NEW YORK Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell has received hundreds of calls and e-mails from readers since yesterday's revelations about Bob Woodward's involvement in the Valerie Plame case, and none of them are positive.

"I am getting a lot of reaction and, from readers, it is all bad," Howell told E&P today, referring to the fallout from Woodward's disclosure that he spoke to a confidential White House source about Plame in 2003. "We are being barraged with calls. They think it was wrong for him not to tell his editors and wrong for the Post not to tell readers."

The ombudsman also pointed out that the e-mails "are all very different. I have not seen [an organized] campaign."

Howell, who has been on the job for just over a month, plans to focus her next column in the Sunday paper on the Woodward story. She said she had a column nearly completed on politics when the bombshell about the Watergate legend's testimony dropped early Wednesday.

The Woodward story has became the talk of Washington and the journalism community since the Post reported Wednesday that Woodward had had a conversation with his administrative source in mid-June 2003 about Plame, the former CIA agent whose identity was disclosed by columnist Robert Novak several weeks later.

Howell, who served as Washington bureau chief for Newhouse Newspapers prior to her Post job, declined to give her opinion of the situation, saying, "I am saving my thoughts for my own column." But, she said, conversations with Post employees have revealed a mixed reaction.

"Inside the Post, you have a lot of positive comments about Bob," Howell said. "There is a wide variety of opinion. Some people are angry about it, but Bob has his defenders. But everyone wishes he had told the paper earlier about this -- his involvement." Woodward said as much himself in an apology yesterday. He also said he should have tempered his many remarks downplaying the Plame probe on national TV.

"I am out in the newsroom talking to people and everyone is concerned who I have talked to," Howell said, adding that she has yet to speak with Woodward or Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., but plans to get them both. "Everybody is talking about it so I am taking the temperature. They should be concerned, they should be talking, this is a newspaper."
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.

Commentary:
The readers have spoken. Why doesn't management listen?