In September, Heather Mallick wrote a cbc.ca column about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin that sparked hundreds of complaints and questions about how editors could allow it to run. Then, during the federal election campaign in early October, CTV aired the false starts of an interview with then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, even though reporter Steve Murphy had promised Dion’s team that wouldn’t happen.

The two corporations handled the cases differently. CBC’s ombudsman for English services, Vince Carlin, wrote a lengthy report that considered whether Mallick’s column met editorial standards; CTV never offered a detailed explanation and the network had no independent ombud to investigate the matter. In fact, in Canada, only CBC and the Toronto Star do (though Kathy English, who has the position at the Star and writes a column in the paper approximately every two weeks, uses public editor as her title.)

Don Sellar, who was the Star‘s ombud from 1992 to 2005, agreed to give the RRJOnline some perspective on the job.

On independence:

DS: The test is what you’re able to say in your column. [Former Star publisher and editor] John Honderich and [former publisher] Michael Goldbloom did not interfere with what I was doing. They supported the office and that was great. If you have an independent ombud who’s backed by the publisher, you have an opportunity to correct mistakes faster and more effectively. You also get a debate going in your own newsroom about what’s the right thing to do. And if you have a person who’s not just an editor, who’s not involved in the day-to-day production, that advice can be really important.

On the near extinction of ombuds in the country:

Newspapers like to practice oversight on every public agency-the police, teachers, the rich and powerful, and so on-but they don’t like to have oversight practiced on themselves as much. That’s part of it. Also, I think a lot of them do not want to spend the money because it’s expensive. An editor at the Montreal Gazette used to say, “Hey, I had a choice: I could have two more reporters in the newsroom or I could have an ombud.” And she went for the two reporters. I know there are economic imperatives, but I also believe you’ve got to invest some money in the ethical dimension of your publication.

Publishers of daily newspapers used to be journalists. But there aren’t many of them around anymore. I think John Honderich was one of the last. People who are publishers of newspapers now come from the business side. They have to pay attention to the notion of shareholder value and all that stuff that gets imposed upon them from higher-ups in the companies.

For example, a friend of mine, Jim Stott formerly at the Calgary Herald-he was replaced with an answering machine! I had another friend, Barry Mullen, formerly at the Winnipeg Free Press-he was fired because he actually dared to write a column in which he criticized the news judgment of the Free Press. In an early edition of the paper, the editors thought the Los Angeles riots about the killing of Rodney King only deserved to be on page 26 or something, and Mullen thought it was a bigger story than that. He said so and he got fired. That was appalling. But newsrooms are awfully thin-skinned.

On the relationship with the newsroom:

Even if the ombud is just stimulating discussion in the newsroom, that’s a good thing! I was always amazed that reporters wanted to talk to me. I liked to go out to the newsroom and hang out a little bit, even on occasions when I didn’t have an ugly piece of paper in my hand related to some problem we had that was going to require a correction. I found that there were reporters at the Star whose standards were higher than the policy manual called for, and that used to thrill me!

Don’t ever get the idea that I think an ombud is the solution to all of the problems a media outlet might have. An ombud has to exist in a culture that’s open and accountable. An ombud sends a message to a newsroom that standards matter. But so much depends on the attitudes of the people at the top of the newsroom and the publisher. If those people are committed to doing journalism better, I think the ombud becomes a tool to improve the newspaper.

On CTV’s decision to air the Dion gaffe:

I think a post-mortem would have been useful. Did I hear a voice in the background saying that it would be OK to re-do it? Who was that agreeing with the reporter who agreed on air to re-start? I would like to know more about CTV’s policy and how CTV operates. I think it’s a great mystery. How often does CTV restart interviews? Does the company allow reporters to re-do their questions? There are a lot of unanswered questions.

On CBC:

There’s a shortcoming in the CBC structure. Its ombuds [for English-services CBC, and French-services CBC] don’t have a regular slot on the radio or television to vent, educate, amuse!

On the Star changing its ombud’s title to public editor:

Personally, I don’t like it. I think ombud is a better title because it strengthens the notion that the person is independent. What’s a public editor? It’s just another editor. But that’s my own opinion.

On Thursday October 23, Doug Bennet, publisher of Masthead, asked editor Marco Ursi, to meet him in the lunchroom. He told Ursi that, after 21 years in print, the November/December 2008 issue of the magazine would be its last.

“Oh fuck,” said Ursi, who had been editor for just over a year.

“Yeah.… Oh fuck,” repeated Bennet, the magazine’s founding editor and a partner at North Island Publishing Ltd.

Ursi was shocked, but understood the business decision and wasn’t really surprised because he knew the magazine struggled financially—the advertising base, dominated by printing companies, has always been small, and Masthead had only 2,800 subscribers.

