WaPo ombud amazed that conservative misses paper

Don't get me wrong: most of the trouble newspapers are in have to do with changing readership habits and the inability to monetize internet traffic. But the "liberal media" label doesn't help.

On Sunday, outgoing Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell penned her "goodbye" column. Among regrets about not being able to respond to all reader concerns and ruminations on the changing nature of the business, Howell added this:

"Most cities don't have as good a paper as The Post. A friend who moved away told me that she misses The Post more than anything else. And she's a conservative Republican."

So, apparently, it's noteworthy that a conservative Republican can enjoy the Washington Post.

The hand-wringing over the political affiliation of journalists and readers baffles me. A very loud minority of bloggers and story commenters will cry "bias" at almost any story in print. The majority of people could care less about the minor slights that partisans on both sides cite as examples of a huge media conspiracy. So why should newspapers make this an issue for discussion in their pages?

Howell writes: "It's not that we have thin skin; we often act as though we have no skin and bleed at the slightest touch." Therein lies the answer.

Stop talking about it. Make sure that you treat both sides fairly, make sure that you're applying the same standards of story selection to both sides, and then shut up. An assertion repeated often enough will generate its own reality.

You are a publishing for a mass audience. Act like it. Be confident enough about your own neutrality to let stories stand on their own. Stop putting your own insecurities in print and giving your publication a dubious reputation in the process. Now, back to talking about real problems.