too late the industry realized the need for what New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta importantly labeled as accountability and transparency – the ethical twins for explaining ourselves as journalists.
As the news industry grew in social prominence, public trust declined. That’s why Norman Isaacs and others saw the need for reform – an idea before its time, as matters turned out.
Now the newspaper arm of journalism withers. You can make a case for loss of public confidence accelerating the economic trend.
Instead of getting riled at ombudsmen, reporters and editors can get riled at their own pink slips.