But weak revenues and a small circulation may not have been the only reasons behind the closure, as it so often was when Masthead covered the demise of a magazine. Instead, the fatal blow may have been a trade show and conference that stretched the magazine’s resources beyond its limits after one of the partners—Magazines Canada, a not-for-profit advocacy association, which counts Masthead as a member—pulled out to start a competing event.

Bennet and Alexander (Sandy) Donald, president of North Island, created  “The Magazine About Magazines” in 1987. It provided readers with information about circulation tactics and methods; exclusive surveys on issues such as salaries and production; profiles on magazines and industry people; and general news about Canadian magazines. People in the business quickly embraced the magazine as a valuable resource, and Jessica Ross, executive editor of Homemakers, says she’ll miss the in-depth analyses, including regular columns by circulation expert, Scott Bullock, and business consultant, Paul Jones. “I hope those voices find another home,” she says, “because we need them to understand how our industry works and to collaborate on best practices.”

In addition, the magazine’s website, MastheadOnline, is more popular than ever—with more than 60,000 page views a month—after a revamp by Ursi that included new blogs by Corinna vanGerwen and Kat Tancock, on career advice and web publishing, respectively. Its job board is one of the most used features. North Island says it can’t afford to continue the website either, but has yet to say when it will close.

One of Masthead’s largest revenue streams was Magazines University, an annual trade show and professional-development conference. In 1991, Masthead joined with Magazines Canada and other leading publishing associations, to launch the event. A huge success, it has attracted 1,100 to 1,400 delegates a year. But after 16 years, Magazines Canada broke from Mags U and expanded its own professional-development conference in 2007 called MagNet.

Although Bennet says the competing conference played a minor role in the “cold-hearted business decision” to close the magazine, Donald points to this split as one factor in Masthead’s demise. “Revenue started suffering primarily over the past two years,” he explains. “The time and effort involved in Mags U, relative to the income, got way out of whack.” Originally, Masthead ran the trade show and helped promote the event while Magazines Canada organized the seminars and speakers. When MagsCan dropped out, Masthead had to invest more resources to put on the show.

It’s still a mystery to Bennet why Magazines Canada left. The attendance at Mags U was consistently high in the years leading up to the departure. On average, it brought in about $200,000 to $250,000 per year, of which roughly one-third went to Magazines Canada and one-quarter to Masthead, with the rest divided among the other association partners. But Magazines Canada CEO, Mark Jamison, says he can’t see the parallel between Mags U and MagNet and that it’s comparing apples to oranges. In an email, Jamison explains that a 2004 survey of its professional-development association members suggested a “more modern” conference should be explored. In response, the association launched a task force that concluded, “the logistical and financial structure [of Mags U] was dysfunctional” and a “ground-up change was needed.”

So, together with other industry associations, Magazines Canada continued with the professional-development conference, renaming it MagNet. Offered in downtown Toronto, rather than the west-end Old Mill, where Mags U is held, the conference offers lower session fees and aims to serve a broader group of magazine professionals.

D. B. Scott, a leading magazine-industry consultant, echoes Jamison’s statements. “MagNet came about because of long-term dissatisfaction with Magazines University and the way it was being run,” says Scott, who sits on two committees at Magazines Canada and writes a regular Masthead column, “Good Question” that answered queries about the business of magazines. He doesn’t think the conference rift was the fatal blow and attributes Masthead’s closing to the usual problems: a shortage of paid subscribers and a shrinking market. When Masthead launched in 1987, printers competed for contracts with several big magazine publishers such as Maclean-Hunter and Telemedia, giving Masthead numerous potential advertisers. However media giants, notably Rogers and Transcontinental, eventually purchased these publishers. “In some sense, the magazine industry is a division of other industries like telecommunications or printing,” says Bennet, with a handful of corporations controlling many of the largest magazines.

Although Masthead had been in the red for years, ad sales were actually up 29 percent from its fiscal 2007 year to 2008, in large part to its 20th anniversary issue in the fall of 2007. But they were still operating at a loss. Bennet and Donald stressed to their staff that the faltering global economy was purely coincidental in the magazine’s closing. Masthead just wasn’t delivering enough return on investment, and North Island needed to focus its energies on prosperous projects, including its trade titles, Design Edge CanadaandGraphic Monthly.

Over the past year Bennet and Donald tried to find a new publisher for Masthead and, up until one week before they announced the bad news, North Island thought it had found one. But the deal went sour. “Indirectly, Magazines Canada basically messed that one up too,” sighs Donald. He couldn’t give the specific details about the confidential agreement but laments, “Unfortunately, the fact is we kept on running into Magazines Canada.”

Although, it’s unclear how much Magazines Canada contributed to Masthead’s downfall, North Island maintains that from a business standpoint, it cannot continue with the magazine or the website. However, there is still hope: a few more publishers are now showing interest. “Since the announcement,” says Bennet, “people have come out of the woodwork.”

Listen to journalist Heather Li speak about her experiences writing “Blame Game” on the Ryerson Review of Journalism’s Podcast.