Public Editor coming for Newsday

"Speaking at a meeting of the Long Island Association, Timothy P. Knight said it was critical for Newsday to create the position of ombudsman or reader's representative. "

"But sources said a leading candidate is editorial writer Bob Keeler, a veteran Newsday journalist who wrote a book about the paper's history. In 1996, he won the Pulitzer Prize for stories about a Catholic parish in Westbury."

Newsday is still suffering from the fallout from its massive circulation fraud. Having lost most of its longtime columnists and editor, the paper is still trying to repair the damage to its prestige. This paper, which has a monopoly on Long Island, has a pretty obvious liberal bias and an ombudsman would be a good move. More importantly for this blog's concerns, the paper is simply one of the most anti-Catholic in the nation. Hopefully an ombudsman would help remedy this. But if Keeler is chosen, then this will amount to placing a tissue on the top of a huge pile of horse manure. Keeler is a member of the paper's editorial board and a longtime employee. The ombudsman should be from the outside and neutral. As far as the anti-Catholicism of the paper, Keeler is a Voice of the Faithful-Call to Action-National Catholic Reporter type of Catholic so I doubt he would change anything.