FIRE THE CRITIC!

     One would think that, if a newspaper were serious about self-examining its content and performance, it would look to someone with hard newspaper experience to serve as ombudsman--the longer and more diversified background in that field, the better. Just because someone writes well and calls himself or herself a journalist, or is knowledgeable in other subjects such as legal matters or public relations, that does not automatically qualify one to be an authority on newspapers.
     But that’s what we readers of the press are presently stuck with in the current version of the ombudsman column published weekly in the Rocky Mountain News. Titled On the Media, an expert on legal issues represents the conservative side of the political spectrum on one Saturday; an expert in public relations champions the liberal side the next Saturday. As far as I know, neither has had any on-the-job experience in the newspaper field.
     To its credit, after the Joint Operating Agreement with The Denver Post went into effect in 2002, the Rocky has tried to maintain a weekly ombudsman-type column. Carried over from the Post and devoted not only to critique its own news content but that of the Post and occasionally Denver’s electronic media as well, the column was fairly interesting for a while. But it wasn’t long until journalism professor Michael Tracey of the University of Colorado got hold of it and turned it into a liberal festival.
    The Rocky let Tracey go and brought in public relations whiz Jason Salzman to represent the liberal side. Salzman’s lack of newspaper experience is telling. He suggests in his latest column (7/5/08) that, since a potty-mouth word or two has slipped through, the Rocky should relax its moral standards and start printing more of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.
    Like Lenny Bruce's vulgarisms, there’s a time and place for the regular use of these “fringe words.” But it’s not in a family newspaper that’s welcomed into one’s home.
P.