PRINTMissouri Honor Medalists: Deborah Howell
MU recognizes seven journalists with the presentation of the Missouri Honor Medal
Courtesy of Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell will receive a Missouri Honor Medal Oct. 20.
October 15, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Deborah Howell, consultant and former ombudsman for The Washington Post
As the “internal conscience” of The Washington Post, Deborah Howell made sure the paper was living up to its standards. Howell graduated from the University of Texas where she worked on the Daily Texan. Currently, she works with Advance Publications and consults with newspapers, web sites and businesses.
What: Journalism and the Spirit
Date: Tues., Oct. 20
Time: 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Where: Fisher Auditorium, MU
How long have you been involved in journalism?
Forever. My parents met in a newsroom. I remember being in the newsroom with my father. I worked on my high school paper. My first paid internship was at the Austin-American Statesman. I have mainly been in newspapers and in print, but I also worked in radio and TV and have also dealt with online journalism when I was at The Washington Post. I spent 25 years in Minnesota as reporter and editor at the Minneapolis Star and was editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I went from reporter to editor to Washington bureau chief for Newhouse Newspapers, then I went to being an ombudsman at The Washington Post. It’s an independent watchdog position. Now I consult for newspapers and Web sites and some businesses.
Do you have a favorite medium?
I like them all. I like dealing with news. I’m platform-agnostic as they say. Though, I love newspapers. I would say newspapers are my first love.
What exactly does being an “ombudsman” entail?
The ombudsman is the internal conscience of The Washington Post. You deal with complaints to the newspaper, and you apply your own standards and the newspaper’s own standards to what is happening at the newspaper. I think internal conscience is what they call it and that’s a good term. I wrote a weekly column. I wrote a staff memo every week letting them know what were the hot button issues of the week.
How did you get the position?
The chairman of the board of The Washington Post, Don Graham, asked me to. He told me he wanted me to do the job. So I was flattered by the offer, but I also thought that he was right, that I would be good at it. I knew local news from being in St. Paul, and I knew national and international news from being Washington bureau chief, so I knew a little bit about everything. I brought it all to the table. It wasn’t that I disliked what I was doing. I thought it would be a new opportunity for me.
Do you ever miss reporting?
I report all the time. I’m a reporter in my soul. I miss being in the newsroom would be the best way to say that. When I come across a story, I tell someone I know about it because I think it should be reported on. I very much have a journalist mentality.
What is your favorite thing about journalism?
Finding out stuff that someone doesn’t want me to know. That’s the essence of journalism — finding out things that people don’t want you to know. That’s what watchdog journalism is about, following a story wherever it leads, even if it’s not a place people want you to go.
What was your reaction when you heard you were receiving the award?
I was thrilled. I wished my father were still alive because he went to school there in the early ’30s, and he would have loved it. My husband, C. Peter Magrath, used to be president of the University of Missouri System, and I used to be in Columbia a lot. We commuted back and forth between St. Paul and Columbia.
Your master class on Oct. 20 is called Journalism and the Spirit. What will you be speaking about?
As the news business is changing so fast, I think that people are concentrating on investigative journalism and watchdog journalism, and that’s important, but I want people to concentrate on writing great stories about people.
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