“Newspapers write about other newspapers with circumspection” and “about themselves with awe, and only after mature reflection” said the dean of press criticism A. J. Leibling.
“The energy and resources that could fuel press criticism tend to be siphoned off at newspapers by the pathetic ombudsman, who often reduces his job to explaining the owner’s and the editor’s positions to the reading public,” says Jack Shafer in Slate’s Press Box column.
“But pity the poor ombudsman: Hammered on one side by readers (who view him as a henpeckable owner’s tool) and on the other by the newspaper staff (who regard him a pest, a hopeless second-guesser, a meddlesome managing-editor wannabe), the ombudsman usually turns bitter and paranoid in his first semester on the job and spends the rest of his tenure mumbling under his desk like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.”
We expect this will set off a firestorm of mumbling from those who are cursed with being the outsiders inside the newsroom – the ombudsmen, many of whom we have quoted to good purpose here.
What we don’t expect is a good dose of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” on the front page. That space seems to be reserved by the Comedy Channel.