On Jan. 5, NU's Online News Service reported that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland had named a member of the Columbus City Council, Mary Jo Hudson, to be the new insurance director. Pretty routine, right? Well, we blew it by headlining the story, “Ohio Gets First Openly Gay Insurance Director,” and by making that the thrust of the story.


We received a few angry letters from readers (a sample appears below this posting) challenging the relevance of Ms. Hudson's sexual preference as far as regulating insurance goes. Those readers are absolutely right.

Ms. Hudson's personal preference is no secret–indeed, it was reported prominently by news organizations as diverse as “The Columbus Dispatch” (which wrote that Ms. Hudson had “made history” in 2005 “by becoming the first openly gay person elected to the [Columbus] City Council) and GayWired.com. At least one of our own competitors played up the “gay angle” as well.

But in rethinking our news judgment, I've decided that while our story was accurate, that doesn't make it right.

Had the governor made Ms. Hudson's personal background an issue when he named her the state's insurance regulator, that might have made the issue newsworthy–I'm frankly not even sure that would have cut the mustard for me. But the point is moot, since neither the governor's press release announcing the apppointment, nor Ms. Hudson's bio on the Insurance Department home page, bother to mention her sexuality–and rightfully not. What's the point?

Sometimes journalists instinctively go for the most provocative aspect of a story because we're trained to focus on what is new and will get the most attention. But at times we step over the line and make an issue out of something that is not relevant to the news of the day. This, I believe, is such a case.

I apologize to our readers for our mistake in judgment, and to Ms. Hudson for making an issue out of an aspect of her personal life that has no bearing on her job as insurance commissioner.

We wish Ms. Hudson luck, and thank those readers who called us to account. We count on you to keep us on our toes.

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