During his first nine months as publisher of the Washington Post, Will Lewis has dug himself into a dismaying number of scandals.

He fired Sally Buzbee, the editor he inherited from the previous publisher, on a Sunday night without much explanation. He is accused of orchestrating the cover-up of a phone-hacking scandal from his time working for Rupert Murdoch (and is currently the target of an investigation by British police into the matter). And he has repeatedly attempted to kill negative stories about his various scandals, including at his own paper and in a quid pro quo offer to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik.

With all of the turmoil and ethical doubts surrounding the man sitting atop one of the most prominent newspapers in the country, readers are rightly in search of a moral compass. Historically, that job would fall to the paper’s ombudsperson.

For much of its existence, the Post has employed an ombudsperson—an internal watchdog who writes a weekly column along with memos for staff. The person was responsible for identifying mistakes and holes in stories, as well as opportunities to improve. They also answered readers’ questions.

Late editorial page editor Fred Hiatt eliminated the position in 2013 and officially replaced it with a “reader representative” (though a self-appointed City Paper reporter attempted to keep the original tradition alive). 

Alison Coglianese became the Post’s reader representative in 2014 following a short stint by Doug Feaver; she was celebrated as an advocate for readers, but she did not write a regular column. She told Washingtonian in 2016 that her “interactions are more on a personal level as opposed to a public one.” 

But Coglianese quietly left the paper last year (neither she nor the Post could confirm when exactly) with no announcement from the Post, and editors have not hired a replacement. Coglianese declined to talk about internal deliberations regarding her authority or the hiring of a new reader representative; for some time, she ran a fashion blog, which hasn’t been updated since 2019.

Neither the Post’s spokesperson nor editor Matt Murray responded to requests for comment for this article.

“I can’t tell you one single thing that the reader representative did,” says Paul Farhi, the Post’s longtime media writer who left the paper during the massive staff buyout of 2023. 

Others provide similar assessments (though none blamed Coglianese) and suggest that it might be time to consider filling the ombudsperson’s empty chair.

“Having an ombudsman is very good PR for the paper,” Farhi adds. “It says, ‘We are an accountable institution, and we are strong enough to handle internal criticism.’” 

Liz Spayd, a former Post managing editor who became public editor for the New York Times and now teaches at Georgetown University, says that an ombudsperson who is truly empowered can push an outlet to be more forthcoming with embarrassing details.

“There is a lot of tea-leaf reading [at the Post] because there isn’t enough candor and forthrightness,” Spayd says. “The instinct is to hunker down and address things behind the scene.”

With such a need for an ombudsperson these days, it’s worth looking back at how the position has functioned.

Deborah Howell, who served as ombudsperson from 2005 to 2008, managed the heat directed at the Post (and at her) over their coverage of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who served nearly four years in prison for crimes related to a criminal lobbying scandal. Bill Green, who served as ombudsperson for one year starting in September of 1980, handled the delicate investigation of disgraced Post reporter Janet Cooke, who invented some of her news stories, including one about an 8-year-old addicted to heroin that was initially awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

During an interview on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, Michael Getler, another former Post ombudsperson, said the job serves readers: “I am independent of the newspaper. It’s painful sometimes to criticize the paper and raise issues that are difficult.”

The position was sacred to the Graham family, who owned the paper before selling it to Jeff Bezos in 2013. For decades, Post leadership, backed by Don Graham, believed that an ombudsperson gave readers a sense of ownership of the paper and added unique accountability to a news-gathering operation that sought to hold itself to a higher standard than others.

The Post’s former executive editor, Marty Baron, was not necessarily a fan of keeping an ombudsperson on staff. Baron told the last person to hold the job, Patrick Pexton, that the Post already attracts plenty of criticism, internal and external, and with a “competition for resources,” the internal critic could be the first on the chopping block.

Today, questions remain about Lewis and the allegations of dishonesty—old and new—that surround him.

Former editor Cameron Barr was brought out of retirement in Scotland to edit the Post’s news coverage of Lewis. But that team has gone dark since July, with no explanation for readers.

There are also unanswered questions about Lewis’ plan for remaking the Post newsroom. He announced that he wants to create a new newsroom focused on video stories, wants to send more paid newsletters, and wants the core newsroom to focus on politics, investigations, business, technology, sports, and features.

Still, the need for an ombudsperson existed before Lewis came along and extends beyond his baggage.

The Post hired Margaret Sullivan in 2016 after her stint as public editor of the New York Times—a different title for the same job. Some thought (hoped, perhaps) that Sullivan would function like an ombudsperson, but she was hired as a media reporter rather than an internal watchdog.

“Having an ombudsman restores confidence,” Sullivan tells City Paper. “The Post should bring it back.”

David Ignatius, who writes about foreign policy for the Post, penned an op-ed in 2017 calling on his outlet to “bring the ombudsman back,” as a way to combat then-President Donald Trump’s incessant attacks on the media as “fake news.”

An ombudsperson is “needed as never before,” Ignatius wrote in 2017. “Critics see media bigshots as arrogant, unaccountable elitists pursuing their own agendas. A good ombudsman changes that balance, in favor of readers and viewers — and fairness.”

Besides the many structural changes happening at the Post, there remain significant editorial decisions that have raised questions. This spring, for example, the Post acknowledged that its reporters had the story about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flying an upside-down American flag—a symbol of support for Trump’s stolen election lie—for three years before the New York Times published those details.

The Post finally ran their story nine days after the Times, admitting the delay in its own coverage. Barr, the editor who oversees the Post’s coverage of Lewis, took responsibility for initially killing the story.

The Times’ reporting prompted bipartisan blowback and calls from Democratic lawmakers for Alito to recuse himself from the court’s cases that dealt with Trump and Jan. 6 (he didn’t). 

But the timing of the Times’ report became all the more significant when the paper dropped a bombshell piece about justices’ internal discussions last week. Days after the Times published its story about the flag outside Alito’s house, the Times reported, Chief Justice John Roberts removed Alito as the author of the court’s opinion on how (and whether) people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 can be held legally accountable.

“While that timing is suggestive, it is unclear whether the two are linked,” the Times reported.

If only there was an ombudsperson to shed some light.