When The Herald's 121st Editorial Board departs after this semester, it will leave behind an impressive legacy. When The 122nd Editorial Board takes over in January, the new board should continue this momentum by creating an ombudsman position, a change that should make for a more critical and responsive paper.
Newspapers hire ombudsmen to serve two main purposes. First, the ombudsman serves as a conciliator between the publication and the community it serves. Second, the ombudsman scrutinizes the paper and writes a regular column — perhaps twice a month — expressing feedback from the community and assessing certain parts of the paper's coverage. Ombudsmen must be otherwise unaffiliated with the newspaper for which they consult.
The Herald is, of course, a paper of which any campus would be proud. Ultimately, any paper that employs an ombudsman allows itself more interaction with and feedback from the community for which it reports. Further, by opening itself up to more feedback, and giving the ombudsman a regular column, the paper creates another accountability device. By increasing scrutiny of its own coverage, the publication can learn from its mistakes, improve its reporting and earn even more legitimacy.
In an email to the Editorial Page Board, the New York Times' Public Editor Arthur Brisbane, their moniker for ombudsman, echoed this sentiment. Brisbane stated that an ombudsman has a "salutary effect" on any publication and is essential to create a "formal approach to receiving outside complaints and investigating them."
The ombudsman can help The Herald in many ways. First, the paper's correction section and occasional battles in the "Letters" section show that problems of misinformation and misreporting are inevitable. An ombudsman is essential to provide clarifications where appropriate. Second, an ombudsman can serve as an archivist, examining how previous edit boards tackled certain issues and how we can learn from the past. Third, an ombudsman can provide fresh eyes to the mainstays of Herald coverage. It might be difficult for editors to see possible improvements to the status quo given their institutionalized roles in the paper, and an outsider might have better perspective to evaluate some of the paper's basic elements. Fourth, an ombudsman can best relay feedback from the Brown community on specific policies or articles.
What's more, people are sometimes confused as to where they should lodge complaints, questions or suggestions. Given that the ombudsman would act as a liaison between The Herald and the greater Brown community, he or she would be able to synthesize and express more concerns from the College Hill community.
Ultimately, both The Herald and our University community can only benefit from increasing dialogue and providing a greater scrutinizing force for the paper. We hope that the incoming editorial board seriously considers adding an ombudsman position to The Herald.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
