(Credit: Bostno Gloeb, screenshot)

iMediaEthics wrote earlier this month about Washingtonian’s reporting that the end of the Washington Post‘s ombudsman’s office might be near.  At the bottom of the Washingtonian‘s story was a note referencing some sort of quoting error, but it wasn’t quite clear what happened.

The “note” read:

“NOTE: A previous version of this story quoted Jeffrey Dvorkin, executive editor of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, accusing Baron of firing the last ombudsman at the Boston Globe. That is not accurate. In fact, the ombudsman left the job to become a spokesperson for Deval Patrick, during his first campaign for governor. The Globe publisher did not replace him.”

But Washingtonian’s story, when iMediaEthics viewed it, didn’t include any quote from Dvorkin.  iMediaEthics has since heard back from Washingtonian’s National Editor and the reporter of the Washingtonian’s story Harry Jaffe with more information about the note. Jaffe told iMediaEthics by email:

“As the author of our post on the status of ombudsmen at the Washington Post, I can say Dvorkin made his comment to our intern, Nicholas Hunt. I decided to include it in the post. Marty Baron, the Post’s new executive editor, asked for a correction based on his point-by-point rebuttal of Dvorkin’s facts. Rather than insert Baron’s comments as a back and forth in the body of the post, I decided to remove the quote, because it was not accurate.”

We asked Dvorkin by email for more information about the “NOTE” but he didn’t respond to that question.