Sid's a draw (though not a Vikes-level draw) plus he's in sports.

I've never heard ANYTHING about Sid being cast to the fates. (There are probably a few people in the newsroom who wouldn't mind.) But as you can imagine, he has seniority, and short of a Gelfand-like reassignment, I can't imagine how they'd pressure him to go. The bad publicity would be considerable, and he is a true (though far from heroic) legend.

John - being an ombudsperson is dangerous work, at least within the profession, as I know from doing something similar outside 425's walls. You're always pissing someone off for being too tough or not tough enough.

I agree that Kate and Lou took different approaches, and in many ways Kate was much more ambitious. She worked out a system to bring reader objections to management meetings. She spent many columns explaining the paper's operations to readers, which fit her view (as I recall when I interviewed her once) that she need to explain the mechanism not just when there was a crisis or foible.

On a much-reduced level, I do similar features, so I understand the reasoning. In retrospect, though, Kate's mix made the job often seem like management's rep more than reader's rep. I'm not sure how many readers cared about the paper's interns, and I can't see, say, Clark Hoyt doing a piece on the New York Times' crew. (Watch someone go find that clip.)

And unless I missed something in the clips, Kate never really "took on" Par Ridder, except as an unavoidable topic.

Before the settlement was announced (her ombudsman job ended before the Strib's deal with the PiPress), Kate wrote a column distancing the work-a-day journalists from his alleged actions. While a very worthwhile thing for the troops, it didn't really blast Ridder's obvious actions, or their morality.

It would've taken a lot of guts and bureaucratic savvy to get that column past the lawyers, likely an impossible task. But Kate *had* to write about the elephant in the room. She did it in a legit way. But it should accord no honors.

When McClatchy's D.C. bureau closed, Kate wrote a piece about how the Strib's two designated correspondents "opted to stay" with McClatchy. She didn't mention that both would see pay cuts had they returned to the Strib.

I do not want to suggest Kate was without sharp elbows. She did do forensics on the paper's miscues. But in hindsight, I wanted more of a cop on the paper's content.

By the way, just this week an ex-Stribber accused me of being too soft on management, so know that what goes around comes around. Life in the foxhole.