So long to a Virginian-Pilot tradition

My one-year stint as The Pilot's first independent public editor ends in a few days.

The position, created in 1974, was reformulated from one assigned to a full-time employee to a new role occupied by part-time "outsiders." Thus, the public editor would be empowered to speak for readers with an unfettered voice.

It has been my joy to have been the first - and perhaps the last - person entrusted with that responsibility.

Unfortunately, it falls to me to announce that this column concludes The Pilot's 34-year commitment to an in-house "watchdog." While publisher Maurice Jones insists that we remain no less committed to transparency and accountability, the public editor has become the latest casualty of the forces creating epic transformations in the news industry.

I lament the elimination of this position, the long-ago commitment that made The Pilot a leader among America's newspapers.

Like many readers, I'm also saddened by the impending end of the public-spirited ownership of the Batten family. The effort to sell the newspaper has been suspended until the recession eases.

During the past year, my charge to ensure that the newspaper lived up to its public mission came with the freedom to criticize lapses in performance, regardless of where the offenders stood in the newsroom or corporate pecking orders.

It is a position that engenders trust among readers who, on various occasions, have expressed surprise and delight at my freedom to criticize both the CEO of Landmark - in my first column, no less! - and the publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

I wish I could be more optimistic about Jones' hope that our letters to the editor feature will provide readers with an appropriate substitute to express their concerns. The 10,000-plus letters we receive annually and the 3,000 we publish make for one of the newspaper's liveliest features.

Letters, however, are a one-way street; they're an outlet for a gripe, to be sure, but one that has no mechanism for thoughtful feedback. Nor do letters produce the trust that comes with a willingness to accept criticism from someone assigned to represent readers.

It became obvious to me, early on, that the passion people feel about our missteps is directly proportional to their understanding that the newspaper is often the only source of information they need to function as effective citizens.

That's what is so distressing about the notion - both here and at newspapers elsewhere - that the public editor is an unaffordable luxury in hard times.

With unprecedented cuts in the sizes of both the staff and the newspaper itself, enormous hurdles stand in the way of fulfilling that vital role. While I remain convinced that newspapers will survive this turmoil, the near-term challenges are daunting.

As downsized newsroom staffs face the digital age, they will increasingly be asked, in the service of a

24/7 news cycle, to produce the print, video and online versions of their stories. That's a triple load that will make lapses inevitable.

For increasingly overburdened copy editors - left with too little time to spot inconsistencies and ask questions - the consequences are often painful. For reporters and copy editors, speed and accuracy seldom make good bedfellows and frequently result in mistakes.

In this newsroom climate, a public editor might not be so expendable after all.

On a personal note, departing editorial page editor Dennis Hartig has my enduring gratitude for inviting me to take this position. Credit for my survival in this endeavor in no small way belongs to Deborah Alexander-Marshall, assistant to the public editor, who so ably handles the scores of reader calls, e-mails and letters and helped me negotiate the office thicket.

Finally, settling the debt I owe associate editor Roger Chesley, whose deft copy editing so often clarified my ideas and/or saved me from embarrassment, would require a government bailout. Working with Chesley and other members of The Pilot editorial board has been a delight.

In closing, it's worth noting that I leave the Brambleton office of the Batten family empire to return full time to my ivory tower at 45th Street and Hampton Boulevard. That's where, ironically, I reside in another symbol of the family's largesse - Old Dominion University's Batten Arts and Letters building.

Joyce Hoffmann, the public editor, is an associate professor in the English Department at Old Dominion University. Reach her at (757) 446-2475 or public.editor@pilotonline.com.