In my early experience as an ombudsman, some of the most forceful writing I've seen in the field has come from National Public Radio's Alicia Shepard. She tackled recent NPR headaches as a true public representative.

Her term was extended a little to permit NPR more time to find a replacement, but now it's come to an end. Her final column praises the organization for having an ombudsman and for that ombudsman having the freedom necessary to communicate.

She has a handful of closing recommendations, too. Her successor is Edward Schumacher-Matos, formerly the ombudsman at the Miami Herald.

Lisa Shepard, the ombudsman for National Public Radio, has been a determined source of information on NPR's recent struggles.
 
First she took NPR to task for the way in which it fired commentator Juan Williams, and now she has been chronicling the events of the last week that saw its chief fundraiser fall into a prank that ultimately caused the CEO to depart.

In that prank, a conservative activist posed as a would-be Muslim contributor and, without any real prompting, witnessed (and taped) the fundraiser casting aspersions on Republicans, the Tea Party and others. While the episode was criticized for its technique, it was overshadowed by the departures.

Shepard's latest post outlines the sequence of red flags that never gained NPR's proper attention. She interviews many fundraisers perplexed at what happened and how it ever might have happened. It's an insightful piece that includes some email exchanges on the matter from within NPR.

National Public Radio is dealing with reputational damage today after one of its fundraising executives was pranked into discussing discomfort with conservatives. (UPDATE: The CEO of NPR, Vivian Schiller, has left the company as a result of the incident.)

A chronic prankster pretended to represent an organization looking to donate and it took little effort to get the executive to open up about the organization's purported adversaries. The scheme plays into stereotypical concerns that NPR is anti-conservative.

NPR has disavowed the comments as unrepresentative, but already commentators are suggesting this hurts the organization.

When I started themediamanager.com three years ago, I was part of a newsroom facing enormous change at The Vancouver Sun. I wanted to share what I was learning about digital media and its intersection with journalism. The response was encouraging and the site drew thousands of views daily.
Now I am in a new role, no longer part of a newsroom or directly contending with day-to-day change and news management. The blog has to shift its focus to represent that.
Still, as the ombudsman at CBC, I can share some content from elsewhere on media issues concerning standards and ethics and the relationship with the public.
You won't find my views here. It will represent, though, some of the most interesting writing elsewhere on the direction of the qualities of journalism and some of the contemporary issues journalism is encountering.
Like themediamanager.com's earlier role, I hope it curates well and serves as a good resource for those interested in this area of journalism (I welcome your comments). I'll shortly assemble a new page of ethics-related sites.
I would encourage you, too, to look at the new blog I've started at CBC for my regular columns and reviews of the public complaints.
The first taste of this new format at themediamanager.com is a look at the review at National Public Radio of the firing of commentator Juan Williams. The review released this week came as the senior news executive for NPR stepped aside. The NPR coverage of this issue has been led by its ombudsman, Alicia Shepard. While the review itself was not made public, Shepard' post includes the board's release on the matter.