Ombudsman Blog

Sunday’s ombudsman column urged The Post to provide estimates of crowd sizes for rallies on the Mall rather than allowing event organizers to offer their own counts that go unchallenged. Actually, The Post did precisely what I suggested for President Obama’s 2009 inauguration, and it still serves as a good example of how readers can be well served by authoritative estimates.

Relying on satellite images, The Post was able to provide what remains a widely accepted estimate of about 1 million people between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial prior to the noon swearing in. Looking back on that estimate, what I liked most was how The Post explained it to readers in a terrific aerial graphic of the Mall.

The Post is launching a major effort to use video on its Web site to promote its journalistic brand. But there's broad agreement that using dancing bears wasn’t the best way to start.

The “Dancing Bears” video in question appeared on the site about two weeks ago. It begins with a brief intro by Anqoinette Crosby, a seasoned on-air TV host hired recently as the site’s first “anchor” for a wide range of live and originally-produced video content on the Web.

“Hi Everyone. I’m Anqoinette Crosby in The Washington Post newsroom,” she says in the intro to the 151-second video. “Well, ‘Dancing With the Stars’ has nothing on these four-legged amazing animals. Take a look at some incredible real footage of bears moving and grooving like the pros.”

Viewers are then treated to YouTube video of bears appearing to dance or frolic to the up-tempo pop song, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin.’” At the conclusion, The Post logo appears.

Almost from the minute it was posted, newsroom staffers contacted me with reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to horror. Most said it is at odds with the brand image The Post wants to convey. Cynics saw it as a gimmicky way to draw traffic to the Web site.

Sunday's ombudsman column continues to draw strong reaction from readers who feel Post editors lacked spine in deciding not to run a recent "Non Sequitur" cartoon out of concern it would offend Muslims. Online comments and e-mails have been overwhelmingly critical of The Post, which joined many other newspapers in not running the Oct. 3 single-panel drawing.

But quite a few readers have made a separate point, insisting that The Post must now hold to the same standard when it comes to cartoons involving other religions.

"I would hope then that the editorial staff would agree to pull any cartoons depicting Jesus in some offensive way, so as not to offend Christians," e-mailed Michael E. Fitzharris of Dayton, Ohio.

The Post, long criticized for running massage-parlor ads, has decided it will no longer accept them.

An internal note, e-mailed Tuesday to The Post's advertising staff, said: "This is to let you know that The Washington Post will no longer accept advertisements for massage parlor businesses.”

The Post had been accepting the ads if the enterprises offered proof of a valid business license from the jurisdiction where they were located. "If we learned that a specific business was not operating within the law, we would discontinue their advertising," the note said.

But in examining that policy in recent years, it continued, "we have seen law enforcement identify a number of such businesses as being engaged in illegal activities. We have also been directed to postings on adult websites from customers of these businesses that refer to illegal activities taking place at these establishments."

"It has become clear to us that our existing standards needed to evolve," it added. "We have therefore decided not to accept such advertisements going forward."

The Omblog will resume when he returns in late September.

Popular Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise has been suspended for a month after knowingly sending a false tweet on Monday.

The action stems from a short scoop to his Twitter followers that said Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has been suspended for six games by the NFL after allegations of misconduct, will only have to sit out five games. “Roethlisberger will get five games, I’m told,” Wise tweeted.

That was big news for those who follow professional football, and it quickly spread on the Internet. But as Wise soon acknowledged, it was a hoax that was part of a misguided attempt to comment on the lowered standards of accuracy for information shared on social media.

Fabrication is a major journalistic transgression. He's lucky he wasn't fired.

To help readers following the largest egg recall in the nation’s history, several Post stories have included an Internet link to the Egg Safety Center, which lists the brands and identifying information on cartons that were sold.

But reader Nora Carroll in Silver Spring noted that when she clicked on the Egg Safety Center link, “Much to my surprise, this was neither a government site nor a public interest group site. Rather, it was an industry Website by the United Egg Producers that not only has a recall list but also contains propaganda about hen treatment as well as other items promoting egg consumption.

“Why would the Washington Post provide an unpaid promotional announcement to the egg industry in the middle of the largest ever recall of eggs?” she asked in an e-mail. “Shouldn’t we rely on the food safety experts in the government rather than the self-serving information from the food industry?”

Several other readers contacted me with the same concern. They didn’t question the accuracy or value of the Egg Safety Center information. Rather, as one caller said, “it just seemed like The Post endorsing something that was a little less credible.”

The readers have a point.

Of all the e-mails, calls and comments on Sunday’s ombudsman column, this online observation by “kcx7” best summed up the discussion over “unpublishing” online content: “Welcome to the coming zero-secrecy, zero-privacy world. It’s only going to keep getting worse, and worse, and worse.”

Questions about whether or when to remove online content are growing in frequency at The Post and other news Web sites. A study a year ago for the Associated Press Managing Editors found that “requests to unpublish are becoming increasingly frequent and are expected to increase.”

The study by Toronto Star Public Editor Kathy English, based on survey responses from 110 news organizations in North America, found that 78.2 percent said there were circumstances under which online content should be removed. “But, overall, the survey revealed strong resistance to unpublishing news content,” English wrote. She concluded that there is “little news industry consensus on how to respond to public requests to unpublish news content from online news sources.”

So far, she wrote, “no overall industry ‘best practices’ have yet emerged.”

As Sunday’s column noted, many readers took issue with The Post’s decision last week to disclose the identities of companies doing classified intelligence work under government contract. Scores complained when word spread through government agencies about the imminent publication of “Top Secret America,” which tracked the huge national security build-up since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But when the three-part series began last Monday, what had been a flood of complaints became only a trickle.

I suspect that had something to do with an explanatory editor’s note that accompanied “Top Secret America.” It described how The Post used public records -- not leaked classified documents -- to create a massive database that readers could access. And it explained that government intelligence organizations been invited to view the database prior to publication in order to express concerns.

Similarly, my guess is that The New York Times received fewer than expected reader complaints over today’s package of stories based on some 92,000 classified reports detailing struggles in the war in Afghanistan. That’s because The Times offered readers a lengthy explanation of how it vetted the documents, which had been provided by a group called Wikileaks. Online, it also had top editors answering reader questions about the decision to publish.

Explanatory devices such as these invariably mute criticism from a public that increasingly views media organizations as unconcerned about their customers or indifferent to the harm that can come from disclosing sensitive information. Readers may not always agree with news decisions, but they appreciate learning that editors and reporters were cautious and actually gave serious thought before publishing.

Quick quiz: Among staff-written stories, what’s generated the most page views on The Post’s Web site in the past year? Something about the BP oil spill, perhaps? The Haiti earthquake? The health-care reform vote?

The answer: Crocs. A story about financial problems facing the maker of the ubiquitous colorful foam clogs is tops. “By a mile,” added Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees The Post’s Web site.

The Crocs story illustrates a sobering reality about The Post’s site. Often (not always), readers are coming for the offbeat or the unusual. They’re drawn by endearing animal videos or photo galleries of celebrities. And as my Sunday column noted, The Post consciously uses this type of content to lure traffic -- in part so that it can show potential advertisers that they would be reaching the largest possible audience.

But it's not just about audience numbers. The Post is also fixated on increasing engagement. When people come to the Web site, The Post wants them to stay for as long as possible. The greater the level of engagement, the greater the likelihood that a reader will consider The Post’s site indispensable. And that’s a huge selling point to advertisers who are increasingly concerned about the “quality” of a Web site’s audience.